PROLOGUE
I Love You Always, Forever
The woman slipped into the pew in front of me and sat down, alone, just a few minutes before the worship service began. I had never seen her before, although at College Church in Wheaton it is common to see people with Down syndrome. She stood up for the opening hymn and so together we sang,
Fairest Lord Jesus,
Ruler of all nature,
Son of God and Son of Man!
Thee will I cherish,
Thee will I honor,
Thou, my soul’s glory, joy, and crown.
What the woman did next caught me by surprise. She put down her worship folder, a little impatiently, as if somehow it was in the way. Then she sang the rest of the hymn from memory and at the same time used her hands to express its words in American Sign Language. She wanted to praise God with her whole person, body as well as soul.
As I watched, the woman’s gestures made the words of the hymn come alive. I found myself walking through fair meadows and spring woodlands, or looking up at “the twinkling, starry host.” Most of all, I could see the face of my beautiful Savior, Jesus Christ, whose hands were pierced for my transgressions.
As my spiritual sister gave glory and honor to the “Lord of all nations,” her face was radiant, her visible words had a graceful beauty, and I had the unmistakable impression that she was deeply in love. Jesus Christ was the predominant passion of this woman’s life. She was not “disabled,” as some would say, but divinely empowered to worship. Nor was she single, as I had assumed from the absence of a ring on her finger. Rather, she was engaged to be married, for the beauty of her worship came from a heart that was betrothed to the Son of God.
This is the relationship that God wants to have with every one of us, male or female, married or single. He wants us to have an exclusive relationship, like the intense affection a bride has for the man she is preparing to marry, with the abiding security that comes from a groom who promises to be faithful unto death.
Introducing the Song of Songs
One of the best places to see a passionate, permanent love relationship is in the Bible’s most famous love song—the ideal romance that we read about in the Song of Songs.
Admittedly, most books are easier to write about than the Song of Songs. To begin with, it is hard to know exactly how to connect the book’s message with the life of King Solomon, who may or may not have been its author but is clearly mentioned in the first verse. Also, the Song of Songs is unashamed to talk about human sexuality, which some people find a little embarrassing. The book is “naked” in ways that some Christians wish they could cover up. Then there is the vexing question of how to relate the book’s human relationship to the love that God wants to share with his people.
In spite of these difficulties, I have wanted to teach this book for a long time. One of the first sermons I ever preached came from chapter 2, with its thrilling exclamations: “My beloved is mine, and I am his” (v. 16 ESV); “He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love” (v. 4 ESV).
I got more serious about studying the Song of Songs when I visited the famous Bodmer Library on the shores of Lake Geneva in Switzerland. The Bodmer boasts one of the world’s most extraordinary collections of ancient religious texts, biblical manuscripts, and other famous books. It is perhaps the best place in the world to see the religious and intellectual history of humanity.
There I saw a stunning manuscript of the Song of Songs from the early Middle Ages—the seventh century, as I recall. The colorful hand lettering was beautiful, but what really captured my attention was the expansive white space around the text. Obviously, the text had been copied by someone who knew how to read poetry. The words were not crammed onto the page the way they are in a two-column Bible but allowed to breathe. The scribe wanted each line of love poetry to be savored before moving on to the next. Seeing the book written out as a beautiful love poem awakened my desire to study it and then to preach it.
God wants us to have an exclusive relationship, like the intense affection a bride has for the man she is preparing to marry, with the abiding security that comes from a groom who promises to be faithful unto death.
Not long afterward, I read the manuscript for a commentary on the Song of Songs by my friend Iain Duguid, who studied Old Testament at Cambridge before becoming my pastor when I was a theology student at Oxford. Professor Duguid has an exceptional ability to understand the Old Testament in connection to Christ and then apply its gospel message for everyday Christianity. The more I read his commentary—to which this little book is deeply indebted—the more I wanted to share the love of loves that we encounter in the Song of Songs.
Our culture needs this book. As a college president, I often hear students ask for more guidance in understanding human sexuality. They are not just looking for a list of biblical do’s and don’t’s (although such a list may have its place); what they want to understand is the stunning beauty of God’s design and his higher purpose for our romantic relationships. We live in a world where sexuality is ruined by sin, its beauty obscured by our brokenness. We need a divine vision for the way sex was meant to be, with a gospel that offers forgiveness for sexual sin and an empowering grace to live into the sexuality that God wants to give us. We also need a deeper understanding of the intimacy that God wants to have with each one of us and how that intimacy relates to our singleness or to our status as husbands and wives, as the case may be.
The best way to capture God’s vision for anything is simply to work through some relevant part of the Bible, letting God’s Spirit set the agenda through Scripture. When we turn to the Song of Songs, we encounter a love story told in the form of a love song that is part of the greatest love story ever told.