Fire and Heat

“I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or the does of the field, that you not stir up or awaken love until it pleases.” 

—Song of Solomon 2:7

Love, sex, and marriage. We are a people obsessed with love. It’s as the Beatles sang, “All you need is love.” But, what is love? And in thinking about love, what do we do with sex? Sex is everywhere, from the checkout line at the grocery store, to websites, television, movies, Viagra commercials, and sexting. It’s all around us. In our world today, we have a confused understanding of love and sex. Love, biblically speaking, is a multifaceted thing, like a diamond held under the light. The Greeks knew love to be complex and used four different words to describe it. The first love is called “storge” which is the love between a parent and a child. The second love, “phileo,” means “brotherly love” and is the love between friends; hence the city of Philadelphia is called the “city of brotherly love.” The third type of love is “eros,” the physical sexual love between a man and a woman, and the last type of love is “agape,” which describes God’s unconditional love for us. When we use the term “love” we usually have in mind one of these understandings, although a particular relationship may involve a combination of them.

In our culture today, the word “love” has really lost its meaning. We “love” outfits we found at the mall, we love our pet, and then use the same word in talking about how much we care for our spouse—but this cannot be. While we may differentiate the term’s usage in our mind, we still have a hard time in using the word exclusively for love for another individual. We must radically reorient our minds to use the word “love” the way that God desires us to use it.

As our misunderstanding of love has grown, so has our misunderstanding of sex. Love and sex are supposed to go together, within the confines of marriage, as heat goes with fire, but our world has largely separated them. No longer does one have to love in order to have sex, and vice versa. Sex has become muddied, and individuals are “hooking up” all over the place, polluting their souls by sharing something of their spirit with another person without any regard for the consequences that come with it.

Sex is designed to be a permanent union of intimacy, a connection of souls, that is for enjoyment and procreation for a husband and his wife. It is not supposed to be with individuals who are not married, or who are married to other people. If sex occurs outside of marriage, it is called “fornication.” If it occurs between two people who are married to someone else it is called “adultery.” If it occurs between family members it’s called “incest” and if it occurs between two people of the same gender it’s called “homosexuality.” If it occurs between a person and an animal it’s called “bestiality” and if it happens between an adult and a child, it is called “pedophilia.” Any union that is not between a husband and a wife is sin in the sight of God.

But when is the appropriate time for sex in a relationship? Our world doesn’t have any standards and believes that any time is a good time, but not according to the Bible. According to the Bible, the only time that sex is appropriate and good is when a couple is ready for marriage. That’s why our passage for today speaks about not awakening love. Our passage is from the Song of Solomon, the great love book in Scripture. Scholars have been divided for centuries on the exact nature of the book. Some have believed that the book is largely allegorical, or symbolic, representing God’s love for Israel or Christ’s love for the church. And still others believed that the book is literal, in other words, it is about love, sex, and marriage.

I think the book is literal, about a man’s love for his wife and vice versa. It’s a book that warns youth about the perils of awakening sexual love before the proper time. Why? Because God desired sexual love to be experienced and enjoyed within a permanent relationship between a husband and wife, and to awaken it for another time, or in another way, is like lighting a fire in the middle of your living room. Light the fire in the fireplace, where it’s made to be; then it’s all well and good. But light the fire in the middle of the living room, and destruction is sure to follow.

I pray that if you are young and contemplating having sex before the proper time, that you wait. And that if you are an adult and are participating in one of the aforementioned illicit unions, that you may repent. I pray that everyone who reads my words will seek to awaken love only at the proper time when it may be pursued within the context for which God designed it. May it be within holy marriage to foster intimacy, and enjoyed for the glory of God, with gratitude for the gift that He has given. Amen.