Song of Songs 4
v.1
How beautiful you are, my darling! Oh, how beautiful! Your eyes behind your veil are doves. Your hair is like a flock of goats descending from Mount Gilead.
v.7
All beautiful you are, my darling; there is no flaw in you.
What God says is true, and you had better believe it. What happens if you do? Suppose Robert Redford came up to you, who think of yourself as a Plain Jane, and said, “You are the woman I’ve been looking for all my life. You move me to tears, you are so beautiful. I want to marry you and make you happy forever.” Would think of yourself a little differently? Well, if even Robert Redford can change your dull self-image, cannot God do it also? Dare you call yourself a Plain Jane if it means calling God a liar? One of you is wrong. You say you are ugly; God says you are beautiful. If you are right, God is wrong. That just cannot be. The alternative is that God is right and you are wrong. You are not ugly. You are beautiful. What God says is fact, objective truth, utter reality.
But what about sin? Does God just hide his eyes? How can that be realism? God does not hide his eyes. Your eyes are hidden in time, hidden from your eternal destiny and identity.
You see only the present crude sketch of yourself. He sees the completed masterpiece, for he sees from eternity. Your life is like a string pulled taut. Like an ant, you crawl along the string of your lifetime, from one end (birth) to the other (death). 🔥 But God sees the whole string end on, from the end. He blinks at nothing; he sees everything in its true perspective. He sees your whole life, but not as you do, piecemeal. He sees you whole, as you see a finished painting. And the judgment he pronounces on you is “perfect”.
That is our destiny, according to Christ: “You must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” The Christ who says this incredible thing is also the Christ who alone makes it happen, the Savior, the Way. The Way will have his way. We are to be “all fair” as he is all fair. Contentment with anything less than perfection is our way, perhaps, but not his. For he is love, and love (according to George Macdonald) is “easy to please but hard to satisfy”. Thank God for both of those facts!
v.9
You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride; you have stolen my heart with one glance of your eyes, with one jewel of your necklace.
It does not take much to set the man off in a frenzy of excitement over the woman: a mere glance of the eyes or one jewel from her necklace. Anything about her or associated with her brings him to his knees in adoration.
v.10
How delightful is your love, my sister, my bride! How much more pleasing is your love than wine, and the fragrance of your perfume than any spice!