II. THE PROCESSES THAT THE TRIUNE GOD
HAS GONE THROUGH
A. Incarnation
1. To Become Flesh
I worship God for His dear incarnation (John 1:14), which is so sweet and marvelous. God became flesh. Flesh is a negative term, not a positive one. God became a man who had become flesh. Genesis 6:3 says that God had no way to go on with man because man had become flesh. This forced God to destroy man by a great flood. God became a man, not before but after the fall. He became flesh, putting on human nature by partaking of human blood and human flesh to be a real man through human birth by a virgin (Isa. 7:14).
2. To Bring God into Man
The incarnation was to bring God into man, mingling God and man as one entity.
3. To Court Man according to His Love
Christ was a "God-husband" courting a "man-female." He came as God, the universal male, to court man, the universal female. The term dating is too low. Courting is high. God came to be a man in order to be a high-standard Husband. The end of the Bible says that the New Jerusalem is the wife of the Lamb (Rev. 21:2, 9). Revelation 19 speaks of the wedding day of the Lamb for His marriage to the overcomers (vv. 7-9). John 3 says that Christ, as the One who marries the bride, is the Bridegroom. His regenerated ones are His bride to be His increase (vv. 29-30). This is what I call the biblical romance. In the Bible there is a universal romance, a romance concerning God courting man. John 3:16 reveals that God fell in love with the world. The world here means the worldly people. God fell in love with mankind. This love was the love which He had from eternity toward man. In eternity past God had a love toward man, so He became a man to court and to marry man.
He courted man by humbling Himself to lay aside His divine form and position to become in fashion as a man (Phil. 2:6-8), so that He could have man engaged to Him in the church age (2 Cor. 11:2) and married to Him to be His wife at the beginning of the kingdom age (Rev. 19:7-9). The book of Song of Songs reveals this divine romance. Solomon courted a country girl by laying aside the things of his kingship. If Solomon had gone to her as a king with a crown to court her, that would have frightened her, but he changed his form to that of a country man. In the same way, the Triune God laid aside His divine form in incarnation to become in fashion as a man in order to court man. This was so that He could have man engaged to Him.
The wedding has not yet come, so we are still in the time of engagement. My burden is to improve and strengthen our engagement with Christ. Paul said that he betrothed the believers as a virgin to Christ (2 Cor. 11:2). Betrothed means engaged. Eventually, the overcomers will have a wedding day with Christ of a thousand years. Then the marriage life with Christ for eternity in the new heaven and new earth will include all of God’s chosen and redeemed people. In Revelation 19 the bride is revealed on the wedding day, and in Revelation 21 this bride becomes the wife of Christ for eternity.
(Crystallization-Study of the Gospel of John, Chapter 4, by Witness Lee)
