In this series of messages, I will be speaking concerning the Christian life from another angle, from the angle of God’s history. The living, purposeful, active, and acting God surely needs a history, a biography. Recently, we published a biography of Brother Watchman Nee, Watchman Nee—a Seer of the Divine Revelation in the Present Age. Should there not also be a book concerning the biography of God? We need to realize that there is such a book. This book took approximately fifteen hundred years to complete through more than forty writers. The first writer was Moses, and the last writer was John. This book is the Bible. The Bible is the biography of God, the history of God. Actually, we may say the Bible is the autobiography of God, because it is a book about God written by God Himself through a number of writers moved by the Holy Spirit. Through His servants, God wrote His autobiography. The entire Bible is a history of the Triune God.
We have to know God’s history because His history has everything to do with us. This is why this series of messages is entitled The History of God in His Union with Man. This means that God’s history has become our history because He is in union with us. We can illustrate this with the union between a husband and wife. In my book about Brother Nee, there is a photograph of him with his wife. A history of Brother Nee could not be written without speaking about his wife. In like manner, the Bible is God’s history in union with us. He is our Husband, and we as His chosen and redeemed people are His wife.
The Christian life is a life in union with God. The New Testament says that Christ as the embodiment of God is the Husband and that the church is the wife (Eph. 5:25-32; 2 Cor. 11:2). The New Testament also says that Christ will have a wedding. Revelation 19 speaks of the marriage of Christ and His marriage dinner (vv. 7-9). Revelation 21 and 22 show us the marriage life in eternity between God embodied in Christ and His chosen, redeemed people. The New Testament is a book concerning the Triune God with His wife. Thus, when we touch God’s history, we touch our Christian life. The Christian life is a marriage life. We are the wife, and Christ is our Husband. The Christian life is the life of a wife who is married to the Triune God.
Our God has a history, and the most wonderful part of His history is His history in His union with man. Even in the Old Testament, God referred to Himself as the Husband and to His people as His wife (Isa. 54:5; 62:5; Jer. 2:2; 3:1, 14; 31:32; Ezek. 16:8; 23:5; Hosea 2:7, 19). The marriage life God desired with His people in the Old Testament is realized in the New Testament. In this series of messages, we want to teach and interpret the Bible with the view of the history of God in His union with man.
To teach the Bible is to teach people about God’s history. The Bible is not merely a book of stories but a living history of a living God. The Bible is written in a particular sequence from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22 to show us the biography of this wonderful living person. We need to know the Bible according to the view of God’s history.