Strong as Death

Set me as a seal on your heart, as a seal on your arm; for love is strong as death. Jealousy is as cruel as Sheol. Its flashes are flashes of fire, a very flame of Yahweh. Many waters can’t quench love, neither can floods drown it. If a man would give all the wealth of his house for love, he would be utterly scorned. (Song of Solomon 8:6-7, WEB)

The bride in the Song asks to be set as a seal upon her lover's heart, and then comes one of the boldest lines in all of scripture, that love is strong as death and that many waters cannot quench it, neither can floods drown it. This is the kind of love a marriage is meant to carry, fierce and durable, able to survive what would sink a lesser thing. It is love with weight to it, love that holds when the feelings run out and the years grow long.

Pornography sells a counterfeit that behaves the opposite way. It is quenched the moment the screen goes dark, and it drowns under the first real demand for patience or sacrifice. It asks nothing and endures nothing, and so it is worth nothing when a marriage actually needs something to stand on. A man raised on that counterfeit may doubt he is capable of the enduring kind, since the only love he has practiced is the sort that evaporates.

Take heart that the love the Song describes is finally God's own love, the flame that death itself could not put out, and he is the one who kindles it in a human heart. You do not have to manufacture it from your own thin supply. He carried a love strong as death all the way to a cross and out the other side, and that same fire is what he offers to set in you toward your wife. Ask him to seal you to her with a love like that, one that many waters cannot quench and no flood can drown, so that you stop trading something eternal for something that is gone before morning. The love that outlasts death is not beyond your reach. It is the very thing he wants to give you.