Better Than Wine

I’m sorry to steal the title from Derek Webb…but that song is so good. I don’t even know how to describe the depths of the truths of that song except to say that song sounds like love. And not the romantic love that the world typically thinks of. It sounds like the love of Christ, something from the Bible. That actually works out well b/c at least two of the lines from that song were taken straight from the Song of Solomon.

Whether Derek is talking about his new bride or the bridegroom of Christ, it doesn’t matter…I’m going to interpret the song by the latter. What I love about the Song of Solomon is that it takes truth and passion and unifies them. The author’s excitement towards his lover is so evident that it jumps off of the page. At my old church, which is a great church, one of the principles that was taught was fact before feeling. I still agree with this, and I think this principle is outlined in the Song of Solomon. You can just sense the truth oozing from the book and at the same the raw emotion that results from the truth is exhilarating.

I’m really fascinated w/ being the bridegroom. Although there isn’t much evidence to support this, if the Song of Solomon is viewed as a spiritual allegory that is a metaphor of Christ’s love for his bride, this is what I think would be cool about that.

In a typical Christian marriage there is one bride and one groom. Ideally, they live in faithfulness to each other for their entire mortal lives. Although they have each other, they still need 2 main things. They need community w/ other believers and reliance upon Christ. However, our sinful nature doesn’t allow us to rely on Christ 100% of the time and lots of marriages are spent in a lack of commune w/ other believers. It’s not perfect.

But the beauty of the bridegroom is it takes care of both of those problems. With our glorified heavenly bodies we CAN live in perfect relationship with our savior…and we get to do so not w/ just one bride (i.e. myself) but we do it with all other believers. It’s the best of both worlds. To have perfect communion w/ Christ w/ a bunch of other Christians. That lights my fire.