Sermon On Love Courtship And Marriage

Love That Will Not Let Go: A Biblical Vision for Courtship, Marriage, and Covenant Commitment

There is a question that every human heart eventually asks, whether quietly in private or openly in conversation with someone trusted. The question is this: What does real love actually look like? Not the love we see performed on screens or described in popular songs, but the kind of love that holds when life gets hard, that grows when novelty fades, that remains when everything easy about a relationship has been tested. That question is not new. It is as old as humanity itself, and the God who made us did not leave us without an answer. This morning we open two passages of Scripture that together give us a portrait of love that is both breathtakingly beautiful and profoundly demanding. One comes from the apostle Paul writing to a church in Corinth. The other comes from the ancient love poetry of the Song of Songs. Together they call us to something far greater than romance alone. They call us to wise courtship, mature love, careful discernment, and covenant commitment.

Let us read our texts. First Corinthians 13:4 through 8 in the Christian Standard Bible reads: "Love is patient, love is kind. Love does not envy, is not boastful, is not arrogant, is not rude, is not self-seeking, is not irritable, and does not keep a record of wrongs. Love finds no joy in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends." And from Song of Songs 8:6 and 7: "Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for love is as strong as death, its jealousy as unrelenting as Sheol. Love's flames are fiery flames, the fiercest of all. Mighty waters cannot extinguish love; rivers cannot sweep it away. If a man were to give all his wealth for love, it would be utterly scorned."

These two passages belong together. One is poetry. One is instruction. But they are saying the same thing from different directions. Love is not fragile. Love is not a feeling that comes and goes with the weather. Love is a force, a commitment, a character. And if we are going to build our relationships on a foundation that lasts, we need to understand what Scripture actually teaches about it.

The Nature Of Covenant Love

Paul's famous description of love in First Corinthians 13 is often read at weddings, and rightly so. But we should notice something important about its original context. Paul was not writing to a couple in love. He was writing to a church that was tearing itself apart. The Corinthian believers were competing with one another, boasting about spiritual gifts, and treating each other with contempt. Paul set love before them as the corrective. This means that the love described in these verses is not primarily a feeling that happens to you. It is a pattern of behavior you choose. It is a character you cultivate. And that has enormous implications for how we think about courtship and marriage.

Notice how Paul builds his description. He begins with patience and kindness. These are not dramatic virtues. They are quiet ones. Patience is the willingness to bear with another person over time without growing bitter. Kindness is the active choice to do good to someone even when it costs you something. These two qualities alone would transform most relationships if they were practiced consistently. Then Paul moves to what love is not. It does not envy. It is not boastful or arrogant. It is not rude or self-seeking. It is not irritable. It does not keep a record of wrongs. Read that list slowly and honestly. Every item on it describes a way that human selfishness expresses itself in close relationships. Paul is telling us that love is the deliberate, Spirit-empowered resistance to our own self-centeredness. That is not easy. It is not automatic. It is the work of a lifetime.

Then Paul closes with four great declarations. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. And then the capstone: love never ends. In a culture that treats love as disposable, that final phrase is radical. Paul is not describing a feeling that might fade. He is describing a commitment that outlasts every difficulty.

The Strength Of Covenant Love

Now turn to Song of Songs 8:6 and 7. Here the language shifts from instruction to poetry, but the message deepens rather than softens. The beloved asks to be set as a seal upon the heart and upon the arm of the one she loves. A seal in the ancient world was a mark of ownership and identity. It was pressed into wax to authenticate a document, to say: this belongs to me, and I stand behind it. To ask to be set as a seal upon the heart is to ask for a place of permanent belonging in the inner life of another person. To ask to be set as a seal upon the arm is to ask for visible, public commitment. Together they describe the full scope of covenant love: inward devotion and outward faithfulness.

Then comes the poetry's most striking claim. Love is as strong as death. That is not a sentimental comparison. Death is the most relentless force in human experience. Nothing outmaneuvers it. Nothing bargains it away. And the Song of Songs says that covenant love shares that quality of absolute, unstoppable persistence. Its jealousy, meaning its exclusive claim on the beloved, is as unrelenting as Sheol, the place of the dead. And then: mighty waters cannot extinguish it, rivers cannot sweep it away. No flood of circumstance, no storm of difficulty, no tide of time can put out the flame of true covenant love. And the closing verse makes clear that this love cannot be purchased. It is not a commodity. It is not something wealth can produce or buy. It is a gift, and it is given freely or not at all.

Wisdom In Courtship And Discernment Before The Covenant

These two passages together give us a framework not only for marriage but for the season of courtship that precedes it. If this is what love looks like, then courtship is the season for discerning whether this kind of love is actually being built between two people. Courtship is not simply the enjoyment of attraction, though attraction is a good gift from God. Courtship is the period of careful, prayerful, community-supported discernment in which two people ask honest questions. Is this person patient? Am I patient with this person? Is there kindness here, or only excitement? Are we building something that bears and believes and hopes and endures, or are we simply enjoying the early warmth before the real work begins?

Wise courtship involves accountability. It involves the counsel of people who know you well and love you enough to tell you the truth. It involves prayer, time, and honest conversation about faith, values, and the kind of life you are each called to build. It does not rush past these questions in the heat of emotion. It honors them. And it submits them to God, who is the author of love itself.

The Gospel Foundation

Here is the deepest truth of this morning's message. The love described in First Corinthians 13 and Song of Songs 8 is not something any of us can produce on our own. We are by nature self-seeking. We keep records of wrongs. We grow irritable. We lose patience. The love these passages describe is a supernatural love, and it flows from a supernatural source. That source is Jesus Christ, who is himself the perfect embodiment of every quality Paul lists. He was patient with sinners. He was kind to the broken. He did not seek his own comfort but gave himself completely. He bore all things, believed all things, hoped all things, endured all things. And his love never ended. It carried him to a cross, through a tomb, and out the other side in resurrection. He is the seal upon the heart of everyone who trusts in him, and nothing can separate us from his love.

This means that Christian marriage is not simply two people choosing each other. It is two people who have first been chosen by Christ, transformed by his grace, and now called to reflect his love to one another and to the watching world. If you are here today and you do not yet know that love for yourself, the invitation is open. Come to Christ. Trust him with your life. Let his love become the foundation on which everything else is built.

And for those of us who are already married, or who hope one day to be, let these texts call us back to the standard. Not the standard of perfection, but the standard of faithful, patient, covenant love. The kind that sets a seal upon the heart. The kind that mighty waters cannot extinguish. The kind that never ends.

Sources Consulted

Ciampa, Roy E., and Brian S. Rosner. The First Letter to the Corinthians. Pillar New Testament Commentary. Eerdmans, 2010.

Fee, Gordon D. The First Epistle to the Corinthians. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Eerdmans, 1987.

Garrett, Duane A. Song of Songs. Word Biblical Commentary. Thomas Nelson, 2004.

Longman, Tremper, III. Song of Songs. New International Commentary on the Old Testament. Eerdmans, 2001.

Schreiner, Thomas R. 1 Corinthians. Tyndale New Testament Commentaries. InterVarsity Press, 2018.

Storms, Sam. Song of Solomon: Explorations in Biblical Theology. P and R Publishing, 2012.