God’s Word for You

Song of Solomon 8:1 I would kiss you…

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Saturday, August 24, 2024

The Wife (or Wife to be)

8:1 I wish you were like a brother to me,
  who was nursed at my mother’s breasts!
  Then I could meet you outside.
  I would kiss you,
  and no one would despise me.

Here in the final chapter, the Song has folded back on itself to a time before the couple was married, when the woman longed to be able to kiss her love in public, but this was not allowed. She wishes that he was one of her brothers. She can kiss them anytime she wants, and no one says a thing. But the man she loves? The man she wants to marry? They have to wait. (Today, in some Middle Eastern cultures, men and women cannot be affectionate in public even after they are married). This was their custom, although it is not ours; we are free to “smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss” if permitted. Then, to kiss a man in public might be done by a prostitute, especially a very wanton one (Proverbs 7:13). But even Jacob could only kiss Rachel in public when it was discovered that they were related (Genesis 29:11).

The Bible does not condemn public displays of affection between spouses; if this passage were describing a married couple (which does not seem to be the case) it would only reflect a custom of Judah in the eleventh century BC. There is, however, a direct application in our lives. While kissing is not forbidden, sexual intercourse prior or outside of marriage is strictly forbidden. “It is God’s will that you should avoid sexual immorality,” Paul teaches, “that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God” (1 Thessalonians 4:3-5).

The arguments of modern objectors are a quagmire of filth and sin. Even to answer their objections smears the believer with sinful traps—since to answer a single question only creates rules and loopholes that the ungodly will try to exploit. It is an impossibly hopeless argument. The heathen does not want to be informed, but to find a way that they can keep sinning. The commandment is clear enough: “Do not commit adultery” (Exodus 20:14), and also “Do not associate with the sexually immoral (that is, with fornicators)” (1 Corinthians 5:9). When a man and woman enter into their marriage with purity, they learn to enjoy and please one another without any sin or memory of past sins, without coveting, without polluted bodies (Jude 1:8), without regretting anything in the past, and without the other punishments God has placed upon man with the various diseases and infections that plague the promiscuous as “the due penalty for their perveresion” (Romans 1:27). In this way they will be physically one flesh, and not an awful mixture of many fleshes, of guilt, of shame, of fear, and of regret.

But for anyone who has a regretful sin in their past, there is forgiveness and there is peace, for we have “a great high priest who meets our needs—one who is holy, blameless, pure, and set apart from sinners” (Hebrews 7:26). For all who have sinned, there is forgiveness through Christ. “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:12), “for he knows how we are formed; he remembers that we are dust” (Psalm 103:14). You are forgiven in Jesus. Be at peace.

But how are we to apply this to our spiritual life and to the love of Christ for his church? This is the very simplest of things, because the believer will not drift away into idolatry for any reason, for any temptation, for any moment of doubt. Remain faithful to our one holy God; to the head of the church, who is Jesus Christ.

In this case, it is more a matter of waiting to see our Lord in person than in regretting, the way that a woman met her boyfriend in the city three thousand years ago. We have nothing to fear or to regret about our meeting with our Lord (Isaiah 54:14; 2 Corinthians 7:10). We have no wishes to concern ourselves with. We simply anticipate the meeting that will never end. “And so we will be with the Lord forever.”

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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