KNOWING, EXPERIENCING, AND LIVING THE ALL-INCLUSIVE CHRIST FOR THE GENUINE CHURCH LIFE
Message Two
Enjoying Christ as the Reality of the Meal Offering to Have a Meal-offering Christian Life and a Meal-offering Church Life, Consummating in the New Jerusalem as a Great Meal Offering— the Ultimate Consummation of the Mingling of the Triune God with the Tripartite Man
Scripture Reading: Lev. 2:1-16; John 6:57, 63; 12:24; 1 Cor. 10:17; 12:12, 24-25
I. The meal offering typifies Christ in His God-man living—Lev. 2:1-16:
A. Fine flour, the main element of the meal offering, signifies Christ's humanity, which is fine, perfect, tender, balanced, and right in every way, with no excess and no deficiency; this signifies the beauty and excellence of Christ's human living and daily walk—v. 1; John 18:38; 19:4, 6b; Luke 2:40; 23:14; Isa. 53:3.
B. The oil of the meal offering signifies the Spirit of God as the divine element of Christ—Lev. 2:1; Luke 1:35; 3:22; 4:18; Heb. 1:9.
C. The mingling of fine flour with the oil in the meal offering signifies that Christ's humanity is mingled with the Holy Spirit and His human nature is mingled with God's divine nature, making Him a God-man, possessing the divine nature and the human nature distinctly, without a third nature being produced—Lev. 2:4-5; Matt. 1:18, 20.
D. The frankincense in the meal offering signifies the fragrance of Christ in His resurrection; that the frankincense was put on the fine flour signifies that Christ's humanity bears the aroma of His resurrection—Lev. 2:1-2; cf. Matt. 2:11; 11:20-30; Luke 10:21:
1. As portrayed in the four Gospels, Christ lived a life in His humanity mingled with His divinity and expressing resurrection out from His sufferings—cf. John 18:4-8; 19:26-27a.
2. Christ's Spirit-filled and resurrection-saturated living was a satisfying fragrance to God, giving God rest, peace, joy, enjoyment, and full satisfaction—Lev. 2:2; Luke 4:1; John 11:25; Matt. 3:17; 17:5.
E. Salt, with which the meal offering was seasoned, signifies the death, or the cross, of Christ; salt functions to season, kill germs, and preserve—Lev. 2:13:
1. The Lord Jesus always lived a life of being salted, a life under the cross—Mark 10:38; John 12:24; Luke 12:49-50.
2. Even before He was actually crucified, Christ daily lived a crucified life, denying Himself and His natural life and living the Father's life in resurrection— John 6:38; 7:6, 16-18; cf. Gal. 2:20.
3. The basic factor of God's covenant is the cross, the crucifixion of Christ, signified by salt; it is by the cross that God's covenant is preserved to be an eternal covenant—cf. Heb. 13:20.
F. That the meal offering was without leaven signifies that in Christ there is no sin or any negative thing—Lev. 2:4-5, 11; 2 Cor. 5:21; Heb. 4:15; 1 Pet. 2:22; Luke 23:14; cf. 1 Cor. 5:6-8.
G. That the meal offering was without honey signifies that in Christ there is no natural affection or natural goodness—Lev. 2:11; Matt. 10:34-39; 12:46-50; Mark 10:18.
II. The meal offering typifies our Christian life as a duplication of Christ's God-man living—Lev. 2:4; Psa. 92:10; 1 Pet. 2:21; Rom. 8:2-3, 11, 13:
A. We need to enjoy Christ as our meal offering day by day for our priestly diet so that He can live again on the earth through us in His divinely enriched humanity; if we eat Christ as the meal offering, we will become what we eat and live by what we eat—Lev. 2:3; John 6:57, 63; cf. Psa. 92:10; 1 Cor. 10:17; Phil. 1:19-21a.
B. By exercising our spirit to touch the Spirit consolidated in the Word, we eat the human life and living of Jesus, we are constituted with Jesus, and the human living of Jesus becomes our human living (Eph. 6:17-18; Jer. 15:16; Gal. 6:17) with the following characteristics of His divinely enriched humanity:
1. The humanity of Jesus fulfills all righteousness—Matt. 3:13-15.
2. The humanity of Jesus has no resting place—8:20.
3. The humanity of Jesus is lowly in heart—11:29.
4. The humanity of Jesus loves the weak ones—12:19-20.
5. The humanity of Jesus is flexible—17:27.
6. The humanity of Jesus serves others—Mark 10:45; see footnote 1 on 1:10.
7. The humanity of Jesus cherishes people—Luke 4:16-22; 7:34; 19:1-10.
8. The humanity of Jesus is orderly, not sloppy—Mark 6:39-40; John 6:12.
9. The humanity of Jesus is limited by time—7:6.
10. The humanity of Jesus is unique—7:46.
11. The humanity of Jesus knows when to weep—11:33, 35.
12. The humanity of Jesus is humble—13:4-5.
III. Christ's life and our individual Christian life issue in a totality—the church life as a corporate meal offering—Lev. 2:1-2, 4-5; 1 Cor. 10:17; 12:12, 24-25:
A. Such a life is a life of humanity mingled with the Holy Spirit and that has the Holy Spirit poured upon it, a life with salt and frankincense, but with no leaven or honey; both forms of the meal offering—the individual Christ and the corporate Christ, the church life—are food for God's satisfaction and our nourishment.
B. The meal offering is a type of blending to bring us into the reality of the Body of Christ for the fulfillment of God's economy:
1. "In 1 Corinthians 10:17 Paul says, 'Seeing that there is one bread, we who are many are one Body; for we all partake of the one bread.' Paul's thought of the church being one bread was…taken from the Old Testament. The meal offering in Leviticus 2:4 consisted of cakes made of fine flour mingled with oil. Every part of the fine flour was mixed, or mingled, with the oil. That is blending" (The Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1994–1997, vol. 1, "The Practical Points concerning Blending," p. 112).
2. The reality of the Body of Christ realized through our being blended together, as typified by the meal offering, is the corporate living by the perfected God-men, who are genuine men but are not living by their life but by the life of the processed God, whose attributes have been expressed through their human virtues; to be perfected is to be matured by continually exercising our spirit to reject the self and live by another life, which is Christ as the life of God—Gal. 2:20; Phil. 3:10; 1:19-21a.
3. God has blended the Body together (1 Cor. 12:24); the Greek word for blended implies the losing of distinctions; it also means "harmonized," "adjusted," "mingled," and "tempered."
4. In order to be blended in the Body life, the meal-offering church life, we have to go through the cross and do everything by the Spirit, dispensing Christ to one another for the building up of the Body of Christ.
5. All these points mean that we should fellowship; fellowship blends us; that is, it tempers, adjusts, harmonizes, and mingles us, causing us to lose our distinctions and saving us from leaving the impress of our personality upon the church's life and work, so that Christ can truly be all and in all—Col. 3:10-11.
6. "We should not do anything without fellowshipping with the other saints who are coordinating with us. Fellowship requires us to stop when we are about to do something. In our coordination in the church life and in the Lord's work, we all have to learn not to do anything without fellowship…Blending means that we should always stop to fellowship with others" (The Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1994–1997, vol. 4, "The Divine and Mystical Realm," p. 160).
C. The meal-offering church life is seen in 1 Corinthians:
1. Christ is the man given to us by God—1:2, 9, 30.
2. Paul's charge to the Corinthians—"be a man" (16:13, lit.)—means that we should have the high, uplifted humanity of Jesus (9:26-27; 13:4-7) with the highest virtues, such as extraordinary love, boundless forbearance, unparalleled faithfulness, absolute humility, utmost purity, supreme holiness and righteousness, and brightness and uprightness.
3. If we love the Lord and love His appearing, looking forward to His coming (Gk. parousia, meaning "presence"), we will be kept in the realm of having Christ as our humanity; the humanity of those who serve the Lord is safeguarded by their praying in the Holy Spirit to keep themselves in the love of God in order to love the Lord to the uttermost and by their daily offering themselves willingly to the Lord in the splendor, the beauty, of their consecration to be conceived as the dew to water Christ—Jude 19-21; 2 Tim. 4:8; Matt. 24:3, 37, 39; 2 Cor. 5:14-15; 1 Cor. 2:9-10; Psa. 110:3.
4. The church life is a mingling living of humanity oiled by and with the Spirit and joined to the Spirit—1 Cor. 2:4, 12; 3:16; 6:17.
5. The grace of God that we are enjoying today is the resurrected Christ as the life-giving Spirit—15:10, 45b:
a. We must die with Christ to self daily so that we may live with Christ to God daily—vv. 31, 36; John 12:24-26.
b. We must demonstrate the reality of resurrection by being one with God and having God with us in the status in which we were called—1 Cor. 7:24, 21-22a, 10-13.
c. We must labor not by our natural life and natural ability but by the Lord as our resurrection life and power—15:10, 58.
6. We must enjoy the crucified Christ as the solution to all the problems in the church—1:9, 18, 22-23a; cf. Mark 15:31-32a.
7. We must enjoy Christ as our unleavened banquet—the life supply of sincerity and truth—who is absolutely pure, without mixture, and full of reality—1 Cor. 5:6b-8.
8. In the church life, the natural life must be killed by the salt, by the cross of Christ—15:10; 12:31; 13:8a; 2 Cor. 5:16.
9. God desires that every local church be a meal offering to satisfy Him and fully supply the saints day by day; this means that we will eat our church life, for the church life will be our daily supply.
IV. As the mingling of the Triune God with the tripartite man, the New Jerusalem will be a great meal offering, the ultimate consummation of the mingling of the Triune God with the tripartite man—Lev. 2:4; 2 Cor. 13:14; 1 Thes. 5:23:
A. The number twelve, which represents the New Jerusalem, indicates that the New Jerusalem is the mingling of the Triune God (three) with His creature man (four)—Rev. 21:12, 14, 21; 22:2.
B. The New Jerusalem is the mingling of the processed and consummated Triune God with the processed and consummated tripartite church—v. 17a.
C. Eventually, the triune, eternal God becomes the New Jerusalem united, mingled, and incorporated with all of us—21:3, 22.