In God’s romance He desires to be one with man. He carried this out by becoming the same as man. God, because of His heart’s desire, became a man in incarnation, and He contacted man by the way of a romance. Before God opened up in the New Testament what was on His heart, both angels and men did not know what God was doing (Eph. 3:9). They did not realize that their God was becoming a Husband to marry a wife. This Husband was divine and the wife He was going to marry was human.
Song of Songs is a romance between a great king and a country girl. However, these two do not match each other. In the same way, how could God with divinity marry a wife with humanity? They do not match. It must have been difficult for Solomon, the top king on the whole earth, to court a common country girl. If he had come to visit her in all his kingly glory, she would have been afraid of him. Therefore, the king became a “country man” in order to go to her village to court her, to gain her love. On the one hand, he made himself the same as the country girl; on the other hand, he made the country girl a queen. This is a type of the story of God’s romance with man. He would marry a human being, just like the king would marry a country girl. God, in order to court us, to gain us in a personal and affectionate way, became a lowly man with humanity.
Although God became a lowly man, His intention was not to remain a lowly man for eternity. His intention was to bring His humanity up to the level of His divinity. Romans 1:3-4 tells us that our Savior is of two sources: the flesh and the Spirit. According to the flesh, He was out of the seed of David. For Him to become flesh was like Solomon’s going to the countryside as a “country man” to gain a wife. God made Himself a man in the flesh. Then in His resurrection He uplifted His humanity into His divinity according to the Spirit of holiness, and in His humanity He was designated the Son of God. He had the capacity to uplift His humanity into His divinity because He was of two sources: the source of the flesh, humanity, and the source of the Spirit of holiness, divinity. Humanity surely cannot pull down divinity. Instead, His divinity uplifted His humanity into His divinity.
Through the divine power in the Spirit of holiness, Jesus’ humanity was uplifted into the divine sonship, into divinity. By this He was born of God not as God’s only begotten Son but as God’s firstborn Son (Rom. 8:29), which indicates that many sons would follow. Today our Christ is God in the divine sense and man in the human sense. He is a God-man. We need to stress that our God is not only God but also a man. We wrote a hymn which says, “Lo! in heaven Jesus sitting, / Christ the Lord is there enthroned; / As the man by God exalted, / With God’s glory He is crowned” (Hymns, #132).