What is true love? The Romantics told us that it is nothing more than a feeling of great affection, of intense desire for someone. But this definition of love substitutes a part for the whole. For while love does involve passion, it is mainly concerned not with the feelings of the self, but with the needs of the beloved. In short, while Romantic love might take risks in order to satisfy one’s own urges, Biblical love is willing to risk everything so that our beloved might be blessed.
In this passage, Michal gives us a great example of true love. Now, she knew her dad better than anyone. She knew when he would eventually calm down and when he had gotten to the breaking point. So, when Saul once again tried to kill David in a fit of jealous rage over yet another one of his victories over the Philistines, Michal knew that this time there was no turning back. She knew that this time, her dad was out for blood.
So, what did she do? She could have focused on her own feelings, her grief over her father’s insanity, her fear of what he might do to her. She could have clung to David like a security blanket, holding her beloved close to her and hoping for the best. But instead, she put what was best for David first. She insisted that he escape from Saul, even though that meant she would be left behind. She lowered him down through the window and watched him run away, not knowing if he would ever return. Then, in order to give David as big a head start as she could, she tried to deceive her own father, even though she knew he might turn on her and kill her in one of his paranoid fantasies.
Yes, Michal shows us what true love, self-sacrificial, promise-keeping love looks like. And isn’t this the same sort of love Jesus showed us on the cross? For in the Garden of Gethsemane, He made it plain that going to the cross was something he dreaded, something He wished He didn’t have to do. But he was willing to go through all that pain and all that shame not so that He might feel some sort of passion, but so that we might be saved from our enemies, from sin and death.
No, if we would follow Jesus, our idea of love for one another needs to be a lot more like Michal’s than what the Romantics taught us. So, no matter what it costs, let’s show that kind of love to one another today.
I Samuel 19:8-17 (ESV)
8 And there was war again. And David went out and fought with the Philistines and struck them with a great blow, so that they fled before him.
9 Then a harmful spirit from the LORD came upon Saul, as he sat in his house with his spear in his hand. And David was playing the lyre.
10 And Saul sought to pin David to the wall with the spear, but he eluded Saul, so that he struck the spear into the wall. And David fled and escaped that night.
11 Saul sent messengers to David’s house to watch him, that he might kill him in the morning. But Michal, David’s wife, told him, “If you do not escape with your life tonight, tomorrow you will be killed.”
12 So Michal let David down through the window, and he fled away and escaped.
13 Michal took an image and laid it on the bed and put a pillow of goats’ hair at its head and covered it with the clothes.
14 And when Saul sent messengers to take David, she said, “He is sick.”
15 Then Saul sent the messengers to see David, saying, “Bring him up to me in the bed, that I may kill him.”
16 And when the messengers came in, behold, the image was in the bed, with the pillow of goats’ hair at its head.
17 Saul said to Michal, “Why have you deceived me thus and let my enemy go, so that he has escaped?” And Michal answered Saul, “He said to me, ‘Let me go. Why should I kill you?'”
