Can We See the Gospel Among the Romance of Song of Solomon?

As I’m watching American Idol, I’m a little shocked to hear the words of Christian artist Lauren Daigle belt out on my television. No, it’s not on the lips of one of the contestants — that isn’t incredibly rare. What shocks me is that the song “You Say” is sung by Daigle as background music to a video montage. But then it hits me — there is really nothing explicitly Christian about these words.

They are about Christ. But “In you, I find my worth, in you I find my identity” can just as easily be sung from one lover to another. What lover wouldn’t want to hear from their partner, “You say I am held when I am fallin’ short”? Those familiar with Daigle know that the lyrics are written to the Lord. We know this because “You’ll have every failure, God” is part of the lyrics — which is absent from the background montage. 

Does this mean that Daigle is a weak song writer and should make her words more explicit? Or is she one worshipper of God in a long line of others who have made songs and poems to God, that could just as easily be written to a human lover? The Song of Songs, or the Song of Solomon, is such a poem. But it’s the kind of love poem that might make a junior high boy blush. Which, frankly, makes it a little awkward to say that it’s also a song about God. 

Is it? Can we find the gospel here or is this simply a song about love between two people that pleases God? Is it somehow both? 

How Do You Find the Gospel in the Old Testament?

I suppose before understanding how to find the gospel in the OT, it’d be helpful for us to define the gospel. The simplest definition is one given by JI Packer: God saves sinners. If you’d like to put a bit more meat on your gospel presentation, I use two different frameworks with four points each. The first is God—Man—Christ—Response. The second is more of a story: Creation—Fall—Redemption—Glory. 

The first presentation centers upon God’s character and how humanity fails to meet God’s holy standard, as such the judgment of God is upon us. But the good news is that Jesus Christ fixes this by fulfilling what is required through his life, death and resurrection. Our only fitting response, then, is to respond to Him in repentance and faith. When this happens, we are united to Christ and his record becomes our record. 

The second presentation centers upon the overarching story of the Bible. God lovingly created us to love Him and enjoy Him forever. We were made for rest, rule, and relationship. But we made shipwreck of this, and so rather than having the blessings of obedience we are under the curse of disobedience. Rather than having peace (rest), purpose (ruling), and healthy relationship we often experience the opposite. Ultimately, we are alienated from God. But thankfully God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to bear our curse and to fulfill what God intended for humanity. As such we now experience the blessings of Jesus’ obedience in our place. He restores the rest, rule, and relationship we were created to enjoy. Someday everything will be ultimately restored and we will live in a new heaven and a new earth. 

We could write entire books focusing on these various themes of the gospel. But every gospel story follows this basic skeleton. No matter where you find yourself in the Old Testament (or the New Testament) you can find one of these various threads. Every place in Scripture is either telling you something about God, something about our rebellion, something about His rescue, or something about our future restoration. If you can spot this, then you can fill out the rest of the story. 

How Do You Find the Gospel in Song of Songs?

This book is variously titled. The opening line calls it the Song of Songs which is a way of saying it is the song. It’s a flex. The author tells us that it’s the best love song ever written.

Who is that author? The second verse says, “of Solomon.” This is why many think it’s the words of Solomon. But if you read through it, most of the words are from a woman. And Solomon wasn’t exactly good at being a one-woman man. No, the “of Solomon” likely is just identifying it with wisdom literature. We don’t know who the young lady is — and cannot be certain that the fella is Solomon. 

The whole book is about desire. It reads almost like Romeo and Juliet. Or maybe like your favorite rom-com where the couple just cannot seem to get together. It’s a little like Erin and Andy on The Office. They keep almost getting together, they kind of do get together but then it gets a little weird, and then they are apart again, on and on and on. That’s a bit like the plot line here. But interspersed through all of this searching are descriptions of the lovers for one another. 

I wouldn’t recommend using some of those descriptions in our day. Being excited that your lover has hair like a flock of goats doesn’t land the same in our day. Neither does the excitement that each tooth has a twin. But it still has many moving descriptions. The conclusion in chapter 8 about the power of love is still a riveting section. But how does it point to Christ? 

Many have interpreted this as a symbol of the covenant between God and Israel. Or perhaps as Paul did in Ephesians 5, as a metaphor for Christ and the church. And I think we should eventually go there. But this is one place where I’d suggest holding off for a moment on the “beeline to the cross.” We should let the text speak for what it is on the face at first. It is about love and the unbridled passion of love. 

Only when we really do business with this will we be able to see that it points to something even greater. Let me give you an illustration — but not from a wedding, from a funeral. Sometimes I’ll use Romans 8:26-39 as my text. When I do, I almost always have a call back to 8:18. “The sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” I think some people bring out a verse like this to fix our eyes entirely upon heaven, to leave the grief behind, and look to the day when there are no more tears. But I use it to encourage really pressing into the grief of today. 

If I really allow myself to feel the weight of death – the finality of never being able to embrace a loved one again, the almost unbearable burden of not hearing their voice or waking up to them in the morning, getting them a cup of coffee, etc. etc. (and oh, there is a whole life in those etc’s) – if I press into that and then say that this pain will be so small in comparison to the glory that awaits us…oh, now we’re onto something. 

The same, I would argue, is true here with the Song of Songs. Let’s really press into this beautiful story of love, exploring every contour, even learning how to stop and celebrate this beautiful thing of love that God has given us. And to really drink in the environment, the garden setting. Allow the text to take you back to the first couple — living in full delight without sin. And as you drink it in — maybe even feeling a little awkward given your Christian sensibilities — allow the words of Paul to wash over you. This is but a shadow. 

If the shadow is this amazing — how wonderful must the reality be? 

And this is where we see the goodness of the gospel. The chasing is a picture of our relationship with Christ. That fulfilled and yet unfulfilled longing is a picture of us in our present experience. We’ve tasted and seen; we know He is good. We are fully satisfied but somehow still left wanting more. 

The gospel tells us that we’re going back to the Garden. I don’t know exactly what that means for the shadow. But it’s beautiful and wonderful today, even in all its brokenness. That’s true of romantic love and its true of our relationship with Christ. We aren’t back in the Garden yet. But Christ is taking us there. The longing of this book should stir in us a longing to be with Christ.

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