Crystallization-Study of Leviticus (1)
Message Five
Eating Christ as the Meal Offering to Become the Reproduction of Christ for the Fulfillment of God’s Purpose
Scripture Reading: Gen. 1:26-27; Lev. 2:1-16; Luke 1:31-32, 35; 2:11
I. The meal offering typifies Christ in His humanity as food for God and especially for those who have fellowship with God and serve Him—Lev. 2:1.
II. We need to eat Christ as our meal offering so that He can live again on the earth through us in His divinely enriched humanity—v. 3; John 6:57, 63:
A. By eating Christ as our meal offering, we become the reproduction, duplication, and enlargement of Christ as the meal offering—an offering composed of humanity oiled with divinity in resurrection through Christ’s death and without leaven or honey—Lev. 2:1-16.
B. By eating Christ as our meal offering, we can live and magnify Him, the wonderful, excellent, and mysterious God-man who lived in the Gospels—Luke 1:35; 3:22; 4:1, 18a; 23:14.
III. The Gospel of Luke unveils the God-man living of the Lord Jesus, the Man-Savior as typified by the meal offering—Lev. 2:1-16:
A. In the Gospel of Luke we see the kind of man that God intended to have in Genesis 1 and 2—Luke 8:39; Gen. 1:26-27; 2:7, 9:
1. God’s purpose is to have a corporate God-man in order to express Him and represent Him—1:26-27; Luke 1:68-69, 78-79.
2. The incarnation of Christ is closely related to God’s purpose in His creation of man—Rev. 4:11; Eph. 1:9; 3:11; Gen. 1:26-27; John 1:14; Luke 1:35.
3. The Lord Jesus, the God-man, is a composition of the divine essence with all the divine attributes and the human essence with all the human virtues—vv. 35, 75; 2:40, 52.
4. The conception of the Savior was God’s incarnation (the mingling of God and man as typified by the meal offering), constituted not only by the divine power but also of the divine essence added to the human essence, thus producing the God-man of two natures—divinity and humanity—Lev. 2:4-5; John 1:14; Matt. 1:18, 20; Luke 1:35:
a. The Man-Savior is a genuine man with the real human nature and the perfect human virtues for the qualification to be man’s Savior—1 Tim. 2:5; Heb. 2:14; cf. John 19:5.
b. He is also the complete God with the true divine nature and the excellent divine attributes to empower and ensure His ability to save man—Col. 2:9; 1 John 1:7; Acts 20:28.
c. When He was on earth, the Man-Savior lived a life that was the mingling of the divine attributes and the human virtues; this is the highest standard of morality—Luke 2:40, 52.
d. Christ expressed in His humanity the bountiful God in His rich attributes through 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—Matt. 4:18-22; 19:13-15; Mark 16:7; Luke 8:1-3.
e. The divine nature with its attributes was expressed in the Lord’s human nature with its virtues; thus, the living of the Lord Jesus was humanly divine and divinely human—1:26-35; 2:7-16, 34-35, 40, 52.
B. The Gospel of Luke unveils the ministry of the Man-Savior in His human virtues with His divine attributes—7:1-17, 36-50; 10:25-37; 15:11-32; 23:42-43.
C. As revealed in the Gospel of Luke, the Lord Jesus had the highest standard of morality—1:31-32, 35, 68-69, 78-79:
1. The highest standard of morality is the standard of life required by God—a life in which the divine attributes are expressed in the human virtues—Matt. 5:48.
2. The highest standard of morality is the living of the One—the Lord Jesus Christ as the Man-Savior—whose life was a composition of God with the divine attributes and man with the human virtues—Luke 1:35.
3. A living where the human life is filled with the divine life and where the human virtues are strengthened and enriched by the divine attributes is what we call the highest standard of morality—6:35; 7:36-50.
4. God is expressed in the living that is according to the highest standard of morality—5:12-16.
IV. By partaking of Christ as the meal offering, we become the reproduction of Christ—the church as a corporate meal offering—Lev. 2:1-4; 1 Cor. 12:12; 10:17:
A. Romans 8 reveals that, as believers in Christ, we should be a duplication of Christ as the meal offering; we should be a copy, a reproduction, of Christ and thus be the same as He is—vv. 3, 2, 13, 11.
B. If we eat Christ as the meal offering, we will be constituted with Christ and thereby become the enlargement of Christ as the meal offering—the church as the corporate Christ, the corporate meal offering—Lev. 2:3; 1 Cor. 12:12; 10:17.
C. The meal offering, which is our daily supply, is not merely Christ but Christ with the church life—1:30, 2, 9:
1. Our hunger is satisfied not only by Christ but also by the church life; therefore, we should feed not only on Christ but also on the church life.
2. We eat the meal offering not only in the first form as flour—the individual Christ; we also eat the meal offering in the second form as a cake—the corporate Christ, the church—John 6:57b; 1 Cor. 12:12; 1:2.
D. We need to be blended together into one Body by living the meal-offering church life—12:24:
1. The flour meal offering signifies both the individual Christ and the individual Christian; the cake meal offering signifies the corporate Christ, Christ with His Body, the church—Lev. 2:4; 1 Cor. 12:12; 10:17.
2. The meal offering is a type of the blending for the fulfillment of God’s economy—Lev. 2:4; 1 Cor. 10:17; 12:24; John 12:24:
a. In order to be blended in the Body life, the meal-offering church life, we have to go through the cross and be by the Spirit, dispensing Christ to others for the sake of the Body of Christ.
b. 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 be all and in all—cf. Col. 3:10-11.
V. By partaking of Christ as the meal offering, we may possess the humanity of Jesus for the Lord’s recovery, for the spiritual warfare, and for the kingdom of God—2 Tim. 2:19—3:14; 2 Cor. 10:1-5; Rev. 1:9; Rom. 14:17:
A. We need the humanity of Jesus for the Lord’s recovery—2 Tim. 2:19—3:14:
1. Because of the degradation of the church and the corruption of society, we are in a situation that requires the Lord’s humanity for His recovery:
a. In order to have the Lord’s recovery in such a degraded time, we need a proper humanity.
b. In order to stand up in this degraded age, what we need is not mainly the divine power but the humanity of Jesus—2:24-25.
c. The Lord is doing a recovery work in which He needs a people who take Him as their humanity—3:10-12.
2. In the midst of the degradation of the church and the corruption of society, we are here for the Lord’s recovery, and for this we need the humanity of Jesus to fulfill God’s purpose—1:9.
B. We need the humanity of Jesus for the spiritual warfare—2 Cor. 10:1-5:
1. The spiritual warfare between the enemy and the saints is mainly dependent upon the humanity of Jesus—Gen. 3:15; 1 Cor. 15:47; Heb. 2:14.
2. For the church to fight the spiritual warfare, we all need the proper humanity—Eph. 5:17—6:13.
3. To fight the battle against the enemy, we must exercise the humanity of Jesus—2 Cor. 10:1.
4. In ourselves we do not have the proper humanity, but we have Christ within us, and His humanity is the proper humanity for the spiritual warfare—Col. 1:27; 1 John 4:4.
C. We need the humanity of Jesus for the kingdom of God—Rev. 1:9; Rom. 14:17:
1. For God to have a kingdom on the earth, there is the need for His redeemed and regenerated people to possess the humanity of Jesus and to have the proper human virtues—1 Cor. 6:9-10; Gal. 5:19-21; Eph. 5:3-5.
2. When we have the humanity of Jesus, we will not only be in the kingdom of God—we will be the kingdom of God—Rom. 14:17.
3. The overcomers become qualified to reign with Christ by having the humanity of Jesus worked into them—Rev. 20:4, 6.