"I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, do not stir up nor awaken love until it pleases."
(Song of Solomon 8:4 - NKJV)
God has a plan for true love between a man and wife.
In God’s plan, there are four roles involved in the biblical marriage relationship, namely siblings, friends, spouses, and lovers.
The first two roles are foundational, serving as a duel foundation for the marriage.
Brother and sister
"You have ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse; you have ravished my heart with one look of your eyes, with one link of your necklace.”
(Song of Solomon 4:9 - NKJV)
The first foundational role in the biblical marriage relationship is the role of brother and sister. When a man and wife are Christians, they first and foremost are a part of the family of God, children of God, and as such are brother and sister in Christ.
The role of siblings is the first foundational role because it grounds the relationship in the deepest love that Christians are called to, specifically to love each other as Christ loved us (John 13:34). This is actually the highest, greatest love people can love with – it is completely selfless and loves to the fullest extent. When spouses love each other with this love, at the foundation of their relationship they will truly and deeply love each other.
These roles also allow the spouses to love each other not for what they do (as friends, spouses, and lovers), but rather simply for who they are – God’s children and their sibling in the family of God. This love is the purest love they can share, and as such it grounds the relationship in pure true love as people.
Friends
"His mouth is most sweet, yes, he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved, and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem!"
(Song of Solomon 5:16 - NKJV)
The second foundational role in the biblical marriage relationship is the role of friends. Ultimately this is what the relationship is all about, two people going through life together as friends. It is a relationship where they are best friends, who share their entire lives together and are willing to love each other for the rest of their lives no matter what.
In the marriage relationship the two spouses are to be as one, specifically in heart, soul, and spirit. The role as friends is foundationally where they become one.
In this role it is critical that they be compatible for each other as friends, including genuinely enjoying each other’s company and having similar interests, similar goals, as well as inherently thinking alike – “Can two walk together unless they are agreed?” (Amos 3:3).
In this role it is also critical that each understand the art of being friends, including the need to be open and transparent – literally have truly open hearts and minds with one another – as well as being open minded, willing to consider the other’s perspective and the other’s interests. It also includes knowing how to love each other as friends, which foundationally means loving each other according to the royal law of scripture, to love your neighbour as yourself (James 2:8), which literally means to do good for one another and not do evil. Practically it means obeying the Bible’s many commands in human relations including the following:
Love each other
Be reconciled
Be merciful
Be patient
Be likeminded
Be subject to one another
Do violence to no one
Do not love in word only
Go the second mile
Let your love be genuine
Don’t let sun go down on your wrath
Please your neighbour for good
Don’t provoke one another
Don’t envy one another
Do good to all men
Don’t weary in doing good
Exhort one another
Don’t judge one another
Live peaceably with one another
Love fervently
Love from a pure heart
Forgive each other from the heart
Speak truth to one another
To sum this up, spouses need to treat each other great. We all want to be treated great. If spouses are going to love each other as themselves this therefore is how they should treat each other.
Ultimately this role, if done properly, is the role that makes the marriage a joy.
Spouses
"Your lips, O my spouse, Drip as the honeycomb; honey and milk are under your tongue; and the fragrance of your garments is like the fragrance of Lebanon."
(Song of Solomon 4:11 - NKJV)
The third role is the actual purpose of the relationship – the role of spouses. When God created man, He quickly created a woman for him, specially to be his mate. It is for this relationship consequently that men and women are to spend their lives together.
In this relationship the woman is to serve as the man’s helper. In God’s order, He created the man for Himself and He created the woman for the man, specifically to be his helper (Genesis 2:18-25). As such the man needs to take his place as a man and fulfil God’s call on his life, and the woman needs to be able to come alongside the man and be his helper. In fact the role of helper for a man is an actual job, one that a woman needs to be uniquely qualified for. Not all women can serve as the helper for all men.
These roles are critical if the man and wife are to be one. In being one, they need to live one life, and in God’s order, it is the man’s life that they are to live, with the wife serving the supportive role, a role that includes being the manager of the home (1 Timothy 5:14).
In these roles God puts a high degree of responsibility on the man in loving his wife. Specifically God commands the man to love his wife as Christ loves the church, love his wife as his own body, and love his wife as himself (Ephesians 5:25,28-29,33). He also commands the man to give his wife honour and dwell with her with understanding (1 Peter 3:7). Alternatively God commands the wife to love her husband, submit to her husband as to Christ, and to respect her husband (Titus 2:4, Ephesians 5:22-24,33). The call to submit to her husband is a very high call that is necessary in God’s order, but one that is made easy when the man fulfils his responsibilities.
As with friendship, being spouses is an art that people need to learn and understand.
Lovers
"Behold, you are fair, my love! Behold, you are fair! You have dove's eyes."
(Song of Solomon 1:15 - NKJV)
The fourth and last role is that of lovers. To be lovers there naturally needs to be a physical attraction between the two, however the depth of the love actually comes from the depth of love expressed in the first three roles. Without true love expressed in these roles the “love” shared as lovers is completely false, based strictly on superficial reasons.
To have this role be the best, the most passionate and strong, full of love, the love expressed in the first three roles must be strong. When it is, the love that is expressed is a deep, passionate, romantic love that comes from the depth of the heart. It is a love full of the fullness of the feelings related to being in love, with the feelings being true and lasting, feelings that even grow over time.
"I am my beloved's, and his desire is toward me. Come, my beloved, let us go forth to the field; let us lodge in the villages. Let us get up early to the vineyards; let us see if the vine has budded, whether the grape blossoms are open, and the pomegranates are in bloom. There I will give you my love."
(Song of Solomon 7:10-12 - NKJV)
These are the four roles involved in the biblical marriage relationship.
If you want the love involved in this relationship to be true, as true as possible between two human beings in this world, there are three keys.
First, the relationship must be submitted to God. God is love (1 John 4:16) and is the author of the marriage relationship. If it is to contain true love, each spouse must love as God calls us to love. This includes loving as siblings, friends, spouses, as well as lovers. It also includes keeping yourself sexually pure so that the romantic / sexual love you share together will be sacred between you and your spouse with all of its inherent meanings true, the way God designed it to be, including most significantly expressing the truths that they truly love each other and that they are one.
Second, both spouses must be real, specifically who they really truly are as human beings created by God in His image. The purpose of this is very simple. If you want to be truly loved, you must be who you truly are. In doing this it is vitally important that rather than being true to your feelings about yourself, which many times can be false, you need to be true to what God says about all of us in the Bible because what God says about us is who we really are.
Discovering who we are as human beings including who we are according to God can take a lifetime, but it is a search worth undertaking if you want to be truly loved for who you really are.
Third, both spouses must be committed to sharing what I call the “ultimate best friend relationship”, which is what the true love relationship ultimately is all about.
The ultimate best friend relationship involves the man and woman being one to the point of having their hearts and minds completely open to each other and joined and intertwined together. It involves them going through life together, sharing their lives together up to and including all of their experiences and their deepest thoughts. And it also involves them being fully committed to each other including the commitment to spend their lives together and to love each other all of the days of their lives, literally helping each other and being there for each other no matter what, which is what causes the love to be true.
Finally, if you want this relationship, the most important thing you need to do is wait on God. God is the author of this relationship, and if you want this kind of relationship, He is the one who will bring it to you.
If anyone is waiting on God for this kind of relationship, I want to share a few thoughts to encourage you.
First, while you are waiting on God to bring you your spouse, know that you are not actually waiting on your spouse, but you are actually waiting on God. And if you do this, know that there is no one better to wait on!
Second, know in your heart that this relationship is worth waiting for. The Song of Solomon says a number of times “Do not stir up nor awaken love until it pleases”. One reason it says this is because the relationship is so good, that you are cheating yourself if you don’t wait.
Third, know that God can make you wait a long time sometimes.
The dream of true love is that you will meet your spouse in your late teens or early twenties, fall in love, get married, and have a long happy life together complete with children and grandchildren. However this is not always God’s plan. Sometimes God has other plans and purposes for our lives and getting married early in life is not always one of them. This can mean that we may have to wait into our thirties and forties and even beyond before getting married.
When this happens, what do you do?
Well, you have a choice, you can continue to wait on God, or you can find someone on your own and try and make a relationship work praying for God to bless it knowing that it isn’t His best.
My advice is that you wait. If God has put it into your heart to wait for a spouse from Him, then in His timing He is going to fulfil that heart desire. When it comes you will know that it was worth it, and like a mother of a new born baby forgetting her birth pains, you will also forget all the years you spent waiting, wondering if your desire would ever be fulfilled. You will be in a new season in your life and the joy of that season will make you forget all of the feelings you felt while waiting.
Fourth, while waiting, understand that your time of singleness is actually better for God – He actually prefers that we were all single as in that case we would all be able to be wholly dedicated to Him, free from the domestic cares of the world (1 Corinthians 7:29-35). Believe it or not, this is biblically true!
Therefore take advantage of your time of singleness and pursue the Lord since knowing Him is what eternal life is all about (John 17:3). In fact I believe that God will hold us all accountable for what we do while we are single, able to be wholly dedicated to Him, as He will hold us accountable for all things.
Also during this time, use it to prepare yourself for marriage. Practice loving your spouse as your sibling by loving your family and loving others in the church as Christ loved us. Practice loving your spouse as your friend by learning the art of friendship and loving others as you want to be loved. And develop yourself as a spouse by working on developing the Christ-like character in yourself so that you can be the best godly man / woman you can be for your spouse, which will eliminate a multitude of potential problems in your marriage.
These are all things you can do while waiting.
In conclusion, if you have already waited a long time, don’t give up. If you’ve waited a long time you definitely want to end up with someone worth waiting for. I believe the person God has prepared for you is a person worth waiting for.