Although God is divine and we are human, it is still possible for us to be one with Him. But in order for God to be one with us and for us to be one with Him, there must be love between us and God. Unless there is mutual love, it is not possible for a man and woman to live together as husband and wife and remain truly one. The genuine oneness between a man and his wife is wholly a matter of love. Love is the motive and incentive for such a oneness. If I did not love my wife, I could not live with her in oneness. For two persons to be one, they must love each other. This is also true of the relationship between God and His people.
Without God, we are empty, and everything is vain. If we did not have God, we would have to say with the writer of Ecclesiastes, “Vanity of vanities; all is vanity” (1:2). But since we have God, we have reality.
Our need for God can be compared to the need a woman has for a husband. Moreover, God needs us as a man needs a wife. No love is sweeter than that between a man and his wife. This kind of love is necessary for keeping the law of God. We keep God’s law by loving Him and His Word and by becoming one with Him.
The love we should have for God is not the love parents have for their children, the honoring love children have for their parents, the love friends have for each other, nor the pitying love a rich person has toward the poor. The love we need to have for the Lord is affectionate love like that between a man and his wife. Our love for the Lord should be that which is expressed in Song of Songs, where we have a beautiful and touching description of the deep and tender affectionate love between the beloved (the Lord) and the one he loves (His love, His loving seeker). This love is so sweet and intimate that it is beyond our capacity to describe it adequately.
Christians often say that the Bible is a book of love. They may quote John 3:16, concerning God’s love for the world, 1 John 3:1 concerning God the Father’s love for His children, or Ephesians 5:25, concerning Christ’s love for the church. However, believers may not realize that the love in these verses is not only the love of God for the world, or the love of God the Father for His children, but also the love of Christ the Husband for His wife, the affectionate love revealed in Song of Songs. The love between God and His people unfolded in the Bible is mainly the affectionate love between man and woman.
According to the Old Testament, God loved Israel with such an affectionate love. In Jeremiah 31:3 the Lord said to His chosen people, “Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.” What we have here is not the love between friends, nor the love of a rich person toward the poor; it is a courting love, a love which leads to engagement and marriage. Because the Lord had such a love for His people, He “took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt” (Jer. 31:32). This is also the love in Jeremiah 2:2, a verse which speaks of the love of Israel’s betrothals. Mainly, the love revealed in the Bible is this love in courtship, engagement, and marriage.
As we pointed out in the foregoing message, in bringing His people out of Egypt and giving His law to them, God was courting them, wooing them, and seeking to win their affection. As strange as it may sound at first, God actually courts His people. Because He has courted us, we are in the church life today. Not only is our God the processed God, the Triune God who has passed through incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension in order to come into us as the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit; He is also the courting God, the God who comes to us and woos us, seeking to win our affection. This kind of love was displayed in Exodus 20 when God came to His people and gave His law to them.
When we come to the divine revelation in the Bible, we should not be occupied by anything that would blind us to the Lord’s light. Rather, we need to open our whole inner being to the Lord. Years ago, I did not see as clearly as I do today that in the Old Testament God came to His people in the way of a suitor courting a young lady. But recently in my reading of Exodus 20 I opened to the Lord in a fresh way. I did not care for what I knew about this chapter. I was open to what the Lord would say to me. I can testify that after this the light came. As early as 1932, I gave messages on this chapter. Those messages, however, emphasized the “night” aspect of the giving of the law. What the Lord has shown me recently concerns the “day” side, in particular the fact that the law given in Exodus 20 functions as an engagement paper, an engagement contract.