«　WEEK 6　DAY 3　»

　　Hosea 11:4 I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love…

　　Rom. 8:37-39 …In all these things we more than conquer through Him who loved us….Neither death nor life…nor things present nor things to come nor powers nor height nor depth nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

　　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. God’s love is divine, but it reaches us in the cords of a man, that is, through Christ’s 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). Apart from Christ, God’s everlasting love, His unchanging, subduing love, could not be prevailing in relation to us. God’s unchanging love is prevailing because it is a love in Christ, with Christ, by Christ, and for Christ. (Hosea 11:4, footnote 1)

　　Because of God’s unchanging love for us and the fact that Christ has accomplished everything on our behalf, neither tribulation nor persecution can suppress or defeat us; rather, in all these things we more than overcome and conquer through Him who loved us. (Rom. 8:37, footnote 1)

　　The love of God is the source of His eternal salvation. This love is in Christ and has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:5). Nothing can separate us from this love of God (8:38-39). In God’s salvation this love to us has become the love of Christ (v. 35), which does many marvelous things for us through the grace of Christ until God’s complete salvation is accomplished in us. These marvelous things provoke God’s enemy to attack us with all kinds of sufferings and calamities (vv. 35-36). However, because of our response to the love of God in Christ, these attacks have become benefits to us (v. 28). Hence, we more than conquer in all our afflictions and calamities (v. 37).

　　By the end of chapter 8 Romans has covered the first half of God’s salvation in Christ. This salvation has saved us to the extent that, on the one hand, we are in God’s acceptance enjoying the source of this salvation, which is God’s love in Christ, from which we cannot be separated by any person, matter, or thing; and, on the other hand, we are in God’s life being conformed by the Lord Spirit to reach the ultimate goal of this salvation, that is, to enter into the incomparable divine glory and be glorified together with God (vv. 18, 30). (Rom. 8:39, footnote 1)

　　In His all-transcending ascension He became the Head of all things to be the Head of the Body of Christ (Eph. 1:22-23; Col. 1:18). He was made the Head of all things that He might be the Head of the Body. He also became the Lord and Christ (Acts 2:36), the Leader (of all the kings) and Savior (5:31), our High Priest in God’s New Testament economy (Heb. 4:14; 7:26; 9:11), the Mediator of the new covenant (v. 15), the surety of the better covenant (7:22), the Paraclete (Advocate, Comforter) of the New Testament believers (1 John 2:1; John 14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7), the New Testament believers’ Intercessor at the right hand of God and within them as well (Rom. 8:34, 26), and the heavenly Minister (Heb. 8:2). In eternity past He was not all these items. He became all these items in His all-transcending ascension.

　　The transformations of the eternal and Triune God in His becoming a man are for the accomplishment of God’s eternal economy. Such a vision should control, direct, and be our goal for our whole life until we see Him. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 1, “Crystallization-study of the Epistle to the Romans,” pp. 380-381)

　　Further Reading: CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 1, “Crystallization-study of the Epistle to the Romans,” msg. 17