Read Song of Songs 2:1–2
Questions from the Scripture text: What does the speaker call Himself in Song of Songs 2:1a? In verse 1b? Whom is He describing in Song of Songs 2:2b? Among whom is she? What does He say that she is like (verse 2a)? Among what?
How beautiful is the bride? Song of Songs 2:1–2 prepares us for the evening sermon on the coming Lord’s Day. In these two verses of Holy Scripture, the Holy Spirit teaches us that the bride is beautiful with the King’s beauty.
NKJ makes a formatting error that attributes Song of Songs 2:1 to the bride (which would be immodest of her). For verse 1 claims to be not merely “a” rose, or even “a” rose of sharon, but “the” Rose of Sharon—not merely “a” lily, or even “a” lily of the valleys, but “the” Lily of the Valleys.
This speaker can only be the King. Not a king, but the King of kings.
He is affirming for her, and with her, her love for Him and her appreciation of His beauty and His glory. He is just as she has been discovering her to be.
Whenever we begin to know and love the beauty of the Lord Jesus, part of His kindness and goodness to us is to strengthen in us our appreciation of Him and delight in Him. So, here, He confirms that He is the great beauty, the great sweetness. He uses that which is specifically more glorious than Solomon (cf. Matthew 6:28–29). The reason that the greatest king, in all his splendor, isn't as beautiful as the lilies is because the lilies are given a created beauty to point to that perfection of beauty that is the Lord Himself.
He is the very definition of beauty. He is the origin of beauty. When He makes beautiful things in His creation, and gives us the ability to recognize what's beautiful, and even to reproduce beauty, He is bestowing upon us the privilege of being made in His image.
So, the speaker is the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, Whose marriage is the marriage of marriages, Whose love is the love of loves—and the song about Whose love, and Whose marriage, is the Song of Songs.
He affirms to her His own beauty, which he has begun to give His bride to delight in, and then also He affirms her own beauty. Her beauty is a participation in, and derivative of, His beauty. Notice He says about Himself, “I am the lily of the valleys.” And then He says about her, “like a lily.” She's beautiful with a likeness unto Him, with a conformity to Him. This is that for which the foreknowing love of God predestined us: those whom He foreknew, He predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son (cf. Romans 8:29)—to be made like a lily (Song of Songs 2:2).
But she hasn’t always been a lily. In her original creation, she had been beautiful. But in the fall, she became as a thorn. The thorn, of course, alludes to the fall (cf. Genesis 3:18). Now, humanity, sadly, does not reflect the beauty of God. They are so corrupt, in their state of sin and misery, that they reflect the fallenness of the world. And yet, when the Lord gives spiritual life and faith and union with Him, and begins to work conformity to Him, the bride loses her “thorn-ness” association with the sinful fallen world, because her identity is much more now bound up in being united to Him. She exchanges her “thorn-ness” for “lily-ness.”
He Who says, “I am the Lily of the Valley,” says of her, “like a lily, among thorns, is my love.” She is among the daughters—those who have a natural descent from Adam. And yet, she has a spiritual descent, or origin, in the last Adam. She has been taken out of Adam the first, and put into Adam the last—the Rose of Sharon, the Lily of the Valleys. What has done this to her? His love for her is making her to be like Him. And so the Christian should learn from Jesus to acknowledge and value this Christ-derived, Christ-shaped beauty that He is giving to you. And when we deal with one another, who have not yet put on our full “lily-ness,” and who still exhibit so much of our “thorn-ness,” we ought to view one another with love and a delight, aiming at that which Christ's love is giving His bride.
How are you acknowledging and appreciating the beauty of Christ-likeness in yourself? In other Christians? How are you pursuing more of that Christ-likeness?
Sample prayer: Father, help us to treat one another, to speak to one another, to speak of one another, as those who are participating already in the lily-ness, the beauty, of the Lord Jesus. Give us not a self-esteem, but a Christ-esteem, so that when we remember that we are united to Him, we will take pleasure in His pleasure in us. So do this for us, we ask in His name. Amen!
Suggested songs: ARP130 “Lord, From the Depths to You I Cried” or TPH425 “How Sweet and Awesome Is the Place”
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