INTRODUCTION
There is so much that can be said about love. However Love in the book of Song of Songs is a romantic love between a man and a woman. Not like the Love that exist between Christ and the church which is “Agape love” one of several Greek words for love. When the word “agape” is used in the Bible, it refers to a pure, willful, sacrificial love that intentionally desires another’s highest good. This is how Christ Jesus loves the church of the Living God.
When King Solomon wrote the Book of Song of Songs he wrote with romantic characteristics of love expressions that a man will express to his wife. And as we read we acknowledge the responses of the woman to the man she longs to be with for the rest of her life.
This awakening of romantic love comes with a warning as spoken in chapter’s two, three and eight, it should not we aroused in the young women as the concentration of what is being depicted through feelings and experiences in the word of God cannot be controlled by the immature, childish age, behavior and bodily development of individuals.
Today I will like to indulge you in the premature aspects of romantic love and its consequences, the value of romantic love and the prescribed principles outlined by the Lord God almighty for love.
1. ROMANTIC LOVE:
Song of Solomon 8:7 ESV /
Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. If a man offered for love all the wealth of his house, he would be utterly despised.
The Cambridge dictionary give a description of romantic love as the feelings and behavior of two people who are in a loving and sexual relationship with each other:
- Romantic love weighs on a balanced scale when two people: man and woman begins a relationship of knowing each other and complimenting each other’s weaknesses with their strength in their faith, their livelihood, their families, churches and communities.
-It is not to be confused with the unbalancing scales of short term gestures of love for selfish gains, perversion, sexual immorality and misdemeanor between individuals. Demonic interferences with the nature of romantic love can lead to these types of sinful dispensation.
-It has no boundaries to whom it can be aroused within. However it can be put under subjection until such time.
It is incumbent upon the mature men and women of God that parent children to teach them and guide them from an early age to subdue the flesh and the soulish nature that can develop this love at the wrong time. It carries the high risk off: -TEENAGED PREGNANCY
-MENTAL DISTRACTION AND DISTURBANCE
-ABANDONMENT OF HEALTHY FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS
-PHYSICAL DAMAGE -TRAUMA, REJECTION, DEPRESSION AND OPPRESION
2: MARITAL LOVE:
Song of Songs 7:11-13
10 I am my beloved's, and his desire is toward me.11 Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field; let us lodge in the villages.12 Let us get up early to the vineyards; let us see if the vine flourish, whether the tender grape appear, and the pomegranates bud forth: there will I give thee my loves.13 The mandrakes give a smell, and at our gates are all manner of pleasant fruits, new and old, which I have laid up for thee, O my beloved.
-Love between a man and wife is a love that commits to the end of each life.
-The struggles and journey of life develops this love.
-The joy and pleasures of life is to stand as a couple and not individually.
-It continually gives strength to each other to rise above the challenges of the individuality of the other.
-It is selfless as two has become one flesh. Mark 10:8-10.
-It is the healing balm of the intensity of the day. (1 Corinthians 13:1)
-It is nourishment to the soul, body and spirit as it provides an environment to physical and spiritual food, shelter and clothing as a family.
-It is the weapon of warfare against the enemy Mathew 18:19.
-It is the foundation that will build the kingdom of God as the church is depicted as a bride awaiting her groom Jesus Christ.
-It is the communication, interpretation and expression of grace, love and wisdom of God that the Man shall love his wife as Christ love the church and give his life for it. (Ephesians 5:25-33)
-It is the submission of the wife to her husband knowing her rightful place as his helpmate (Ephesians 5:22). The church is the helper to Christ on the earth to carry out the will and plan of God for the nations of the earth.
3. AGAPE LOVE:
The unconditional love of God toward mankind is called an agape love. We are commanded to love, even to love our enemies.
Sometimes it’s hard to even love those that say negative things about us far less to love those that hurt us. We must thrive to reach that place( Matthew 5:43-47)
-The gospel is a gospel of Love. For God IS love. (1 John 4:7-10)
-His love has no boundaries to His creation.
-We are designed by His hands to love and not hate. Hate is not part of the blueprint of the human soul, it was taught by man.
-God loves us first, we cannot change His love for us and He sent Christ Jesus as the propitiation for sins that gives us the liberty to be loved and to love God.
-This love is an everlasting love that will never die but enter into eternity with us. This love is demonstrated through the sacrifice of the only son of God Christ Jesus.
-While we were yet in sin/not been born as yet this love was poured out for us. (Romans 5:8).
-It is not compromised, it is unblemished, it is flawless and pure.
CONCLUSION:
Love is a powerful portion of God the Father that He endowed in the life of every individual. When we think on love we must think on the goodness of God and all that He has created for us, and in us.
Love can never fail, neither can it die. It should not only be a feeling to persuade a physical relationship but to commit to the cause of what it was designed to do especially to forgive. It must grow to the benevolent place of unconditional love that brings healing, deliverance and salvation to mankind in Christ Jesus.
When King Solomon wrote these poetic love verses he was prophesying the love of God through Christ Jesus to the church of the living God. We are to love in marriage, to love the Lord, to love people and to love His word.
Let us understand that Love has power through God the Father and how it must be used for the greater good upon the face of the earth and not pervert the design and reduce the power of love to a demonic affair that once started in the Gardens of Eden.
