God’s desire is not only to save us from eternal perdition but to bring us to the throne; for us to be brought to the throne, we need to experience the humanity of Jesus with its virtues, and we need to reign in life. God’s goal is to bring us to the throne; His desire is to make us people of the throne.
God is not satisfied until we are on the throne; when we – sinners who were once ruined and corrupted by Satan – are brought to the throne, God receives the full glory. When we are brought to the throne, God’s kingdom can come in full.
When we are brought tot he throne, God’s enemy is subdued. Satan rebelled against God’s throne; a creature raised his throne against God, and now God wants another creature – the man created in His image and according to His likeness – to deal with this rebellious one.
In the universe there’s a war raging for worship and power; God is on the throne, and Jesus Christ, the man-God, has been set by God to rule over all things, but Satan constantly rebels and tries to overturn God’s authority.
Whether in big things – such as a president being elected – or in small things – such as our daily living with its daily activities – Satan wants man to live in the principle of rebellion, opposing the throne of God and His arrangement.
God would not deal with Satan directly: He won’t lower Himself to deal with one of His creatures; rather, He wants to gain man’s cooperation and work on man to bring man to the throne, and this corporate man will deal with Satan and subdue him.
The work of God today is for us to represent Him with His authority to cause Satan to sustain a fatal loss on earth; for us to do the work of God, we cannot spare ourselves. We need to know God’s authority and be intrinsically dealt with so that any rebellion in our being would be exposed and uprooted.
From the time of Satan’s rebellion until now, there has been a dispute in the universe regarding authority, and much of what happened in the world and of what is happening today is an expression of Satan’s resistance to God’s throne.
We as believers in Christ should desire to reign – to exercise authority for God – and to enjoy the blessing of reigning for God. May the Lord put such a desire in us all, that we may be one with Him to reign over Satan, sin, and death, and bring in the kingdom of God on earth.
The overcomers will be on the throne with Christ as His co-kings (Rev. 3:21); those who will be on the throne with Him in the millennium are those who are reigning in life today on the throne in the reality of the kingdom.
This should be normal – it should be normal for us to grow in the divine life unto maturity until we reign in life with Christ. Christ is on the throne, and we also need to be with Him on the throne; Christ has all the authority, and we as His overcomers also should share in this authority to rule over all the nations (see Matt. 28:18; Rev. 2:26-27).
Lord Jesus, put in us a desire to reign with You on the throne. May we have such an aspiration that we would be fully saved in Your life and dealt with in our inner being until we are qualified to exercise authority for God and to enjoy the blessing of reigning for God. Lord, put in us a willingness to let You work in us until we are on the throne.
Being Brought to the Throne by Experiencing the Humanity of Jesus with its Virtues
When we speak of the matter of being brought to the throne, most believers (and unbelievers alike) may think that we will reign over people, we will be given authority to rule and reign and do whatever we want to do – even as we see in today’s world how the rulers do what they want to do.
But it is not like that; for us to reign with God on the throne means that we ourselves are under the rule of God and we know His authority, and then this authority will flow through us to others.
Furthermore, in order for us to be brought to the throne to rule with the Lord, we need to experience the humanity of Jesus with all its virtues. We can clearly see what kind of humanity is not fit for God’s kingdom in portions such as 1 Cor. 6:9-10, Gal. 5:19-21, and Eph. 5:3-5; such things should not be practiced and not even mentioned among us, for they are the negative side of human virtues.
For us to rule with the Lord on the throne, we need to have the humanity of Jesus; we need to experience His humanity and express His human virtues.
How can we, fallen human beings, express the humanity of Jesus with its virtues? In ourselves – no matter how much we try – we can never do this, but praise the Lord, we have Jesus living in us as the proper, unique man; He is in our spirit, and such a One with His proper humanity is in us to be our humanity.
We need to have the humanity of Jesus with all its human virtues lived out of us to put Satan to shame. When Satan came into man to corrupt and ruin man by injecting himself into man, he ruined man’s spirit (by rendering it functionless), man’s soul (by making it into an independent self), and man’s body (by transmutting it into the flesh of sin).
Furthermore, Satan ruined and corrupted man’s virtues, and he is working today to continue to do the same.
We as believers in Christ need to have a daily walk conformed to the Lord’s humanity in our spirit, and in this way we put Satan to shame and defeat him.
When the Lord Jesus within us bothers us concerning something we wear, something we are about to say, a place we are about to go to, or something we are doing, we should simply go along with the humanity of Jesus.
We need to have a proper daily life in the humanity of Jesus, and we will have a proper church life; this church life will be God’s kingdom on the earth today – a real boast to God and a real shame to Satan. It is a shame to Satan when many men live out the humanity of Jesus and practice the church life in a proper way.
Especially among the young people, the Lord wants to have a kingdom to obtain a group of redeemed and regenerated people who live out the humanity of Jesus. When we live the humanity of Jesus, we are balanced in all things; we are under God’s heavenly ruling, and we will never be out of balance.
This is not outward adjustment but inward dealings and conversations with the Lord as He speaks to us, adjusts us, corrects us, and regulates us from within. As we experience the humanity of Jesus in a practical way with all its virtues, we are being brought to the throne.
Lord Jesus, we want to experience the humanity of Jesus with its virtues so that we may be brought to the throne. How much we need Your humanity! How much we need all the human virtues in order to put Satan to shame and bring glory to God! Oh Lord, may we take Your humanity and experience it in our daily living, so that we may never be out of balance but live a life under God’s heavenly ruling. May You gain a group of people who are under the heavenly rule living out the humanity of Jesus for God’s glory and Satan’s shame and defeat!
Eating Christ as the Meal Offering to become the Reproduction of Christ and Live the life of a God-man
How can we live out the humanity of Jesus? We can barely live out a good and proper humanity in this wicked and immoral world, where sin prevails, laws are twisted to man’s desire, and the people we look up to do not have a proper humanity.
The way for us to have the humanity of Jesus, experience this humanity, and live out His humanity is by eating Jesus as the meal offering.
Jesus Christ is the meal offering for God’s satisfaction and man’s supply; He lived a perfect human life, died, and was resurrected, and now He is the bread for us to eat and live because of.
In the Old Testament the meal offering was for Aaron and his sons to eat (Lev. 2:3-10; 6:14-18) and for God also to enjoy a part of it. Eating the meal offering is not hard work; eating Jesus Christ as the God-man is not hard work, and such an eating will result in Him being digested and assimilated into our being.
By constitution and in an intrinsic way we are wrong; we can’t live out the humanity of Jesus because inwardly we are a sinful and selfish constitution. Therefore, we need to eat the Lord and live because of Him, just as He ate the Father and lived because of the Father when He was on earth (John 6:57).
As we eat the Lord, He as the law of the Spirit of life will make us the same as He is inwardly, in so many ways; He will work His obedience and submission into us, and we will do the Father’s will. When we eat the Lord, we will know what authority is, we will live under God’s authority, and we will represent Him with His authority.
When we eat Christ as the meal offering, we will represent God with His authority toward the saints not by ruling over them but by serving them, ministering to them, shepherding them, and caring for them; we will be their servant (rather than trying to be their king).
When we eat the humanity of Jesus, we will represent God’s authority toward the enemy to subdue him and put him to shame.
We need to eat Jesus Christ as the meal offering every day, partaking of His humanity, until for us to live would be Christ (Phil. 1:21), and it would be no longer us who live but Christ living in us (Gal. 2:20).
The more we enjoy Christ as such a diet, the more we will be nourished, qualified, strengthened, and supported to serve God in a priestly way and to deal with His enemy. It is by eating Jesus as the meal offering that we can become His reproduction and we can live the life of a God-man.
Lord Jesus, we want to eat You as the meal offering to become Your reproduction and live the life of a God-man. Save us from trying to improve or better ourselves by our self-effort. May we focus on eating the Lord’s humanity in His word and allowing Him to be digested and assimilated into our being to become our inward constitution. Oh Lord, we want to eat You and live because of You, just as You lived because of the Father! Work Your humanity into us, and live out Your humanity through us for God’s glory and the enemy’s defeat!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by brother Ron Kangas for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1971, vol. 2, “Christ as the Reality,” chs. 4, 6, 8-9, 15-17, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-Study of Ezekiel (1), msg. 8 (week 8), The Man on the Throne.
- Hymns on this topic:
# Let us stand up in Jesus / In His full human life, / Human virtues prevailing / ’Gainst corruption so rife; / In this wickedness concerted, / In this age perverse, perverted, / The humanity of Jesus / Must the church now display (Hymns #1172)
# Let us eat Jesus every day, / Eating His flesh in such a way / That in the trials great or small / He as a Man will be our all. / Eat, eat more of Jesus! / Eat, eat more of Jesus! / Why should we undernourished be / When we have His humanity? (Hymns #1146)
# Satan’s one aim: to ruin man, / Man, who’s the center of God’s plan! / But man will rule the earth utterly, / Conquering every enemy. / Each time we turn and eat this man / We put an end to Satan’s plan. / Jesus through His humanity / Has conquered all! (Hymns #1173)
About aGodMan
We must realize that the meal offering is mainly for us. Only a handful as a memorial is for God; all the remainder, the major part, is for the priests. “What is left of the meal offering shall be Aaron’s and his sons’” (Lev. 2:3). This is the diet of the priests. The priests feed on Christ as the meal offering day by day. We are the priests, so we must eat Christ as the meal offering for our priestly diet.
The Lord Jesus said in John 6:57, “He who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me.” If we eat the meal offering, we will live because of this offering. We are what we eat. What we eat eventually becomes our being. If day by day we eat Christ as our meal offering, eventually we will become Christ. “To me, to live is Christ” (Phil. 1:21). It is this kind of life that is adequate to serve God in the priesthood.
The more we enjoy Christ as such a diet, the more we will be nourished, qualified, strengthened, and supported to serve God in a priestly way. This is why we need to experience such a Jesus daily. (CWWL, 1971, vol. 2, “Christ as the Reality,” pp. 142-143, 140-141, 34)
Amin. Aleluia !!!