The Love of Loves in the Song of Songs E-Book

Philip Graham Ryken

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 258

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

We live in a world where sexuality is ruined by sin, its beauty obscured by our brokenness. We need a divine vision for the way love was meant to be, with a gospel that offers forgiveness for sin and grace to live in the way that God has made us to be. In the Song of Songs, we encounter a love story that is part of the greatest love story ever told. Philip Ryken walks through this biblical love poem verse by verse, reflecting on what the Bible says about God's design for love, intimacy, and sexuality and offering insights into not only human relationships but also our relationship to God himself—learning more about the One who has loved us with an everlasting love.

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“Phil Ryken is a master expositor of the Scripture, and he uses all his ability to beautifully unpack one of the most intriguing and difficult books of the Bible to understand—the Song of Solomon. Historically, interpreters have read the book as either/or. It is either about human romance or about our relationship with Jesus. Ryken reads the book as both/and—both in its immediate historical context (about romance) and its whole canonical context (about the spousal love of Jesus Christ.) And, of course, biblical wisdom about love and sexuality has perhaps never been as crucial and needed by the church as it is today. An important book for us all!”

Timothy C. Keller, Pastor Emeritus, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York City

“The Love of Loves in the Song of Songs is a book that every serious Bible student will want. A thoroughly researched, insightful, and challenging treatment of one of Scripture’s most engaging and relevant books, written by one of our generation’s finest pastoral theologians!”

J. D. Greear, author, Not God Enough; President, Southern Baptist Convention; Pastor, The Summit Church, Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina

“Our culture is deeply confused about sexuality and marriage. Not coincidentally, it is equally confused about the God who created humanity for a committed, exclusive, loving relationship with himself. This book shows us the remedy in the Song of Songs, the divine love song that shows us how our human marriages ought to work and how they ought to mirror Christ’s passionate love for his bride. Ryken shows us how the song speaks to everyday relationships and, in doing so, how it points us to the One who made us for himself.”

Iain M. Duguid, Professor of Old Testament, Westminster Theological Seminary; author, Song of Songs (Reformed Expository Commentary)

“Phil Ryken looks at this neglected book of the Bible, Song of Songs, on its own terms and with wonderful gospel awareness. He presents a truly thrilling vision of human sexuality along with the lover’s heart of God himself. It has had a deep impact on me already, and I’d love for you to benefit from it too.”

Sam Allberry, Speaker, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries; author, Is God Anti-Gay? and 7 Myths about Singleness

“After reading The Love of Loves in the Song of Songs, I will never read this biblical book in the same way again. Ryken skillfully weaves into each passage God’s wisdom about both the magnificence of human marriage and the romance of our redemption. I can’t think of any Christian—single or married—who wouldn’t benefit from this book.”

Jani Ortlund, Executive Vice President, Renewal Ministries

“Here is a book of costly value for both single and married people! I have been blessed to read this, and through Ryken’s exposition I see how the Word made flesh in the Song of Songs is brighter and more wonderful than I imagined. Ryken’s call for obedience to Scripture’s authority is convicting, but we are given hope and help as we read. He says that this Song ‘operates simultaneously on at least two different levels,’ teaching us about Christ with his bride, which speaks to what a truly godly marriage can be, and how all of us in the body, single or married, are his true bride.”

Valerie Elliot Shepard, author, Pilipinto’s Happiness and Devotedly: The Personal Letters and Love Story of Jim and Elisabeth Elliot

The Love of Loves in the Song of Songs

The Love of Loves in the Song of Songs

Philip G. Ryken

The Love of Loves in the Song of Songs

Copyright © 2019 by Philip G. Ryken

Published by Crossway1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

Cover design: Connie Gabbert

First printing 2019

Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture references marked NKJV are from The New King James Version. Copyright © 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission.

Scripture references marked NLT are from The Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, IL, 60189. All rights reserved.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-6253-2 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-6256-3 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-6254-9 Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-6255-6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Ryken, Philip Graham, 1966- author.

Title: The love of loves in the Song of songs / Philip G. Ryken.

Description: Wheaton, Illinois : Crossway, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018019951 (print) | LCCN 2018042521 (ebook) | ISBN 9781433562549 (pdf) | ISBN 9781433562556 (mobi) | ISBN 9781433562563 (epub) | ISBN 9781433562532 (tp) | ISBN 9781433562563 (epub) | ISBN 9781433562556 (mobipocket)

Subjects: LCSH: Bible. Song of Solomon—Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Classification: LCC BS1485.52 (ebook) | LCC BS1485.52 .R95 2019 (print) | DDC 223/.907—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018019951

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

2022-02-11 10:18:27 AM

To Josh and Anna,

whose amazing love story is still being written,

and to the Savior who is also our Lover, our Friend

Contents

Prologue: I Love You Always, Forever

 1  You’re the One That I Want (Song 1:1–14)

 2  Underneath the Apple Tree (Song 1:15–2:7)

 3  I’m for You, and You’re for Me (Song 2:8–3:5)

 4  Royal Wedding (Song 3:6–5:1)

 5  Lovers’ Quarrel (Song 5:2–6:3)

 6  The Duet after the Fight (Song 6:4–8:4)

 7  Forever Yours (Song 8:5–14)

Epilogue: Happily Ever After

Acknowledgments

Discussion Guide

Notes

General Index

Scripture Index

Prologue

I Love You Always, Forever

The woman slipped into the pew in front of me and sat down, alone, just a few minutes before the worship service began. I had never seen her before, although at College Church in Wheaton it is common to see people with Down syndrome. She stood up for the opening hymn and so together we sang, “Fairest Lord Jesus, Ruler of all nature, Son of God and Son of Man! Thee will I cherish, thee will I honor, thou, my soul’s glory, joy, and crown.”

What the woman did next caught me by surprise. She put down her worship folder, a little impatiently, as if somehow it was in the way. Then she sang the rest of the hymn from memory and at the same time used her hands to express its words in American Sign Language. She wanted to praise God with her whole person, body as well as soul.

As I watched, the woman’s gestures made the words of the hymn come alive. I found myself walking through fair meadows and spring woodlands, or looking up at “the twinkling, starry host.” Most of all, I could see the face of my beautiful Savior, Jesus Christ, whose hands were pierced for my transgressions.

As my spiritual sister gave glory and honor to the “Lord of all nations,” her face was radiant, her visible words had a graceful beauty, and I had the unmistakable impression that she was deeply in love. Jesus Christ was the predominant passion of this woman’s life. She was not “disabled,” as some would say, but divinely empowered to worship. Nor was she single, as I had assumed from the absence of a ring on her finger. Rather, she was engaged to be married, for the beauty of her worship came from a heart that was betrothed to the Son of God.

This is the relationship that God wants to have with every one of us, male or female, married or single. He wants us to have an exclusive relationship, like the intense affection a bride has for the man she is preparing to marry, with the abiding security that comes from a groom who promises to be faithful unto death.

Introducing the Song of Songs

One of the best places to see a passionate, permanent love relationship is in the Bible’s most famous love song—the ideal romance that we read about in the Song of Songs.

Admittedly, most books are easier to write about than the Song of Songs. To begin with, it is hard to know exactly how to connect the book’s message with the life of King Solomon, who may or may not have been its author but is clearly mentioned in the first verse. Also, the Song of Songs is unashamed to talk about human sexuality, which some people find a little embarrassing. The book is “naked” in ways that some Christians wish they could cover up. Then there is the vexing question of how to relate the book’s human relationship to the love that God wants to share with his people.

In spite of these difficulties, I have wanted to teach this book for a long time. One of the first sermons I ever preached came from chapter 2, with its thrilling exclamations: “My beloved is mine, and I am his” (v. 16); “He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love” (v. 4). I got more serious about studying the Song of Songs when I visited the famous Bodmer Library on the shores of Lake Geneva in Switzerland. The Bodmer boasts one of the world’s most extraordinary collections of ancient religious texts, biblical manuscripts, and other famous books. It is perhaps the best place in the world to see the religious and intellectual history of humanity.

There I saw a stunning manuscript of the Song of Songs from the early Middle Ages—the seventh century, as I recall. The colorful hand lettering was beautiful, but what really captured my attention was the expansive white space around the text. Obviously, the text had been copied by someone who knew how to read poetry. The words were not crammed onto the page the way they are in a two-column Bible but allowed to breathe. The scribe wanted each line of love poetry to be savored before moving on to the next. Seeing the book written out as a beautiful love poem awakened my desire to study it and then to preach it.

Not long afterward, I read the manuscript for a commentary on the Song of Songs by my friend Iain Duguid, who studied Old Testament at Cambridge before becoming my pastor when I was a theology student at Oxford. Professor Duguid has an exceptional ability to understand the Old Testament in connection to Christ and then apply its gospel message for everyday Christianity. The more I read his commentary—to which this little book is deeply indebted—the more I wanted to share the love of loves that we encounter in the Song of Songs.

Our culture needs this book. As a college president, I often hear students ask for more guidance in understanding human sexuality. They are not just looking for a list of biblical do’s and don’t’s (although such a list may have its place); what they want to understand is the stunning beauty of God’s design and his higher purpose for our romantic relationships. We live in a world where sexuality is ruined by sin, its beauty obscured by our brokenness. We need a divine vision for the way sex was meant to be, with a gospel that offers forgiveness for sexual sin and an empowering grace to live into the sexuality that God wants to give us. We also need a deeper understanding of the intimacy that God wants to have with each one of us and how that intimacy relates to our singleness or to our status as husbands and wives, as the case may be.

The best way to capture God’s vision for anything is simply to work through some relevant part of the Bible, letting God’s Spirit set the agenda through Scripture. When we turn to the Song of Songs, we encounter a love story told in the form of a love song that is part of the greatest love story ever told.

The Way We Were and Were Meant to Be

A good place to begin is by setting the Song of Songs in its wider context. I do not intend to treat the book like an allegory, in which everything in the book stands for something else, and in which we start coming up with meanings that the author never intended. But I do want to be faithful to God’s purposes for marriage and romance, which the Bible consistently regards as mysteries that point beyond themselves to God’s everlasting love. Whenever we talk about the way that a husband loves his wife, we are never simply talking about marriage; we are always talking about Christ’s great love for the church (see Eph. 5:25–32). The sexual union of man and wife is not an allegory, strictly speaking, but it is analogous to the spiritual union that God shares with his people.

Thus the Bible repeatedly uses marriage as a metaphor for the divine-human love relationship. The Song of Songs becomes an important part of this pattern by putting the romance of our redemption into poetry and song. We might think of this book as the soundtrack for our love relationship with the living God.

The love story begins with the first man and the first woman, Adam and Eve. It was not good for the man to be alone. In order to fulfill God’s purpose in the world—and for his own well-being—Adam needed an equal partner and complementary companion. So God made a woman. And then, as the father of the bride, he presented her to the man. When he saw her, Adam suddenly became a lyrical poet:

This at last is bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh;

she shall be called Woman,

because she was taken out of Man. (Gen. 2:23)

The first human words in recorded history were expressed in the form of a love song, which the Bible immediately places in the wider context of marriage: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). Forsaking all other human relationships—including the precious parental bond that first brought them into the world—a husband and wife are bound together in an exclusive union that is secured by promises of abiding love.

We are so familiar with this passage that sometimes we fail to see how astonishing it is. The Bible begins with the story of creation. God has been at work making a universe. Light shines in the darkness. Stars are scattered across immensities of space. Galaxies spin into place. Then, against the vast backdrop of a cosmos that is consecrated for the worship of God, we are introduced to one man and one woman who are joined in one marriage.

Adam and Eve are so small and insignificant that they are beneath anyone’s notice—unless somehow their mutual love relationship is at the very heart of what God is doing in the entire universe. Ray Ortlund writes:

The attention of the text shifts from the heavens and the earth coming together in cosmic order to a man and a woman coming together in earthly marriage. . . . There it is, this peculiar thing we call marriage, tenderly portrayed in its humble reality and delicate innocence against the enormous backdrop of the creation.1

In some mysterious way, with the union of this man and this woman, the curtain rises on the redemptive purposes of God.

What we discover as the story unfolds is that the one-flesh relationship of Adam and Eve is the divinely ordained pattern for marriage and also one of the Bible’s primary pictures for God’s relationship with his people. Isaiah said it as simply and as directly as he could. “Your Maker is your husband,” spoke the prophet. And, “As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you” (Isa. 54:5; 62:5). Similarly, in the book of Jeremiah God identifies himself as Israel’s husband, going back to the time of the exodus out of Egypt (Jer. 31:32).

This comparison is multidimensional, because divine and human marriage hold many things in common. Both relationships are based on love. Husbands and wives share mutual ties of intimate affection. So, too, God is in love with us, and we are in love with him, or at least we ought to be. Both relationships are bound by promises. Human marriage is rightly understood as a covenant, which is why every wedding has vows. The Bible uses similar language to describe our relationship with our Redeemer. God has made a covenant with us—a covenant of everlasting love (e.g., Deut. 7:9; Jer. 31:31–33). So we are betrothed to the God who says to us, “I love you always, forever.”

Here is another similarity between divine and human marriage: both relationships are meant to be exclusive, inviolable. There are bonds of intimacy—especially sexual intimacy—that husbands and wives should never share with anyone else. In the same way, God rightly claims all of our honor, affection, and worship. When he says, “You shall have no other gods before me” (Ex. 20:3), he is saying, in effect, “Repeat after me: ‘I, believer, take thee, Yahweh, to be my lawful wedded husband.’”

The exclusivity of this relationship explains why it is right and good for God to be jealous. Jealousy sounds like a bad word, but when it comes to marriage, jealousy has its place. When God says, “I the Lord your God am a jealous God” (e.g., Ex. 20:5), he is taking the part of a faithful husband who longs for his wife’s loving embrace and thus refuses to share her love with anyone else. The Old Testament is the story of an exclusive love, in which God styles himself as the husband of his people.

When we turn to the New Testament, suddenly the groom walks into the room. His name is Jesus of Nazareth, also called the Christ, the Son of God. So when John the Baptist explained who he was in relation to Jesus, he called himself “the friend of the bridegroom, who . . . rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice” (John 3:29). This makes Jesus the bridegroom—the one who gives himself to the bride. Jesus sometimes used the same imagery to explain his saving work. He compared his kingdom to a king who throws a wedding feast for his son (Matt. 22:2) or to maidens waiting to meet the groom (Matt. 25:1).

Later, when the apostle Paul wanted to explain what Jesus had done to save his people, he said it was like a husband who loved his wife so much that he gave himself up for her (Eph. 5:25–27). Jesus is so in love with us that he was willing to do whatever it took to make us his bride. Like a valiant prince, he went out to slay that old dragon, Satan, which he did by dying a bloody death on the bloody hill of Calvary. By this reasoning, the cross is an expression of matrimonial affection—the sacrificial love of a doting husband for a beloved bride. Taken together, these passages show that marriage is not a superficial metaphor, but a sacred mystery that is introduced at the beginning of the world and lies close to the heart of the gospel. To quote again from Ray Ortlund, “Marriage from the beginning was meant to be a tiny social platform on which the love of Christ for his church and the church’s responsiveness to him could be put on visible display.”2 Thus a faithful marriage is the gospel made visible to the watching world.

If we were to trace the full trajectory of this love story, we would arrive at a match made in heaven, celebrated at the last of all weddings (Rev. 19:7–9), when “a bride adorned for her husband” will come down from heaven and become “the wife of the Lamb” (Rev. 21:2, 9). We were made to be married to the Son of God—the fair prince who is waiting for us at “the marriage supper of the Lamb” (Rev. 19:9). Think of it this way: the Bible begins with a blind date (when Adam opens his eyes to see Eve) and ends with a wedding reception (where all of us get to dance with Jesus).

So the relationship that God wants to have with us is like the mutual affection of a man and a woman who are so deeply in love that they promise not to love anyone else but stay together for the rest of their lives. Whether we are married or single, all of us are invited into this spiritual marriage. This is why Adam and Eve were there at the beginning and why the Bible says that marriage should be held in honor by everyone (Heb. 13:4). We are all lovers—lovers who were always meant to be a pure bride for one husband (2 Cor. 11:2).

One of the most famous lines in English literature is the aside that Jane Eyre makes at the climactic moment of Charlotte Brontë’s novel of the same name. After many disappointments in life and love, Jane is finally united with the man she loves, Edward Rochester. The final chapter thus begins with her immortal words: “Reader, I married him.”3 The storyline of the Bible comes to a similar climax in its closing chapters, when the Son of God finally is able to say this about the church: “Reader, I married her!”

But It’s All Over Now

I wish I could say that in the romance of our redemption we have always had a perfect relationship, but we haven’t. It is sad to say, but the majority of the passages in the Old Testament that use marital imagery to describe our relationship with God talk about marital failure. Again and again, God accuses his people of being unfaithful, of having casual idolatry and committing spiritual adultery, of “play[ing] the harlot” (Ps. 106:39 NKJV), of worshiping other gods in every city square (Ezek. 16:31), “on every high hill, and under every green tree” (Jer. 2:20). The Bible is not afraid to say that the wife of God has become a whore.4

What happens in Jeremiah 2 and 3 is especially shocking, for in these chapters God actually files for divorce. Giving legal testimony in a court of law, he starts at the beginning and goes back to their honeymoon, when Israel was young and in love: “I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride” (Jer. 2:2). This was in the days when God rescued Israel from Egypt and led his people through the wilderness.

That was then, but this is now, and Israel is guilty of the great sin of spiritual adultery. So God files a covenant lawsuit: “I still contend with you,” he says, using legal terminology (Jer. 2:9). Then he brings exhibit after exhibit of his people’s unfaithfulness. One image is especially disturbing. God compares his people to “a wild donkey used to the wilderness, in her heat sniffing the wind! Who can restrain her lust? None who seek her need weary themselves; in her month they will find her” (Jer. 2:24). God’s people have such a voracious appetite for worshiping other gods that they are like a donkey in heat, sniffing the wind, hoping to detect the scent of another sexual partner. This is what it is like when we say that God is not enough for us. Instead of walking with Jesus, we run to money, sex, and power or to cynicism and criticism and all the other idols that seduce us with the promise to satisfy us—a promise they will never keep.

What makes the Bible’s sexually charged imagery especially apt is that Canaanite religion—such as Israel was tempted to practice—often was characterized by ritual prostitution. People went to the hilltop shrines of the pagan gods not merely to worship but especially to have sexual intercourse. Listen how graphically the Bible describes what God’s people were doing:

You have played the whore with many lovers. . . .

Lift up your eyes to the bare heights, and see!

Where have you not been ravished?

By the waysides you have sat awaiting lovers. . . .

You have polluted the land

with your vile whoredom. (Jer. 3:1–2)

Simply put, God’s people have been sleeping with other gods.

We find similar imagery in the book of Hosea, which begins with perhaps the strangest command that God ever gave to one of his prophets. He told Hosea to marry a prostitute. Why on earth would God do this? Because he wanted to give Israel a living object lesson of spiritual unfaithfulness. So he said: “Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord” (Hos. 1:2). The point was that Israel was like Gomer: although God was her faithful husband, she wanted to be with other lovers.

Jeremiah and Hosea wanted people to see how disordered our desires are, how serious sin is, and how much damage this does to our love relationship with the living God. Every sin is a kind of spiritual adultery. Understand that any time we sin against God—whenever we are proud of our intellectual accomplishments, or worry about things that he tells us not to worry about, or minimize others so we can maximize ourselves, or give in to secret sexual temptation, or rely on our own strength rather than acknowledging our weakness, or commit any other sin—we are unfaithful to God. In every case, we are choosing not to love God but to love something else instead, which is the same thing as cheating on our divine spouse.

The Love That Will Not Let Us Go

Here is where the love story gets truly amazing, because you would think that God would walk away from us. Why would any husband put up with repeated unfaithfulness? If he knows that his virgin bride has become a brazen prostitute, then obviously he will follow through with the divorce, right?

Except that he doesn’t. What God does instead is to go back to his people again and again. As an ardent lover, he tenderly wins us back to his love. He is always ready to renew his vows to us and for us to renew our vows to him.

God’s love comes with a grace so powerful that it cleanses his people’s sin and makes them pure again. Remember the wild donkey, sniffing the wind for another partner? Later in Jeremiah, God uses a very different image for his people and calls Israel a virgin. Humanly speaking, once you lose your virginity, you can never get it back. But the sanctifying power of God’s forgiveness restores his people to perfect purity. By “the chemistry of grace,”5 the faithless people of God are fully entitled to wear pure white on their wedding day (see Isa. 61:10; Eph. 5:26–27; Rev. 21:2). Such is the obvious symbolism of Christian weddings in the Western tradition; a white dress is a sign of virginal purity. Such purity is nothing that we can preserve; it is something that only God can produce. And he does:

I have loved you with an everlasting love;

therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.

Again I will build you, and you shall be built,

O virgin Israel! (Jer. 31:3–4)

“Let us rejoice and exult

and give him the glory,

for the marriage of the Lamb has come,

and his Bride has made herself ready;

it was granted her to clothe herself

with fine linen, bright and pure”—

for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. (Rev. 19:7–8)

Even when we do not love God, he is still in love with us. Even when we are guilty of sexual sin, there is grace for us. Even when we are unfaithful to God, he remains faithful to us. Thus Karl Barth rightly observed that in the Bible, “we have to reckon with the unfaithfulness of the wife, but never with the unfaithfulness of the Husband.”6

We see the contrast between God’s faithfulness and our unfaithfulness perhaps most graphically in the book of Hosea. The prophet marries a prostitute. Then she goes out and does what prostitutes do: she pursues other lovers (Hos. 2:7, 13). But God tells Hosea to go find her and bring her back home: “Go again, love a woman who . . . is an adulteress, even as the Lord loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods” (Hos. 3:1). By this point, Gomer must have been sold into slavery, because in order to bring her back home, Hosea has to buy her back. He ends up paying “fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a lethech of barley” (Hos. 3:2), a price which suggests that he purchased her at auction. Gomer was sold to the highest bidder, who turned out to be the husband that she betrayed. Imagine paying the price for someone else’s spiritual adultery!

But that is what this love story is all about. Look at Christ on the cross, and count the cost of your redemption. When Jesus died at Calvary, he was the Bridegroom paying the bride price. He was a wounded lover, pierced for our adulterous transgressions. He was dying to win us back to his love so that he could say the same thing to us that he said to Israel in the days of Hosea and Gomer: “I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the Lord” (Hos. 2:19–20).

The Song of Songs is part of this remarkable story. The song that is sung in its pages “echoes the melody of another deeper and richer song, a song about a true and faithful Lover who is not like Solomon, with his massive harem of disposable women, but rather One who loves and gives himself for his bride.”7

We have been unfaithful in every way. This is true individually and also corporately. Is there any sin we have not committed? Pride, jealousy, slander, selfish ambition, lust, adultery, greed, racism, anger, idolatry—the list goes on and on. Every one of these sins is a form of spiritual unfaithfulness to the Son of God.

We are so unfaithful. But God loves us with an everlasting love. Therefore, he continues his faithfulness to us. Jesus Christ is the loving groom who takes us into his loving arms and says, “I love you always, forever.” This undeserved romance is the ultimate reality. Even after everything we have done wrong, we are still betrothed to the Son of God. So we should love accordingly, pursuing spiritual chastity as we wait in hope for the return of our beloved Bridegroom.