Overflow Daily...ish: This Book is NR


2 Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is better than wine; 
3 your anointing oils are fragrant; your name is oil poured out; therefore virgins love you. 
Song of Solomon 1:2-3 

Don’t worry, you are in the right place. You did not stumble across a blog for 50 Shades of whatever, nor did you come across an article hyper-sexualizing everything under the sun. Now that we got that out of the way, I love my wife. She is amazingly beautiful and precious and when I read Song of Songs it makes me wonder what sort of descriptive words I would use to describe her. For me, words fall short to the love I have for her because she is the most wonderful gift that God has given to me apart from His Son. And that drives me to love and cherish her and be gentle with her as I long to lead her in such a way so that I present her back to God unblemished. And there are no shortages of analogies used by Solomon in describing the love he has for his unnamed love. As beautiful as this book is, unfortunately it is probably one of the most confusing ones to readers today.

Some will contend that the graphic nature of the book is evidence that this should have never been part of the canon of Scriptures. That its lack of mention of God is yet another reason for why it should be excluded. Others will swing in the opposite direction to the more popular (false) method of interpretation, allegory, and will spiritualize every aspect of the story. Examples include the woman being the virgin Mary in the Roman Catholic faith to more common ones identifying the man is Christ and the woman as the church.

I think one of the main reasons why allegory is used so often is that many are baffled with how to handle this text. They would much rather see the Bible contain 65 books, but since it is included, they have to figure out some sort of spiritual meaning behind it and so allegorization of the text is what occurs. However, both history and logic disprove any allegorical basis for its inclusion in the canon of Scripture. Duane Garrett put it this way, “Certainly no one would dream of interpreting the Song of Songs as an allegory of God and Israel if it were not found in the Bible.” What are we to do with this book then?

First off, the Bible asserts that it is sufficient for us for life and godliness, able to equip us for every good work (2 peter 1:3 and 2 Tim 3:16-17). Well this includes being able to speak into our lives on marriage and love. In the Song of Songs, we see demonstrated that this sort of love is exclusively between a man and a woman. It is not exploitative or repressed or abusive.

Even though we live in a world tainted and fallen to sin, the love between a man and a woman is still possible. Without Song of Songs, we may start to believe that sexual love is innately evil; with its inclusion, we read positive instructions for healthy love. And this sort of love is cherished between the two and is celebrated by others; learning that the misuse and abuse of sex is completely wrong. Sex is also not limited in this book to procreation, but enjoyment within the bounds of marriage.

This wonderful book provides positive instruction on sex and love which is very much needed in today’s sex-indulging age. Let’s not fall to the trap of condemning sexual love within marriage, nor should we elevate it to a religious duty. Likewise, let’s not take beautiful books and passages of Scripture and force a spiritual meaning which does not exist. When we do that, we abuse God’s word and also devalue the gift it is to us. Let us rightly understand that God’s word has spoken sufficiently on matters of life and godliness and may we live in light of its truth.

Grace and Peace,
Pastor Alex

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