Question #4: What standards will I live by?
You do not want to wait until you’re in the back seat of a car late at night with the person you’re dating to determine your standards. By then, it’s too late! Here are the questions you need to answer ahead of time…
- What’s my standard on sex? (2:7) Here’s what you need to know. One of my mentors, Dr. Ron Hall, has been teaching college students for years and years that “Premature physical connectedness skews and distorts the ability of a couple to see whether or not the building blocks are present for a lifetime companionship.” In other words, sex prior to marriage further blurs your ability to see clearly if the person you are dating is a good option for a marriage partner. In this way it always hurts the relationship and never helps it. Nevertheless, people in our culture today say “I would never buy a car without test driving it first, and I would never marry someone without first having sex with them.” To this ridiculous statement Walter Trobish has rightly responded “Sex is no test for love, for it is precisely the very thing one wants to test [love] that is destroyed by testing [by having sex prior to marriage].” If you use sex to test love, you destroy that which you’re trying to test. This is precisely why God admonishes us to wait to enjoy a sexual relationship until marriage. In chapter 2:6 the Shulamite expresses her desire to sleep with Solomon, stating “His left arm is under my head, and his right arm embraces me.” Scholars believe this verse is better translated “O that his left arm is under my head, and o that his right arm would embrace me.” She wants to have sex with him. But then in Song of Solomon 2:7 she goes on to say “Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you by the gazelles and by the does of the field: Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires.” In other words: Though she desired a sexual relationship she recognized that dating is the wrong context for a sexual relationship. Water in the right context is a wonderful thing (i.e water coming out of a faucet can give you a drink, water coming out of a shower head can help you get clean). But water in the wrong context (i.e. overflowing a riverbank in a flood) can be very destructive. In the same way, electricity in the right context can be used to turn on a light or charge your phone. But in the wrong context (i.e. in a storm) it can be incredibly destructive. In the same way, sex in the right context (i.e. within marriage) is a wonderful and beautiful thing. But sex in the wrong context can be very destructive. I read in Dr. Ron Hall’s Life Formation Workbook that those who wait to have sex until marriage are 31% more satisfied with their sex life than those who have sex before marriage. Friends – God wants you to have a great and satisfying sex life, which is why he tells us to wait. He doesn’t give us this command to detract from the enjoyment of sex, rather to enhance it. So you’ve got a decision to make. What’s your standard going to be when it comes to sex? Now, if you’ve made mistakes in this area, thanks be to God that in Christ all things can be made new! You can’t change yesterday, but you can choose to do things different tomorrow (starting today).
- How far can I go? (1:2) At this point you might be saying: I know I can’t have sex, but what can I have? Well first off let me say that we shouldn’t treat dating like we do the limbo! With the limbo the question is “How low can I go?” But with dating the goal shouldn’t be to go as far as you can without crossing the line. God is more impressed with our willingness to stay as far away from the line as possible, rather than with our ability to get as close as we can without crossing it. But with that said, we read in Song of Solomon that Solomon and the Shulamite did kiss while dating (1:2). A number of years ago Joshua Harris wrote a book called “I Kissed Dating Goodbye.” Well Solomon and the Shulamite kissed while dating. And since they kissed, I think it’s safe to say they held hands too. So here’s a suggested standard to follow. If you’re approaching or at marriage age, as Solomon and the Shulamite were, here’s my suggestion: Hands on hands. Lips on lips. Save everything else for marriage. If you want to be more conservative than that – good for you. But I wouldn’t advise being more liberal than that. Now if you’re nowhere near marriage age, I would not recommend this standard. Until you’re near marriage age I don’t think you should do anything physical because you’ll probably just get yourself in trouble and possibly do something you’ll regret later on down the road. But if you’re at or close to marriage age “Hands on hands. Lips on lips. Save everything else for marriage.” is a good standard to follow for it seems to be what Solomon and the Shulamite followed.
- How will I express my love? (1:2,10,11) We are mistaken if we think that the only way to express love is to do it physically. That’s just not true. Look what Solomon did. Though he very much wanted to express his love for the Shulamite physically, he chose to limit that aspect, saving that for marriage, and instead chose to express his love verbally and materially. Take a look. In 1:10 Solomon praises her beauty and in 1:11 promises to provide her with jewelry to match her natural good looks. Praising her beauty was a verbal way to express his love and buying her jewelry was a material way to express his love. He minored on the physical aspects of expressing love and majored on expressing his love verbally and materially. It’s not that prior to marriage you can’t express how you feel. You just want to do it in a God-honoring way – and in a way that doesn’t destroy the foundation you’re trying to build a lasting relationship on. Prior to marriage you want to maximize the verbal and material expressions of love and minimize the physical.
You need to answer these questions ahead of time. Again – You do not want to wait until you’re in the back seat of a car late at night with the person you’re dating to determine your standards. By then, it’s too late!