Your love is better than wine. (Song of Solomon 1:2)
The greatest earthly blessings are often the greatest distractions from God. Nowhere is this statement illustrated more clearly than in the issue of romantic relationships. Sometimes God greatly blesses a man and woman by giving them each other; and when He does, the result is wondrously beautiful. It can be a blessing beyond description, as it has been for Leanne and me.
But it is precisely the beauty of romance that creates the distraction. One of the most common stumbling blocks for a godly man is a girl, and one of the most common stumbling blocks for a godly woman is a guy – not because romance is bad but because it is good. Really good. Romantic desires for the opposite sex are natural, powerful, and delightful, but sometimes powerful desires take over, and when they do, they are no longer mere desires. They become masters, and we their slaves.
Sadly, I have seen this too often. I could list many men and women who were walking with Christ and growing in Him until they met that perfect person. Five years later, that perfect person wasn’t so perfect, but the damage was done. The relationship with Christ had usually become distant.
We, thus, have great need for Biblical direction in navigating romantic relationships, and that direction begins by discussing the inherent goodness of romance. When God created the human race, He created male and female, He made sexual attraction and sex itself, and He invented marriage.
Thus, this entire world of romance is something God has His fingers all over. God loves romance. You might say He is a romantic at heart, for God so loved the world that He pursued us with a passion that no man ever had for a woman. And when He won our hearts, He made us His Bride. The very gospel itself is a love story, a heavenly romance. Because of this fact, Christians, of all people, should be given over to the praises of romance. Earthly romance is a picture of our relationship with God. That’s why it is so good. The problem comes when we make it a substitute for our relationship with God, when romance drives our life, when it becomes more important than Christ Himself.
Now in modern culture, romance and dating often go together. Sometimes dating comes first, and romance blossoms out of that soil. Sometimes romantic feelings come first, and they drive the desire to date. But whichever was first, they are often a pair.
If you talk to Christians about dating, you will find responses all over the field. To some Christians, dating is almost a curse word, a plague upon society to be avoided like voodoo. To others, dating is a vast improvement over the old ways in which many couples got married without knowing each another. In reality, dating has its pros and cons, and those who praise it, major on its benefits, while those who castigate it, major on its pitfalls. What I want to do is to talk to single people about dating and to do so with a focus on the kingdom of God. So let’s start.
The purpose of dating is tied to marriage. In the beginning of the relationship, the purpose is to discern if this other person is someone to marry. Later in the relationship – for example, during an engagement period – dating can involve preparation for marriage. But at whatever stage a dating relationship is in, marriage lies behind the purpose of what you do. Therefore, if you want to understand dating from a Biblical standpoint, you must first understand marriage.
Marriage takes one man and one woman and unites them as one flesh for life. In marriage the two become one in a way that is indivisible. In marriage, the two live in closeness and intimacy for the rest of their lives. In marriage, the one flesh union is permanent. In marriage, you give your life to the other person as long as you both shall live. This is what marriage is.
The purpose of marriage is to reflect Christ and the church – His Bride. Thus, marriage is a portrayal of something bigger than itself, and God cares about marriage deeply because He intends it to be a living portrait of the gospel. Marriage is sacred. Marriage is intimate. Marriage is permanent.[1]
These are all truths you need to know when you are trying to decide if you should marry someone. The point of dating is to discern marriage; therefore, you need to ask yourself if you could live in oneness with this other person for the rest of your life. You need to ask yourself if you can commit, if you can joyfully give yourself to this person, not for a year or two, but for the next 75 years or more.
Many people who mess up the dating relationship do so because they don’t understand marriage. If you have a low view of marriage, you will have a low view of dating as well. Others mess up the dating relationship because they divorce dating from marriage altogether, as if the point of dating is merely to have fun or to be an outlet for their sexual desires.
So far I have talked briefly about foundational issues related to dating and romance – romance is inherently good, it reflects a deeper and more important relationship with Christ, dating is tied to marriage, and marriage is sacred, intimate, and permanent.
In the next blog, I want to talk about some principles for dating, but these foundational issues are crucial. They are the operating system within which we must work as we start putting some function to a dating relationship.
[1] I have been brief in describing marriage but have written a series of blogs on it. If you want more detail, go here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
