God created us to love him and love one another, and desire is how our hearts reach out for what we love. That’s why misplaced desire (loving and seeking the wrong things) is the root of sin (Genesis 4:6, James 1:14–15). It’s also why God calls us—by the power of his Spirit—to desire him, seek him, embrace him, and rejoice in him.

The Song of Songs is a book all about this desirous love, and it illustrates and celebrates it in the context of one of the most intimate relationships we’re capable of experiencing: marriage. We experience sexual desire because we’re created to long for union with another, to mutually know, love, and belong to someone else. The monogamous, intimate, committed, passionate, faithful, and delightful bond of marriage is the closest any human relationship comes to the committed relationship God gives us in Christ. That’s why Scripture so often describes God’s relationship with his people as a marriage. The desire for union between the man and woman in Song of Songs points upward toward Christ’s love and union between his church (Eph 5:32).

The lessons the Song of Songs has to teach us about sex and marriage help us not only understand ourselves and our own sexuality, but also teach us about the loving bond we enjoy in Christ.