Seeing how the Entire Bible is a Divine Romance and Giving Ourselves to Love the Lord

“The entire Bible is a divine romance, a record of how God courts His chosen people and eventually marries them.” – this is what the Bible is all about.

Beginning from Genesis 2 where we see that God says, It is not good for man to be alone (and by this He referred to Himself, that it is not good for God to be alone), and ending with Revelation 21 and 22 where the processed and consummated Triune God gets married to and lives a marriage life for eternity with His transformed and glorified elect.

This week we will look at the Type of Eve as the Counterpart of Adam, and our prayer is really to have a fresh new seeing of Christ and the church, so that the Bride of Christ would be our goal! How we need to be renewed, rekindled, refreshed, and even intensified in our love for the Lord Jesus!

We need to be the “Lord Jesus, I love You!” persons. For this, we need to open to the Lord to create in us a desire, a hunger, and a love for the sanctifying, cleansing, washing, and bride-preparing word of God! As we get into the word of God with a heart open to the Lord to love Him, we are being beautified, perfected, charmed, drawn, and attracted by the Lord to become His Bride.

The Lord as our husband cares more for our beauty than for our function, and so He is daily working Himself into us through His word so that He would remove any wrinkles and spots, and He would beautify us to be His Bride!

Just Give Yourself to Love the Lord

How is your romance with the Lord? Do you have a secret history of falling in love with the Lord Jesus again and again? The Bible is a record of how God courts His people (Israel in the Old Testament and the believers in the New Testament) so that He would marry them as His Bride. We need to see the Lord Jesus in His wonderful Person, and then just follow after love.

We simply need to give ourselves to love the Lord – there’s no other way that is so prevailing, so safe, so rich, and so full of enjoyment. Just love the Lord, and do not care for anything or anyone else. Even tell the Lord, Lord, keep me in Your love. Lord, attract me with Yourself. Lord, keep me all the time in Your loving presence.

As long as we love the Lord from the deepest part of our being, we will be alright. Everything we need, the Lord is to us. We desire nothing else but to look to the Lord and have Him revealed to us.

Loving the Lord to the uttermost perfects us, equips us, and qualifies us to speak for the Lord with power and authority. But losing our first love for the Lord is the beginning of our backslide in our Christian life. We need to go to the Lord and deal with Him,

Lord, be merciful to me. I don’t need anything or anyone else. Lord, show me Yourself. Lord, draw me. Lord, show me Your love that I might be constrained by Your love. I just want to love You, Lord, and take You as my person. I want to take Your personality as my personality, Your desires as my desires, and Your everything as my everything!

Opening to the Lord in such prayers will cause our love to be burning for Him and to enjoy Him as all that He is. We need to go to the Lord and ask Him to draw us to Him! As the most wonderful Person in the universe, the Lord will draw us, captivate us, attract us, and charm us to be a crazy lover of Jesus.

He has an indescribable sweetness and aroma emanating from Him in His humanity, and He is an immense magnet drawing people to Himself. His disciples forsook everything and followed Him. When we are captivated by the Lord, nothing else matters – we just love Him! Give yourself to love the Lord!

Verses in the Bible Showing us a Record of the Divine Romance

There are many verses in the Bible which show us how God loves man and He courts him, drawing him to love God and be one with Him. Both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament we see how God wants to get into a love relationship with man by regenerating man and enabling man from within to love Him, be one with Him, and express Him.

Here are some of the verses showing us the divine romance:

• Gen. 2:21-24 – It is not good for God (and man) to be alone – God needs a wife! Just as Even owes her existence to Adam since she was built from the rib taken out of Adam, so we as the bride of Christ owe our life and existence to Christ since we are redeemed and regenerated with His life through His death and resurrection.
• Song of Songs 1:2-4 – The Lord Jesus is the real Solomon, and we are His lover. Our desire is for the Lord to kiss us and love us, and His desire is to court us, draw us, love us, and marry us. Our appreciation of the Lord’s love cannot match the Lord’s appreciation of the believers’ love. He loves us deeply and He can appreciate our love, and His heart is satisfied with our love. We simply kiss Him (inwardly, in our spirit) in our private and spiritual (He brings us into His chambers, into our spirit) relationship with the Lord.
• Isa. 54:5 – For your Maker is your Husband; Jehovah of hosts is His name. And the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; He is called the God of all the earth. God is not only our Creator but also our Husband, loving us and wooing us!
• Isa. 62:5 – For as a young man marries a virgin, Your sons will marry you; And with the joy of the bridegroom over the bride Your God will rejoice over you. God desires not only that we would worship Him and obey Him, but that we would love Him and marry Him!
• Jer. 2:2; 3:1, 14; 31:32, and Ezek. 16:8, 23:5 – God comes to us at the time of love, loves us, draws us, and makes a covenant of love with us, betrothing us to Himself for marriage. At the same time God is jealous over us, and many times we are unfaithful to Him.
• Hosea 2:7, 19 – God is our first husband, and many times when we choose “other lovers” we are not really satisfied; our desire is to return to God as our husband and be with Him!
• Matt. 9:15; John 3:29 – Christ is the Bridegroom, and His incarnation and living on earth was for Him to gain a bride. His living was aromatic and fragrant, and man was attracted to the Lord, following Him and listening to His words.
• 2 Cor. 11:2 – Paul considered that he betrothed the believers to the Lord through his ministry, and today we can testify that as we read the ministry of the age we are stirred up in our love for the Lord Jesus.
• Eph. 5:25-32 – Christ loves the church to the extent that He gave Himself up for her (to redeem her), and today He is cleansing and sanctifying her to present the church to Himself glorious! The husband and the wife today are a type of Christ and the church.
• Rev. 19:7; 21:2, 9-10 – Let us rejoice and exult, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready! The Bride is the New Jerusalem, the regenerated, transformed, and glorified people of God, and the Husband is the Spirit as the consummation of the processed Triune God.
• Rev. 22:17 – at the end of the Bible, God and man (the Spirit and the Bride) speak as one, calling anyone who is thirsty to come and drink. The divine romance consummates in a couple who live a marriage life for eternity!

Judicial Redemption, Organic Salvation, and Bride Presentation

It is not normal to marry someone that you do not love. In order for God and man to be married, there needs to be a mutual love between us and the Lord. At the time of our regeneration, God came into us as the divine life with the divine nature, and now we can love Him and fellowship with Him because of His life and nature in us.

When we love the Lord and exercise our spirit and turn our heart to Him, He loves us and manifests Himself to us, making His abode with us (John 14:21, 23). He loves us with an eternal love and He draws us with His loving kindness.

As we love the Lord and spend time with Him in His word, God infuses us with His divine element and makes us one with Him as His spouse, the same as He is in life, nature, and expression!

In Eph. 5:25-27 we see three things: Christ loving the church and giving Himself up for her (judicial redemption, see v. 25), Christ as the life-giving Spirit organically saves the church through dispositional sanctification (organic salvation, see v. 26), and Christ as the Bridegroom presents the church to Himself glorious (bride presentation, see v. 27).

God in Christ is not only our Creator – He is our Redeemer, Organic Savior, and Bride Presenter. Footnote 1 on Eph. 5:27 in the Recovery Version Bible really explains this,

In the past, Christ as the Redeemer gave Himself up for the church (Eph. 5:25) for redemption and the impartation of life (John 19:34); in the present, He as the life-giving Spirit is sanctifying the church through separation, saturation, transformation, growth, and building up; and in the future, He as the Bridegroom will present the church to Himself as His counterpart for His satisfaction. Therefore, Christ’s loving the church is to separate and sanctify her, and His separating and sanctifying the church are to present her to Himself.

How are we as the Bride of Christ making ourselves ready? It is by being in the Word of God every day. We need to love God’s word, pray over His word, and let His word wash us, cleanse us, purify us, remove any oldness and wrinkles, and wash away any impurity and spot! When we read God’s word with an open heart to the Lord, we will see our true condition, we will repent before the Lord, and the beauty of Christ gets infused into our being through His word!

Lord, speak to us, We want to hear Your voice. We love Your word. Wash us and cleanse us in Your Word. Lord, sanctify us and transform us that we may be Your loving and beautiful Bride. Thank You for Your redemption. Go on to organically save us through the washing of the water in the Word. Lord, keep us loving You, opening to You, and kissing You! Lord Jesus, we love You! We give ourselves to You to just love You. We care for nothing else. Rekindle our first love for You. Lord, how we love You!

References and Further Reading

• Inspiration: bro. Ed Marks’ sharing in the message and portions in, Life-study of Genesis (msg. 17), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on the Crystallization Study of Genesis (1), week / msg 8, The Type of Eve as the Counterpart of Adam.
• Further reading: How to be a Co-Worker and an Elder (by Witness Lee, see page 18).
• Similar sharing online:
  # The Divine Romance – God, the Bible, and the Church (via eachonehas.com).
  # The Divine Romance in the Bible (via achristinaoncampus).
  # The Divine Romance – a diagram (via lifeandbuilding.com).
  # The Divine Romance—Revealing the Deeper Significance of the Book of Romans (via holdingtotruth.com)
  # The Divine Romance of a Universal Couple (via newjerusalem12).
• Hymns on this topic:
  # Give yourself to love the Lord. / Do not care for anything else; / Just love Him! Do not care! / Give yourself to love the Lord!
  # Loving You, Lord’s all I’m living for; / Loving You, Lord, to the uttermost. / Lord, forgive me if I’ve left my first love, / That’s the bridal love to You.
  # Lord, we’ve been drawn off by many things; / Now we turn our heart back—how it sings! / We repent of loving other things— / Jesus, Lord, You’re our first love
  # Sometimes it seems that / I have no room in my heart for You. / But then You touch me / And soften me to turn to You. / Recover my heart, / Rekindle my love for You. / Fill me with love / Eternally, ever new. / Make me wholly Thine.