Romance Advice, Books, Tips, Ideas & Help for Christians
The Bible not only speaks of passionate love between men and women. The Bible describes God as the most passionate, pursuant, and perfect lover of all. It shows God as the ultimate lover in the courting of us – his human creations! Between God and us lies the greatest of all Romances! So what can we learn from God’s love?
We don’t normally think of God as a romantic lover in the way that romance and passion is shared between a man and a woman. But it is the romance between him and us, that he wishes to symbolise in our passionate quest and desire for oneness with the opposite sex. There are many different kinds of passion but none quite as intense as the passion of lovers – except God’s passion for us. The desire – the passion – the chase and ultimately the marriage of the husband to the wife – and Christ to the church.
How does the Bible describe romance. What does it say about romantic love?
Romantic love is distinct throughout Scripture. God is depicted as the unrequited lover. “Will a girl forget her finery or a bride her ribbons? Yet my people have forgotten me over and over again. God is a passionate lover, and passion can fuel anger. God storms at his lover for her prostitution. God also desires Israel for his bride: “For, as a young man weds a maiden, so you shall wed him who rebuilds you”. All very intense stuff!
God in relation to his people is depicted as having rescued them as a newborn baby lying in their own blood, raised them to full maturity, gave them fine clothes and jewellery, provided for them the best of foods, and presented them with sons and daughters (Ezek. 16:114). In return, they (you might say us) imperviously fornicates. “How you anger me!” shouts God (Ezek. 16:30). He threatens to turn them over to her many lovers, to strip them naked before. The lovers will then rob their jewelry, stone them, and hack them to pieces (Ezek. 16:39-40). One couldn’t be more passionate than that. So then the stormy rows of lovers can be seen in God’s passionate love and jealousy for his people.
But God is the perfect lover. He vents his frustration and anger, then whispers: “I will still woo her, I will go with her into the wilderness and comfort her” (Hos. 2:14). He follows her through hell and high water wherever she goes, and pleads “How shall I deal with you? Your loyalty to me is like the morning mist, like dew that vanishes early.” Don’t you see, he adds, “loyalty is my desire, not sacrifice” (Hos. 6:4-5). Love will heal: it will reveal the eternal identity and make all things new. Come, God says, and Israel may be “fair as the olive” and “flourish like a vine” (Hos. 14;6-7).
Then God, the greatest and most persistent lover ever changes tack. He is not only wanting to gain this one peoples love, but all of creation! His passion will stop at nothing. In this sense he is almost like a madman. He comes to us and takes on the nature of the most lowly slave. He walks with us and, experiences our greatest sorrows and our most heart felt joys, heals the sick and casts out demons and not forgetting him showing his righteous anger as well. Then the lowly servant shows how the fist shall be last and the last shall be first by demonstrating his almighty power over evil and death itself by being raised from it. He yearns, “How often have I longed to gather you children, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings: but you would not let me” (Luke 13:34).
We still turn our backs but in the end there is no fighting it. We have been caught by our “true and only husband” (2 Cor. 11:2). We have seen that love really does reign over death, love is stronger than life itself, angels, principalities, powers or anything we can imagine. In the end it’s hard to comprehend why we ran so hard from this perfect lover!
So finally the bride is made new. God’s people are sown in humiliation but raised in glory. Very soon the wedding of all weddings will begin. Heaven will open and the bridegroom will appear on a white horse. And so God romances us the same way that we romance our beloved husband or wife.
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Related Christian Advice topics
Christian Dating Guide | Help and advice on Christian Courting | 40 Romantic Ideas
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