Why would God include a love poem so intimate that many pastors avoid preaching from it? Lisa Harper joins Jase, Al, and Zach to discuss the Song of Songs, a book filled with desire, romance, insecurity, marriage, and longing for closeness. Their conversation shows that the book is not an embarrassing side note in Scripture. It speaks to the human heart and to the way God created people for faithful relationship.
Lisa also shares why this biblical poetry changed her understanding of God’s love. Although she had taught grace for years, she struggled to believe that God could truly delight in someone with pain and failure in her past. The Song of Songs helped her see faith as more than correct beliefs and good behavior.
Phil does not participate in this episode, though the group remembers one of his memorable wedding warnings. The discussion belongs to Lisa, Jase, Al, and Zach, who move between serious theology, honest personal stories, marriage lessons, and enough awkward humor to match the Bible book they are studying.
The episode explores why the Song of Songs matters to married and single Christians, especially those who struggle with shame, desire, or fear of intimacy. The conversation also connects this poetry to the larger biblical story of creation, redemption, and Christ’s love for the church.
The humor begins with Jase confessing that some of his earliest exposure to Scripture came through a boy at church who showed him every Old Testament passage that sounded sexual. Zach admitted to similar teenage mischief. He would hand his mother a supposedly meaningful verse, only for her to discover that he had chosen one of the Bible’s more uncomfortable lines.
That boyhood curiosity points to a serious question. Why does the Bible contain such vivid language? Lisa’s short answer is that Scripture is not merely an ethics manual.
"At its core, this is a love story."
The opening of Song of Songs 1:2-8 introduces a woman who openly expresses affection for her beloved. She then becomes aware of the social distance between them. She has worked in the vineyards, her skin shows the effects of the sun, and she wonders why someone like him would notice her.
Lisa saw her own insecurity in that woman. She had long believed that God forgave her because forgiveness was part of his role, yet she found it difficult to believe that a holy God could delight in her. The bridegroom’s affectionate response challenged that fear. Song of Songs 4:9 describes a heart captivated by a single glance.
Scholars have offered different readings of the book. Some understand it primarily as poetry about human marriage. Others emphasize symbolic connections to God’s covenant love. Lisa believes the poem likely reflects real people, while also seeing a broader application to Christ and his people. Zach leaned more toward a figurative reading connected with biblical wisdom. The group did not pretend to settle the debate, but they agreed that the book honors faithful love rather than reducing sexuality to an isolated act.
Jase recalled a teacher who summarized the Bible’s central movement in a few lines. The Old Testament prepares for Jesus, the Gospels reveal Jesus on earth, and the rest of the New Testament announces his continuing work and promised return. That framework helped Jase understand Scripture as one connected story rather than a pile of unrelated rules.
The disciples on the road to Emmaus experienced something similar in Luke 24:13-32. They were grieving because Jesus had been crucified, and they still expected a political deliverer. Jesus explained how the writings of Moses and the prophets pointed toward him. Only later did the disciples recognize why their hearts had burned as he opened the Scriptures.
The Song of Songs participates in that larger story through the themes of love, covenant, faithfulness, and longing. It should not be forced into an allegory in which every poetic detail has a hidden Christian meaning. Still, the Bible itself uses marriage to describe Christ’s relationship with his people.
In Ephesians 5:21-33, Paul addresses husbands and wives before identifying the deeper mystery of Christ and the church. Marriage is important, but it is not the final destination of Christian hope. It points toward the faithful love of Jesus.
This is why the book can matter to an unmarried believer such as Lisa. She is not claiming a romantic relationship with Jesus. She is describing the spiritual intimacy available to every Christian through Christ. The biblical image of the bridegroom communicates commitment, nearness, covenant loyalty, and joy.
Zach observed that many churches have treated human beings mainly as thinking creatures who need correct doctrine. Correct belief matters, but people are also shaped by their wants, loves, and habits. A person may know a rule and still be carried away by a disordered desire.
The Bible begins by presenting men and women as God’s image-bearers. Genesis 1:26-28 gives both male and female equal dignity while showing that their differences make fruitfulness possible. Genesis 2:18-25 then describes the man and woman becoming one flesh without shame.
Lisa argued that Christian teaching can cause harm when it presents sexuality as dirty before marriage and then expects newly married people to change their entire emotional response instantly. The problem is not that desire exists. The moral question concerns where that desire leads and whether it honors God and another person.
"He did not neuter us when he saved us."
In other words, salvation does not remove human longing. It begins to redirect it. Within marriage, desire can serve covenant love, mutual care, and the creation of family. Outside God’s design, it can become self-centered and destructive.
Jase also emphasized that the woman in the Song is not a silent object. She expresses desire and responds freely. That matters because biblical intimacy involves two people with equal worth before God. It is not domination, objectification, or the use of another body for private gratification.
The conversation becomes especially practical when Zach contrasts the Song of Songs with the disturbing imagery of Ezekiel 23:20. Ezekiel uses graphic language as part of a prophetic picture of unfaithfulness and idolatry. The desire in that chapter ends in degradation, violence, and ruin.
By contrast, the Song presents desire within relationship. The lovers see and know each other. The woman is loved rather than reduced to body parts, and the man is more than a tool for satisfying an appetite. Song of Songs 8:6-10 describes love as strong, enduring, and not available for purchase.
This difference helps explain why simply telling people to suppress desire is not an adequate response to pornography. Pornography trains a person to separate sexual excitement from covenant, patience, sacrifice, and knowledge of another human being. It promises intimacy but delivers isolation.
Al described that result as the difference between fulfillment and emptiness. A counterfeit may create a brief physical reaction, but it cannot produce the peace of being known and loved. It can instead create habits that damage a person’s ability to relate to a spouse or future spouse.
Paul’s command in 1 Corinthians 6:18 to flee sexual immorality recognizes that sexual sin touches the body in a serious way. The answer is not disgust toward the body. It is a recovered view of the body as belonging to God and worthy of honor.
The Christian alternative to pornography is not desirelessness. It is desire reordered by love, self-control, truth, and concern for another person’s good.
The Song does not remain in the excitement of attraction. In Song of Songs 4:16-5:6, the poetry moves from marital union to a moment of distance. The beloved knocks, but the woman hesitates to respond. By the time she rises, he has gone.
Lisa turned the scene into a modern picture. Imagine a wife finally alone with comfortable clothes, ice cream, and control of the television remote. She hears her husband arrive home and realizes that the quiet evening she expected is over. The example drew laughter because marriage includes moments when two people who genuinely love each other are not equally ready for closeness.
The scene also gave Lisa a picture of spiritual life. Christians can love God while still pulling away from his invitation. Distraction, fear, comfort, or shame can make a person reluctant to respond. A temporary lack of feeling does not prove the relationship is false, but it can reveal where attention and affection have drifted.
Lisa remembered watching John and Stasi Eldredge during her years at Focus on the Family. Stasi would drop John off while caring for their energetic sons, and John would look at his wife with unmistakable affection. She was not dressed for a formal occasion. She was simply a busy mother, yet his expression communicated that she remained the woman who had captured his heart.
That picture helped Lisa reconsider how she viewed God. She had known how to teach grace in formal terms, but she often approached Jesus as if he cared more about her performance than her heart.
"If my ethics are not informed by the intimacy I have with Jesus, then all that is just noise."
Obedience still matters. Grace does not make conduct unimportant. Rather, Christian obedience grows from being loved by Christ, not from a desperate attempt to earn his attention.
The group also considered Paul’s counsel about marriage and singleness in 1 Corinthians 7:1-35. This prompted the story of Phil speaking at Sadie’s wedding. Instead of beginning with a sentimental blessing, he warned the couple that marriage brings trouble. The microphone soon lowered, which the family jokingly received as merciful intervention.
Paul was not teaching that marriage is bad. He was explaining that marriage adds real responsibilities, especially during seasons of hardship and persecution. A married believer must consider the safety and needs of a spouse and children. Love creates joy, but it also creates vulnerability.
Marriage must not become an idol within the church. Zach recalled an elderly couple whose lifelong closeness could be seen as they quietly held hands. Their intimacy was no longer about youthful excitement. It included decades of shared words, work, children, grandchildren, grief, and faithfulness.
Lisa spoke honestly about being 62 and never married. She sometimes wishes for a husband when the air conditioner breaks or an unpleasant job needs doing, but she rejects the idea that singleness makes her less loved by God. Marriage and singleness are different callings and circumstances, yet neither determines a believer’s value.
Jase’s experience with Missy offered another perspective. They waited until marriage to have sex, even though the wait was difficult. When they entered marriage, he remembers nervousness and laughter but not shame. Their experience reflected the picture in Genesis of intimacy received within trust and covenant. It is a testimony, not a guarantee that every faithful couple will have the same emotional experience.
One of Lisa’s most honest stories began when women in a recovery program asked how they could experience closeness with Jesus in practical terms. She suggested that they take warm laundry from the dryer, lie back against it, and ask Jesus for grace to rest more fully in his compassion.
On her drive home, she realized that she had recommended something she had never tried. She had biblical education and years of teaching experience, but intimacy with Jesus remained a weak area in her own life. So she went home, warmed the laundry, prayed the same prayer, and cried.
Lisa compared her former spiritual posture to wearing restrictive clothing before God. She tried to hold in every unattractive part of her story. Confession was one of the few times she felt close to him because she could admit failure and receive forgiveness. The Song of Songs helped her consider another possibility: approaching God on an ordinary day without first proving that she deserved to be there.
This does not mean God overlooks sin or calls evil good. Jesus is both Savior and Lord. Yet 1 Corinthians 1:30 identifies Christ as the believer’s wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. The Christian’s confidence rests in him rather than in a polished spiritual image.
Wisdom from God also changes relationships. James 3:13-18 contrasts selfish, earthly wisdom with wisdom that is pure, peaceable, gentle, and full of mercy. That kind of wisdom guides sexual integrity, marriage, singleness, and the daily choice to treat other people as image-bearers rather than objects.
The central lesson is not that the Song of Songs provides a secret code for every relationship. It is that God is not embarrassed by the people he created. He speaks to embodied human beings with longings, fears, wounds, and hopes. He calls those longings away from selfish counterfeits and toward faithful love.
For some listeners, the practical step may be confronting pornography or seeking help for a destructive habit. For others, it may mean showing a spouse affection, refusing to idolize marriage, or bringing a hidden wound honestly before Jesus. The full conversation and related resources are available through Unashamed Truth, while listeners who want the show without advertisements can find it through EKKL.
God’s grace invites honesty rather than pretending. Believers do not have to hide behind religious performance or treat desire as an enemy. In Christ, they can learn to live with integrity, receive love without shame, and offer faithful love to others.