Song of Songs 4:9 – You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride…
This devo includes portions of an excerpt from the new book “Real Romance: Sex in the Song of Songs”. To purchase the book, click here, and to access the sermon series that accompanies these devos and this book, click here.
In calling [Abbi] “my sister, my bride”, Solomon is pointing to a particularly important marriage principle in the Bible. Before a woman is a man’s bride, she is God’s daughter and the man’s spiritual sister. In 1 Timothy 5:2, Paul tells Timothy to treat “younger women as sisters, with absolute purity.” A good marriage begins with a good friendship between two Christians who pray together, worship, learn from the Bible, and serve God in church.
After your marriage, you remain brother and sister in Christ and add to that role the relationship of husband and wife. Worshipping and serving God has been at the bedrock of our marriage, and we would urge you to believe that this order of spiritual friendship first and marital relationship second is crucial.
If you erred in the early years of your relationship by placing sex, hobbies, or something else as the foundation of your relationship, then it’s not too late to lay a new foundation based upon your spiritual life together. This was our sin and error, and God was gracious to forgive us, and give us a new foundation on which we have built 30 years of faithful marriage.
We would encourage the husband to take initiative in spiritual things as the statistics reveal that it is usually the woman who is spiritually active and the husband who is inactive. If we learn anything from the story of Adam and Eve and the first marriage, it is that a passive man opens the door for Satan to be the head of his household.
If you’re married, are there ways you erred in the beginning that you need to repent to your spouse about? If you’re not yet married, what types of things can you avoid to set yourself up for a healthier marriage going into it?