Be Drunk with Love?

A Call to Drink Deep of Divine Love from Song 5:1

“Eat, friends, drink, and be drunk with love!” (Song 5:1).

That’s an attention-getting image: “Be drunk with love.”

It appears the apostle Paul is using this same idea when he charged us not to be drunk on spirits but to be filled with the Spirit (Ephesians 5:18). Paul’s words help us capture Solomon’s poetic charge to be “drunk with love.”

We’ve all seen what happens when too much alcohol enters a human. Think about what changes when someone is drunk:

• Emotions

• Speech

• Vision

• Reactions

• Attitude

• Walking

• Decision-making

• Processing

• Treatment of others

It’s an apt word picture for what happens when we drink deeply of God’s love. Isn’t this what happens when we experience the love of Jesus? We become different people.

When we guzzle down that gospel goodness, we are not the same. When we are filled with thoughts of Christ’s cross, Christ’s love, his blood shed for the forgiveness of our sins, his empty tomb, his conquering of death and the devil, and Christ watching over us and caring for us from his th…