God’s desire is to express Himself through a people. He wants to make this people His dwelling. Furthermore, this people must become God’s expression corresponding to His law. Since God’s law is the expression of what God is, to correspond to the law is to correspond to God. God’s people can have such a correspondence only by loving Him and being infused with His substance.
According to Song of Songs, the man is the beloved, and the woman, the one who lovingly seeks him, is his love (1:13-16). Thus, the beloved is the husband, whereas his love is the wife. The Bible reveals that in the Old Testament God sought His people as the Beloved seeking someone to be His love, His spouse. If you read Exodus 1 through 20 in this light, you will see that in these chapters God came a number of times to woo His people. After wooing them, He became engaged to them at Mount Sinai.
In Exodus 3:14-15, the Lord revealed Himself to His people as Jehovah their God, the great I Am, the One who was, who is, and who will be forever. The One who so revealed Himself to the people was the One who was seeking lovers.
In Jeremiah 31:3 the Lord told His people, “Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore, with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.” Elsewhere we are told that God loved Jacob, but hated Esau (Rom. 9:13). There seems to be no reason for God’s love for His people; He just loved them, almost as if He were blinded by love. He continued to love His people even when they were not faithful to Him. Love blinds people. The best love is this kind of blind love. If you are not blind, you will not be able to love properly. If your eyes are open to all the faults of the one you love, you may want a separation, or even a divorce. But if you love blindly, you will consider your husband or wife to be the best. In loving His people, God seemed to close His eyes and to love them blindly. In the matter of love, do not be wiser than God. Follow Him to love your spouse blindly.
When I was young, I wondered if God had been mistaken in loving Israel. Even though Jacob was a supplanter, God loved Him. God still loves Israel with an everlasting love, just as He did when He uttered the words of love in Jeremiah 31:3. Many nations may rise up against Israel, but God continues to love His people with an everlasting love.
Because God was the Beloved seeking His people to be His love, He dealt with them as His spouse. This is indicated clearly in Jeremiah 2:2; Hosea 2:19-20; Isaiah 54:5; and Ezekiel 16:8.
We have pointed out again and again that God’s law was given in a courting way. By giving His people the law in such a way, God made known to them what kind of God He is. In each of the first five commandments, He referred to Himself intimately as “Jehovah thy God.” Revealing Himself as a jealous God, He requested that they have no other god, no other beloved, besides Him. He was seeking their love so that they would keep His commandments to express Him. The same concept is found in John 14:21 and 23. Verse 21 says, “He who has My commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves Me; and he who loves Me shall be loved by My Father, and I will love him, and will manifest Myself to him.” As in Exodus 20:1-12, here we see the Lord’s love in courting us and in seeking a people to love Him. In John 14:23 the Lord continues, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make an abode with him.” In the New Testament as well as in the Old Testament, God is courting man. The commandments in 20:1-12 were given not in a legal way, but in a courting way. In giving the law to His people, God wanted them to become His lovers.
If we do not love God, we shall not be able to keep His commandments, and thus we shall not be able to express Him. The goal of engagement is to bring two people into oneness. In marriage a man and his wife become one flesh. In like manner, God and His chosen people became one through the engagement which took place in Exodus 20. This oneness both between God and His people and between husband and wife is a basic principle in the Scriptures. However, many Bible teachers neglect this aspect of the giving of the Ten Commandments. Instead, they emphasize the distance between God and His people and the fact that God wanted them to keep the commandments. But we cannot deny the fact that the Ten Commandments served as an engagement paper and that the engagement of God and His people brought them into oneness.
In a proper marriage, a man and his wife become more and more one as the years go by. Gradually they become one in habit, characteristics, and expression. Likewise, eventually God’s chosen people will become the same as He is and thus will truly express Him. We need to be infused with the Lord as our Husband, becoming more and more like Him. Then we shall become His expression. According to the Bible, this basic principle applies both to human marriage and to the love relationship between God and His people.
The function of an engagement paper is to make the two parties, the man and the woman, one. In the same principle, the function of the Word of God is to make us one with God. For God to say that He betrothed Israel unto Himself means that He has caused His people to become one with Him as a wife is one with her husband. God’s words cause His spouse to be one with Him. The highest function of the law is to bring God’s chosen people into oneness with Him. The Ten Commandments are not simply regulations decreed by God as the highest authority in the universe. The law is an engagement paper which brings us to God and makes us one with Him. This is also true of the Bible. The primary function of the Bible is to bring us to God and make us one with Him. Because we love God, we also love His word. As His words infuse Himself into us, we become one with Him in life, nature, and expression. This understanding of the law as God’s living word and of the Bible shows forth the intrinsic function of the law and of the Bible, the Word of God.