Four Realities of Covenant
In the Song of Songs 8:6, the bride defines her love and marriage through four similes. Each simile points us to four realities of God’s covenant love.
Covenant love is like a seal on the heart and arm (v.6a).
A seal conveys permanence and exclusivity. In both the indefinite and monogamous nature of marriage, we're meant to see the beautifully restrictive nature of God's covenant with his people. Twenty-six times in a row, the psalmist of Psalm 136 employs covenantal language saying, God's "steadfast love endures forever." The word steadfast is the English translation of the Hebrew word hesed. Hesed is God's permanent and persistent love. It's his covenant faithfulness. R.P. Nettelhorst explains that hesed " ... relates to loyalty within a relationship. In relation to the concept of love, it denotes God’s faithfulness to his people" (LTW, 2014). God's love is a seal upon the life of every believer (see Jeremiah 31:3). And like in marriage, this seal has two aspects to it––the heart and arm. The woman is asking her beloved to mark her on his inner and outer life. She wants his utter devotion to her to not only sink deeply within his soul, personality, and self-concept, but also animate his actions, relationship, and words. God desires the same thing from us. True covenant is not simply what we believe and know to be true in our interior lives. Relationship with God is demonstrated in our decision-making, the way we love our neighbors, and in how we speak. God's covenant seals us, inside and out.
Covenant love is as strong as death (v.6b).
While lovers always speak about forever, we all know love doesn't go beyond death, right? When we're dead, we don't love anyone anymore. We can't. But let's think about this biblically. What the bride is hinting at is a unique perspective of God's covenant people. The Ancient Near East understood good and evil, life and death as equally matched powers vying for an uncertain outcome. However, God's people knew death was no match for God. “He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken” (Isaiah 25:8). God is greater than death. God will swallow death. Therefore, his hesed, his steadfast love is not only as strong as death, it's stronger than death. Jesus made it clear that there's no marriage in heaven (spoiler alert). Responding to a trap set by some religious leaders he said, “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven” (Matthew 22:30). Marriage isn't stronger than death, but covenant is. Hesed is. In that sense, author Mike Mason writes in his book The Mystery of Marriage, "Heaven will be all marriage. ... in eternity everyone is to be married to everyone else in some transcendent and unimaginable union, and everyone will love everyone else with an intensity akin to that which now is called 'being in love'" (86). God's covenant is stronger than death.
Covenant love is as jealous as the grave (v.6c).
We usually think about jealousy as a negative. But within the language of divine covenant it's always an expression of righteous single-minded devotion. Temper Longman describes jealousy as the "energy that tries to rescue the relationship" from peril––especially the peril of a competing and destructive love of another (Song of Songs, 211). You see, I'm jealous for my wife; not simply because I don't want to share her. But also because "sharing" covenant love threatens covenant love. The prophet Nahum put about as fine a point on God's covenant jealousy as you can. “The Lord is a jealous and avenging God; the Lord is avenging and wrathful; the Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies” (Nahum 1:2). Nahum prophesied at a time when a nation called Nineveh wouldn't repent and were brutally mistreating other nations, including God's people. So God is putting them on notice. Don't mess with my people. Jealous is like a grave, then, because a grave is tenacious. It doesn't take no for an answer. In tension with the previous word picture, the grave always wins. God's covenant is tenacious like the grave.
Covenant love is as intense as fire (v.6d).
Not only is covenant love holistic, permanent, and tenacious ... it's intense. It's not passive or minimal. The entire Song is one of intense relational and sexual passion. Through graphic description and unmistakable pleasure, the couple loves being in love. They're pumped to get married. They're pumped to have sex. They're pumped be together. Few passages of Scripture covey similar zeal for covenant than Jesus coming to the temple at Passover. While the temple was meant to be a house of prayer and worship, thousands packed the halls to buy and sell and trade. They’re being casual with the covenant. The Apostle John tells us, Read John 2:14-15 ... In the temple [Jesus] found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables” (John 2:14-15). Few things describe Jesus better in this scene than fire. He's hot. He's passionate. He's intense. But, he's also self-controlled. He's not being manipulative or harmful. He's demonstrating a deep and abiding covenant love, which is not simply committed to the appearance of a good marriage with his people, but the reality of a pure union. God's covenant is like that. It's passionate like fire.
That's the design of covenant love. It's a promise. It defines our relationship. God vows to be our God and we to be his people. It's a promise of a holistic seal that's stronger than death, tenacious like a grave, and passionate like fire. A love that takes its fullest form in the flesh. Jesus Christ is the one who fulfills all the promises of God’s covenant love.
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*This is an excerpt adapted from the sermon “Souls in Covenant.”
