When you imagine how Jesus relates to you, what’s his posture?

Is he sitting up on a throne, high and distant? Is he frowning, disappointed yet again? Maybe he’s unavailable and you can’t even see his face, captured by other, more important concerns. Or maybe he can spare you a moment, but he just doesn’t want to. Maybe he’s heading away from you – fast. Whether you’ve envisioned one of these pictures or another, the image you have of Jesus almost certainly isn’t one of rapturously engaged pursuit. It’s incomplete.

Whatever it is that we imagine, we all carry misconceptions about Jesus. These perceptions often emerge from our own woundedness rather than from Scripture; and yet we integrate these pictures into our devotional lives as if they were unimpeachable truths. We imagine Christ with a limited posture towards us. And because we believe in a limited Christ – a distant Christ, a disappointed Christ, a detached, regretful, unavailable Christ – we fail to live in the fullness of the gospel and fail to be transformed as we ought by the renewal of our minds. And this has far-reaching consequences: how we picture Jesus will determine how securely we can abide in his gospel.

So we can envision Jesus better. We have to. And we can correct the posture he has in our minds by looking to his true posture towards us. This true posture doesn’t come from our wounded imaginations, but from Scripture itself. We see a facet of this in one of the most pervasive and consistent metaphors that God uses, spanning from the opening chapters of the Old Testament all the way to the penultimate moments of the New.

Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for love is strong as death, jealousy is fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the Lord.

Song of Solomon 8:6 ESV

Picture, instead of this imagined-Christ, a Jesus who:

  • rescues you.
  • pursues you.
  • sings over you.
  • rejoices over you.
  • gives himself fully to you.
  • and ultimately, weds himself to you.

It’s a romantic image, one almost unbearably intimate and near. This is Christ-as-Bridegroom, and while it isn’t anywhere near the image we might anticipate, it is exactly the image we find as we read through God’s own descriptions of himself.

Yes, Jesus is our ultimate Bridegroom; and he tirelessly pursues his Bride.

We often have it backwards in our minds: we imagine that it is we who must pursue Christ, and if we are not always chasing after his disappearing frame, we will lose him. Yet this runs counter to one of the clearest and most consistent descriptions God gives himself in all of Scripture. The Bridegroom pursues. Yes, it is he who pursues us; and we, in receiving his pursuit, are transformed out of our wretchedness and into the purest beauty. Through this bridal imagery, we see a Christ who relates to us in terms of romance, devotion, and intimacy, with wedding bells and glorious feasts and radiant garments.

Another way to say it is this. According to the metaphorical language of scripture, one of the most natural postures we can envision for Jesus is down on one knee, offering up an engagement ring.

Is this the Jesus you most often picture?

I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or the does of the field, that you not stir up or awaken love until it pleases.

Song of Solomon 2:7 ESV

Do we need to be careful with this kind of love?

As a single man, I need to be careful with how I let affection stir up in my heart. When I meet some attractive young woman (probably in the checkout line at the grocery store), I have to guard my heart against traveling too far down the road of infatuation. Never so with Christ. When we receive his romantic affection, we can receive it fully and openly, unrestrainedly, limitlessly, opening ourselves to the infinite floodgates of his divine affection in us. In human relationships, we have to guard our hearts against love awakening too early; in Christ, our love can never awaken too early.

Whether married or single, our desires and attractions are ultimately designed to reveal something about our relationship with God, holy and pure, innocent but not unimaginative. As your King, God rules over you. As your Father, he nurtures you and protects you. As your Friend, he cares for you deeply and closely. But as your Bridegroom, Christ pursues and cherishes you with a fierce and jealous passion. In other words, your sexuality gives you “the vocabulary and imagination to appreciate how your divine Husband feels about his bride.”1 We may be concerned with bringing our sexual expression too strongly into our understanding of God’s love: instead, our understanding of sexual love and romantic affection is too weak to contain all that God truly feels for us.

This category of language is bold, and may seem presumptuous. Intuitively, we will reject it as too-familiar, too-intimate, too-good and personal to be true. Yet Scripture repeatedly and consistently unfolds this imagery in charged and – frankly – erotic language. Whether through Isaiah’s prophecies, Paul’s letters, Hosea’s invectives, or John’s revelation, the clear language of God’s word is delivered to us in strikingly intimate terms: God’s word is charged with yearning, written as if between lovers. We may be embarrassed by the bold sexual imagery in God’s message to his people, but God himself is not.

We might think that we are too strong with our desires. That is not so. In fact, our sexual desire seems too weak, too tepid, too unfocused to fully grasp the full breadth of God’s love for us.

Fear not, for you will not be ashamed; be not confounded, for you will not be disgraced; for you will forget the shame of your youth, and the reproach of your widowhood you will remember no more. For your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name.

Isaiah 54:4-5 ESV

So what does this mean for us?

It means that for all of us, to engage with Christ on his terms means recognizing ourselves as the recipients of his divine love and affections. We are precious and beautiful to him, a delight in his eyes. He cherishes time spent with us and enjoys when we share our lives with him. This language isn’t just for the sentimental, or the naturally poetic. It isn’t flowery drivel for the dreamy-eyed, nor effeminate tenderness for the rugged to handwave away, but is rather a primary reality for the serious believer seeking to grow in Christ’s holy love. To be a Christian in the Church is to live as Christ’s Bride, to abide unreservedly within the marriage covenant of the Lamb.

If we are to approach Christ, we will come to him on marital terms – or miss out on an entire dimension of his love.

And these divine romantic affections of Christ are not a consolation prize for the unhappily single. Nor is it inherently feminine to bask in this unfolding reality of divine romantic pursuit. This identity we take on as Christ’s Bride is the primary reality for men and women, married or single, who love him and have put their faith in him. As C.S. Lewis said, “What is above and beyond all things is so masculine that we are all feminine in relation to it.”2 Of that which God has said boldly, we must not be ashamed.

In the Song of Solomon, we see a pattern of mutual pursuit and delight between the Lover and the Beloved; yet ultimately it is the Bridegroom who initiates, sustains, and consummates the love. As we abandon ourselves to the love of Christ, we must never mistake our role: we pursue mutually, we delight mutually, we enjoy mutually; but all is possible only by the initiation, sustenance, and consummative love we receive from Christ. We are not the primary movers of the romance we are in. The action is mutual, but by no means equal. Our Bridegroom pursues us far more and far earlier than we ever did him.

Whatever the state is of our romantic desire, we will only be free to pursue it when our romance is satisfied in Christ. Only when we are living in the surplus of his affections, not in the desperate deficit of our own striving, will we have the actual freedom to pursue romance here on earth.

So as you picture Christ, picture him pursuing you. Imagine an “in-love” Christ. Envision a wooing Christ, an amorous Christ, a romantic Christ.

Picture Christ knelt on one knee, offering up all of his life to you – and asking all of your life for him.

For you will not be ashamed. He will not turn you away. How could he? Your divine husband pursued you long before you ever loved him. His love endured death, burns like a furnace, and rose victorious from the grave. You may stir up this love as soon as you like, as often as you like, for it will always please, and will only ever please, and will go on pleasing, for ever and ever, always without fail.

For your Bridegroom pursues you even now.