First-time marriage rates have dropped roughly 50% over the last fifty years. Why? Marriage isn’t declining because it doesn’t work. It’s declining because we’ve changed what we think it’s for.
It’s common now to hear, “Marriage is just a piece of paper.” The underlying assumption is that marriage is man-made, and what people made up, people are free to remake. That assumption sits inside something philosophers call social contract theory: the idea that human beings exist first as autonomous individuals, and every relationship we enter is by choice, for our personal benefit. That logic is fine for cell-phone contracts. It fails catastrophically as an ethic for marriage.
The Bible offers a different starting point. God establishes four institutions in Scripture: marriage, family, the church, and the state. Plenty of other good institutions, like schools and hospitals, God leaves to human creativity. Marriage isn’t one of them. God brought it into being and defined it. Governments don’t get to redefine what God has already defined. And neither do we.
Marriage isn’t a contract. It’s a covenant. In a contract, you pledge services. In a covenan,t you pledge yourself. If you want a love that lasts, you need to understand the terms of the covenant.
Song of Songs (also called Song of Solomon) is classified as wisdom literature alongside Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes. Job brings wisdom to suffering. Ecclesiastes brings wisdom to meaning. Song of Songs brings wisdom to love.
And we desperately need that wisdom.
Song of Songs is exactly what it sounds like: a love song between one man and one woman, with her friends occasionally chiming in.
The opening verse is “Solomon’s Song of Songs” (Song of Songs 1:1), and “Song of Songs” is a Hebrew superlative, the same construction as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Solomon wrote 1,005 songs (1 Kings 4:32). For comparison, Bob Dylan has written about 600 and Taylor Swift about 250. Out of all 1,005 of Solomon’s songs, this one, the one about marriage and intimacy, is the Song of Songs. God Himself decided that.
Let me draw out four laws of a love that lasts from the first chapter of Song of Songs.
Your marriage is your highest earthly calling.
Your first and ultimate allegiance is to Jesus Christ. Short of that, no other relationship carries the priority or depth of marriage. In Genesis, God creates everything and calls it good. There’s only one thing, before sin ever entered the world, that God says is not good: “It is not good for the man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18). And in His kindness, God provides a wife. Then comes this line: “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24).
One flesh. No other relationship is described that way. You don’t become one with anything or anyone else. Men, you don’t become one with your work, your hobbies, or your team. Women, you don’t become one with your kids, your friends, or your home.
So the first law of a love that lasts is this: if you put any earthly thing above your spouse, you are in violation of the covenant. It’s when the kids get all your patience. Your work gets the best of you. Your hobbies get your passion. Your phone gets your attention. Your boss always gets your “yes,” and your marriage gets whatever’s left.
For love to last, your spouse gets your greatest patience. Your most intense passion. Your focused attention. Your best yes.
Question: Does your spouse get the best of you, or what’s left of you?
The woman speaks: “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for your love is more delightful than wine” (Song of Songs 1:2).
Sex is a good gift from God to be enjoyed inside the unique, sacred relationship between a husband and wife. If physical intimacy is neglected, avoided, or treated casually, the marriage will not become the blessing God intended it to be.
Women, never use intimacy as leverage or a reward. Initiate. Pursue. Play offence, not just defence.
Men, you can be a physical blessing to your wife in more ways than just sex. Hold her hand. Hug her in the morning. I once interviewed a couple who’d been married more than 60 years, and one of the very first things they said about a love that lasts was: “We hug every day.” Be a physical blessing.
And men, you cannot be a physical blessing to your wife and look at pornography. Why? Because you have become one with someone else in your mind. Pornography shatters the unique oneness you share with your spouse. Jesus said, “I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away” (Matthew 5:28–29). That’s a hard teaching. Jesus is telling us that unfaithfulness isn’t only physical. It’s also mental.
If that hits close to home, hear it as a fresh invitation to freedom. Christ in you is the power to walk away from sin. The Spirit brings power and self-control. Wage war on lust at all costs. It will be the best thing you can do for your marriage.
Question: Is your body a blessing or a barrier in your marriage?
The woman says, “Pleasing is the fragrance of your perfumes; your name is like perfume poured out” (Song of Songs 1:3). Translation: he doesn’t smell bad.
Song of Songs is a cat-and-mouse pursuit, and not just before marriage.
Guys, when you were dating, you did some pushups before she got to the door so your shirt would fill out. You made sure your car didn’t smell like a gym bag. You showed up on time. You opened her door. You asked questions and listened to the answers. Ladies, you put in the effort. You took an hour to get ready. Your phone stayed out of sight. You laughed at his jokes even though they weren’t funny.
Both of you put your best you forward. Not the couch-dwelling, sweat-pant-stained version. There is a time for that version of you (full comfort with each other is a beautiful thing), but comfort was never meant to replace pursuit.
On my first date with my wife, I’d never worn cologne in my life. I bought a bottle for $20. I was broke, but I was trying.
So let me ask: are you still trying? Or has attraction turned to apathy? A lot of us flip the script somewhere along the way. We stop trying to impress our partner and we defend ourselves: “This is who I am. If you don’t like it, that’s your problem.” That’s not covenant thinking. That’s contract thinking creeping back in.
Listen to how Paul puts it: “The husband should fulfil his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife” (1 Corinthians 7:3–4). This isn’t saying a woman has no say over her body or that a man can demand whatever he wants. It’s saying: when you become one flesh, no part of your life exists in isolation any longer.
Keep pursuing. Keep trying.
Question: If your spouse went on a first date with you today, would they want a second date?
Now this passage will need a little context. The woman says, “Dark am I, yet lovely, daughters of Jerusalem… Do not stare at me because I am dark, because I am darkened by the sun” (Song of Songs 1:5–6).
In our culture, tan is in. In Solomon’s day, it was reversed. If you were wealthy, you didn’t have to do hard labour in the sun, so pale skin was the status symbol. If you had dark skin, you’d worked the fields. The woman is saying she’s darker than everyone else. She’s insecure about how she looks in his presence.
Back to Genesis 2: “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” That word helperdoesn’t mean inferior. The same Hebrew word is used in the Psalms to describe how God helps His people. It means strength, vitality. Eve isn’t Adam’s assistant. She’s an essential partner, supplying what Adam lacks so that together they fulfil God’s calling.
Notice what comes before that. God brings every living creature to Adam, and not one of them is a suitable partner. So God creates the woman.
When Adam sees her, he doesn’t critique. He doesn’t compare. He doesn’t hesitate. He bursts into song. We don’t know what Eve looked like; the Bible doesn’t tell us. But compared with everything else Adam had ever seen, she was in a category of her own.
Here’s the big idea: God made one woman for Adam. So whatever she looked like, that was Adam’s standard of beauty. Men, you have one woman, and whatever she looks like, that is your standard of beauty. Women, you have one man, and whatever he looks like, that’s what is beautiful to you.
If they’re tanned, you’re into tanned. If they’re pasty, you’re into pasty. If they have love handles, you’re into love handles.
The man’s response to his wife’s insecurity is wonderful: “I liken you, my darling, to a mare among Pharaoh’s chariot horses” (Song of Songs 1:9). Pharaoh’s chariot horses were the ultimate symbol of beauty and strength. He doesn’t say, “You’re like one of those horses.” He says, “You’re the mare among them.” Even among the most beautiful women, you’re in a category of your own.
Question: Does your spouse know that, to you, they are in a category of their own?
I want to close with one more verse. The last time we heard from the woman, she was insecure and ashamed. But something has changed. By chapter 2, she’s saying, “I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys” (Song of Songs 2:1). She’s no longer hiding or ashamed. Why?
His love changed her. She’s now seeing herself the way he sees her.
That’s the power of a Godly marriage. Marriage isn’t a piece of paper or a tax strategy. It’s a covenant, a pledging of our very lives. And that kind of self-giving love doesn’t leave you untouched. It changes you.
Which points to something even deeper. The Bible reaches for marriage language to describe our relationship with God because it’s one of the clearest pictures we have of how deeply He loves us. “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy… and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless” (Ephesians 5:25–27).
Jesus doesn’t love us after we’re radiant. His love makes us radiant.
Maybe you’ve never experienced that love. You can today. When you put your full faith in Jesus, God pours His love into your heart, and you are changed. You might not believe that about yourself yet. You see yourself a certain way. You have a list of insecurities. You’re carrying shame. God isn’t oblivious to any of it. Just as the man saw the woman as she was, God sees you exactly as you are, and His response isn’t rejection. His response is Jesus.
On the cross, the love of God was made visible. Your shame, your past, your mistakes, your insecurities, all of it placed on Jesus. Replace your shame and receive His freedom. Trade your insecurities for His peace. Trade your failure for His forgiveness.
No love will ever change you like the love of Jesus.
His love is a love that lasts.