The woman in Song of Songs highlights how sexual desire develops in a godly relationship. God made us so that sexuality—the best sex, physical oneness—happens when it is the icing on the cake of oneness in every other aspect of our lives. Sex is supposed to be a oneness that corresponds to oneness in every other way—spiritual, emotional, and financial. That’s why sex is supposed to happen only in the context of covenant marriage, and it means that the best sex, the best romance, happens when the relationship has been built on a complete oneness of persons.
Why did God create marriage in the first place? You might say, “To give us a picture of Christ and the church, to reveal his love.” Yes, that was God’s ultimate purpose. But what was its first earthly, functional purpose? Was it for procreation? For the alleviation of sexual desires? No. The Bible is clear in Genesis 2 that “it wasn’t good for man to be alone,” so God created a companion for the man, an “ezer kenegdo” in Hebrew. Ezer kenegdo means that the companion was different but the same—two genders with a difference of perspective, a difference of temperament, all of that, while also companions and friends in this task called life.
Marriage, in other words, is fundamentally about friendship. Not child-rearing. Not sex. Friendship. This means that what you should most be looking for when you date is someone who can be your friend. Because that’s God’s earthly purpose for marriage. Think of it like building a pyramid with spiritual, emotional, and physical layers.
The bottom layer, the largest one, is spiritual. If you’re choosing a companion or a friend, and you are going to be partners in life, then choose someone who shares your deepest and most fundamental commitments. If you call yourself a Christian, I’m not sure why you’d ever intentionally date or marry someone who is not a Christian or who doesn’t share the vision for life that you do. Second Corinthians 6:14 isn’t a restrictive rule but a loving instruction: Don’t be unequally yoked. When you don’t share this at the core of your relationship, you will never be able to share the deepest parts of you with them, and you’ll be pulled in opposite directions for the rest of your life.
The middle layer is emotional. Your companion should make an excellent partner for you in life. It doesn’t mean you have to like all the same things—you don’t have to both love sports or hunting or Taylor Swift or home design. But at the end of the day, are they someone you want to process your day with? To go on vacation with? Do you want to spend years with them? Are they your best friend?
The top layer, the smallest one, is physical. It’s the least substantive of the three layers, which is why it’s the smallest. It’s not that physical attraction is meaningless—after all, God created it, so it matters—but simply that it’s not strong enough to build a relationship on. When the physical attributes fade or sag or wrinkle (and they will), you still have a foundation of relationship built on the spiritual and emotional.
Build the pyramid with the spiritual as the base, and your relationship will be secure. Invert the pyramid and the relationship becomes wildly unstable.
This is why the woman in Song of Songs says several times, “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” (ESV). She says, “Keep ‘em hibernating until it’s time for them to run. But then, let ‘em out the cage and let ‘em go wild.” She isn’t opposed to physical intimacy. But she knows that sex clouds the judgment process. Sex before marriage makes incompatible people think they’re compatible.
Physical intimacy works like a drug—it intoxicates you, which isn’t always bad, of course. When you’re sick and in physical pain, the doctor prescribes a pill that makes you feel awesome. Thank God for those painkillers! But here’s the truth: You feel great, but your body is not, in fact, great. The drug simply deceives you into making you think you feel awesome. That’s fine when you’re sick, but think about the harm you cause to yourself if you let the illusion that drug creates in you keep you from taking whatever steps to really get better. (For the record, I tend to do this far too often when it comes to sickness. Still learning.)
Whether we have the drugs or not, the longer we ignore our sickness, the longer we become sick. The intoxication of physical intimacy works in a similar way: It keeps you from seeing what is really going on in the relationship and who the other person really is. So when the physical excitement of sex fades, which it will, all you are left with is a sick relationship.
When I was a teenager, my dad gave me four practical rules for this. They were shorthand ways to keep a dating relationship from moving too far. Since his name is Lynn, these guidelines have come to be known as “Lynn’s Laws.” They are:
1. Nothing in the dark.
2. Nothing below the chin.
3. Never lie down.
4. Nothing should last longer than five seconds.
Are those in the Bible? Of course not. You can follow those rules and still do colossally stupid things. Conversely, you can break these rules and not immediately create a disaster. But I always found them to be helpful guidelines. They helped me “not awaken love until it was time,” and when I held to them, they kept me out of a lot of trouble.
Remember: The purpose of dating is not to give you a “romance appetizer” or “marriage light.” The purpose of dating is to get clarity on someone’s character, to see what kind of companion they’ll be—not to sample intimacy with them. Sex is common in the dating culture, even expected. But common doesn’t mean healthy. Having sex before marriage is common, but so is divorce. If you want something very few people have, you have to be willing to do what very few people are willing to do.
Build your relationship differently. Build the pyramid with the right foundation.
Photo Credit: SWN Design
"Editor's Note: Pastor JD Greear's "Ask the Pastor" column regularly appears at Christianity.com, providing biblical, relatable, and reliable answers to your everyday questions about faith and life. Email him your questions at [email protected]."
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