David Bahn – Reflections

Click here for an audio version of this blog post.

These devotions are part of the Follow the Word Bible reading program at St. John Lutheran Church in Cypress, Texas. This year we are reading through the Scriptures together, listening for how God speaks through his Word day by day. I hope you will join me on this journey.

Today’s readings are 2 Chronicles 1, Song of Solomon 1-2, Psalm 129.

Song of Solomon 2:10, 16

My beloved speaks and says to me:
“Arise, my love, my beautiful one,
    and come away,

My beloved is mine, and I am his

For much of church history, the Song of Solomon was understood primarily as an allegory of the love between God and his people — Israel in Jewish interpretation, and Christ and his Church in Christian interpretation. Martin Luther himself did not read the book mainly as a guide to romance or marriage, but more broadly as a picture of God’s ordering and blessing of human life. Only in more recent centuries has the Song come to be read chiefly as a celebration of romantic love between husband and wife. Perhaps both themes belong together. Human love, rightly ordered and faithfully lived, is itself one of God’s good gifts — and in its deepest beauty it reflects the covenant love, delight, and faithfulness God shows toward his people.

I say, why not both? In other words, the love between a husband and wife is a picture of the love of Christ for his bride the Church – the One Holy Christian Apostolic Church. Jesus’ love for the sum total of all believers in heaven and on earth. This is the church we confess in both the Apostle’s and Nicene creeds. We confess it because it is invisible; we cannot look into someone else’s heart to see whether they are true believers or not. That is known only to God. But we believe it exists because Jesus promised it would endure to the end even prevailing over the gates of hell.

It’s nice to know that Jesus knows who are his, and that there are true believers in the world today. And to think that Jesus loves the One Holy Christian and Apostolic Church on earth may bolster our faith. But I want to remind you that God loves the world. Jesus died for the sins of the world. Jesus loves broken people and crippled churches.

The Song of Solomon portrays an idealized version of two lovers. She’s amazingly beautiful. He is the handsomest of all men. It can be properly understood to speak of our Lord Jesus, and his bride the Church. But it can also remind us of how God made us male and female. It can help a husband to look to his wife with delight and love. It can remind us that husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the Church and gave himself for her. It can remind us that wives are to respect their husbands as the church respects and honors Christ.

Diane and I have found great insight in the book, Love and War by John and Staci Eldridge. One thing we found to be enlightening is that women wish to be loved and men wish to be respected. Of course we each want both, but the scale is tilted on those directions for most women and men. I wonder if we – the Church – would lay hold of Christ’s love more fully, and show our respect for him by honoring his name and believing his word.

Song of Solomon might be understood both allegorically, or as speaking of the love between a husband and wife. But without a doubt we must love our spouse and rejoice in Jesus’ love for his Church.

Click here, or on the image below for the Bible Project Video on Song of Solomon