“Draw me after you, and let’s run.” Song of Solomon 4:4 NASB
God is always looking for ways to express His love for us in ways we can understand. Even though the love God has for us in not romantic, God uses the love between a man and woman to express the love He has for us.
The Song of Solomon is about a man pursuing a woman he deeply loves, and the meaning of this love song is illustrative of Jesus pursuing us with a great love. When a man is deep in love, He will relentlessly pursue the object of His affection. He will despise all others in order to focus on the one He wants. There is no other woman that can distract or pull him away from her. He is single-minded, cherishing her and only her. He does not stop until he has her, and when he has her, he describes the intimacy with her that completely satisfies him.
Lust is not love. Lust is when someone is not satisfied by their mate, and their eyes are always roaming to look at what another person has to offer. Lust is an imagination of being with someone other than their mate, being aroused by someone other than who they have. Lust can even take someone into the act of adultery, leaving their own bed to be intimate with someone else. Lust is the opposite of continually pursuing the one you love. Jesus said to men that lusting after a woman was committing adultery, betraying the one you once pursued to be stimulated by someone else, even in thought. What person wants to feel they are not enough to satisfy their mate? This is not the heart of Christ. His pursuit is pure and undefiled.
Another pursuit of a man for a woman is Hosea going after a woman named Gomer, a prostitute. The love in this book is a great love, a story of a man pursuing a woman that is unfaithful to him. Though she turned away from Hosea time after time, Hosea continued to love her and pursue her. This love illustrates the love God has for His people, a people who turned away from Him over and over; yet God continued to pursue them and take them back. This same love that God had for Israel is the love of God that pursues and overtakes all of us, no matter how unfaithful we have been to Him or how unfaithful someone was to us. God is faithful, and His pursuit is a loyal and committed pursuit.
Application: If you have ever been in a human relationship where your mate was not satisfied with your love, turn to God and let Him show you what real love is – it is an undistracted, relentless pursuit of you. He will continually overtake you with His love, and you will be satisfied with Him.