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God’s history in man began with the incarnation and continued with His processes of human living, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension; Hosea 11:4 says that these are the cords of a man, the bands of love:
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The divine history, God’s move in man, is with the processed Christ, the God-man, as the prototype, unto the new man to consummate in the New Jerusalem, the great God-man, the ultimate fulfillment of God’s eternal economy.
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Through Christ’s incarnation and human living, He brought the infinite God into the finite man, He united and mingled the Triune God with the tripartite man, and He expressed in His humanity the bountiful God in His rich attributes through His aromatic virtues.
Morning Nourishment
Hosea 11:4 I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love…Matt. 4:19-20 And He said to them, Come after Me, and I will make you fishers of men. And immediately leaving the nets, they followed Him.
The Bible may be considered the history of God…. God’s history is of two portions—the history of God with man, found in the Old Testament, and the history of God in man, found in the New Testament. In the Old Testament God’s history was a history with man. In the New Testament God’s history is a history in man, for this history involves God’s being one with man. Therefore, the history of God in the New Testament is a divine history in humanity. (Life-study of Joel, pp. 37-38)
Today’s Reading
[In Hosea 11:4] the phrase with cords of a man, with bands of love indicates that God loves us with His divine love not on the level of divinity but on the level of humanity…. The cords through which God draws us include Christ’s incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension. It is by all these steps of Christ in His humanity that God’s love in His salvation reaches us (Rom. 5:8; 1 John 4:9-10). (Hosea 11:4, footnote 1)In His full ministry in the first stage, the stage of His incarnation, Christ brought the infinite God into the finite man…. This is our new language today. God is infinite, and we human beings are finite.
In His full ministry in the first stage of His incarnation, Christ also united and mingled the Triune God with the tripartite man. The Triune God is mysterious, and the tripartite man is difficult to understand. If we simply say that Christ united and mingled God with man, this is easy. However, according to the new language of the new culture in the divine and mystical realm, we need to say that Christ united and mingled the Triune God with the tripartite man. Concerning the Triune God, the Father is the source, the Son is the expression, and the Spirit is the entering in. Concerning the tripartite man, the spirit is the innermost part, the soul is in the middle, and the body is on the outside.
In His full ministry in the first stage of His incarnation, Christ also expressed in His humanity the bountiful God in His rich attributes through His aromatic virtues. No one can deny that the human virtues of Christ were aromatic; even when non-Christians read the four Gospels, they sense that the Jesus recorded in these books was a sweet and fragrant One, whose virtues were aromatic. This is because He expressed in His humanity the bountiful God in His rich attributes.
Our attributes are the characteristics of what we are…. Our God has His attributes, and His attributes are rich because He is great and bountiful. He is love, light, holiness, and righteousness. These rich attributes were expressed by the Lord Jesus in His humanity to become the aromatic virtues in His humanity.
Furthermore, Christ in His humanity expressed God through His aromatic virtues by which He attracted and captivated people…. [In Matthew 4:18-22] the disciples forsook everything to follow Him. I truly believe that at that time the Lord Jesus must have displayed an aromatic power in His countenance and His voice that could really attract and captivate people.
Christ expressed His aromatic virtues by which He attracted and captivated people, not by living His human life in the flesh but by living His divine life in resurrection. He was in the flesh, but He did not live by His human life in His flesh; rather, He lived by His divine life in His resurrection. Today, as God-men…we can get out of the realm of the flesh and enter into resurrection to live by the divine life in resurrection, that is, in the divine and mystical realm. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 5, “How to Be a Co-worker and an Elder and How to Fulfill Their Obligations, ” pp. 223-227)
Further Reading: Life-study of Joel, msg. 7