The humanity of Christ bears the aroma of His resurrection, for He lived a crucified life to express God.
Christ’s Spirit-filled and resurrection-saturated living was a satisfying fragrance to God, and Christ always lived a life under the cross, being “seasoned with salt” for man and God to enjoy and be supplied.
May we all learn to exercise our spirit in all kinds of situations to enjoy the Lord and partake of Him as the meal offering so that we may live because of Him.
May we never graduate from exercising our spirit.
May we never say that we no longer have to exercise our spirit; that day is a terrible day, a terrible graduation from exercising our spirit. We have a spirit of wisdom and revelation (Eph. 1:17).
The dwelling place of God is in spirit (Eph. 2:22). The revelation of the mystery of the Body of Christ was revealed to the holy apostles and prophets in spirit (Eph. 3:5).
As the Father strengthens us into our inner man, Christ can make His home in our heart through faith so that we may apprehend with all the saints what the universally vast dimensions of Christ are (Eph. 3:17).
Also, we are being renewed in the spirit of our mind (Eph. 4:23).
As the Spirit spreads from our spirit into our mind, emotion, and will, it will dominate, control, rule, and govern our mind to saturate and occupy our mind. Today we are in this process.
We need to be filled in spirit (Eph. 5:18), and we need to pray at every time in spirit (Eph. 6:18).
In our spirit we enjoy the reality of all that God is, all that Christ has done and has accomplished, and all that the Spirit is applying to us from the Father and the Son.
Everything is in our spirit. We want to remain in our spirit, exercise our spirit to receive a new revelation of Christ and the mystery of Christ, and be filled in spirit.
Especially as we come to the matter of the meal offering, which can be seen from the Old Testament through the New Testament and consummating in the New Jerusalem, we need to look at the ingredients of this offering with God’s economy in view.
And we need to offer the Lord short and living prayers so that He would work in us according to His word, for us to become the reproduction of Christ as the meal offering.
First, it is Christ who is the reality of the meal offering; then, we are becoming the reproduction of Christ as the means offering as we enjoy Him, partake of Him, are constituted with Him, and become Him.
We are being grounded to be fine flour, we are baked with oil to be oiled with the Holy Spirit, and we have the frankincense, the aroma of the resurrected Christ, and we have the salt, the cross of Christ applied to our being.
Amen, may we offer these to the Lord in prayer for all these matters to become our reality today!
Christ’s Humanity bears the Aroma of His Resurrection
The frankincense in the meal offering signifies the fragrance of Christ in His resurrection (Lev. 2:1-2; cf. Matt. 2:11; 11:20-30; Luke 10:21).
The fact that the frankincense was put on the fine flour signifies that Christ’s humanity bears the aroma of His resurrection.
Paul said he was a captive of Christ (2 Cor. 2), bearing the fragrance of Christ and being a fragrance of Christ to God (v. 15).
We are becoming a reproduction of Christ, a duplication of Christ as the meal offering.
The fragrance is something invisible; how can we describe fragrance? You have to use your olfactory sense o sense fragrance.
Matt. 11:20-30 speaks of some of the cities that rejected the Lord to the point that He said that, if the works of power made in them were done in Sodom, it would have remained until today.
These cities rejected the Lord; not receiving the Lord’s word is a very serious thing. But the Lord brought this to the Father when it says, Jesus answered and said, I extol You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth.
What kind of humanity is this? He was not just not upset that these cities rejected Him but even more, He extolled the Father, for He has hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to the infants.
We all need to be such ones, those who are divine and mystical living in a different realm, the realm of God Himself. In everything we need to bring to the Lord all things.
We need to be poor in spirit so that we receive new thoughts from the Lord all the time.
As portrayed in the four Gospels, Christ lived a life in His humanity mingled with His divinity and expressing resurrection out from His sufferings (John 18:4-8; 19:26-27).
Though the Lord was about to be arrested in the garden of Getsemani, He cared for His followers and spared them from arrest.
And whatever He did, He lived God, expressing resurrection out of His sufferings.
Even while on the cross, He cared for His mother by asking John to care for her as his mother.
What kind of humanity is this? His humanity bears the aroma of His resurrection 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).
May we pray that the Lord would grant us to have a Spirit-filled living, a resurrection-saturated living so that our living would be a satisfying fragrance to God.
In the Gospels, we see that everything that the Lord did was in the Spirit and by the Spirit.
In Luke 4 we see that the Lord was full of the Holy Spirit and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.
When He came out of the waters of baptism in Matt. 3:17, the Father confirmed, This is My Son, the Beloved, in whom I have found My delight.
The Lord’s Spirit-filled and resurrection-saturated living gave the Father rest, peace, joy, enjoyment, and full satisfaction.
When in Matt. 17 the Lord went on the Mount of Transfiguration and was transfigured before His three disciples, the Father said, This is My Son, the Beloved; hear Him.
And when they looked up, they saw Jesus only. The Lord Jesus is the real Moses and Elijah, and in Him the Father delights.
He is the reality of all the positive things, and He is the reality of the frankincense for the Father’s satisfaction.
We can enjoy Him as such a One and we ourselves can become His duplication to be for God’s satisfaction and for man’s satisfaction. Just as His humanity bore the aroma of His resurrection, so we can partake of Him and bear the same aroma today!
Lord Jesus, we love You! We appreciate You as the One who is mingled with God and saturated with the Spirit to satisfy God and man. We praise You for Your Spirit-filled and resurrection-saturated living, which was a satisfying fragrance to God. You give God rest, peace, joy, enjoyment, and full satisfaction. We want to enjoy and eat You as the One who satisfies God. May we have a Spirit-filled living, a resurrection-saturated living, for the Father to be satisfied and filled with rest. Amen, Lord, may our humanity today bear the aroma of His resurrection! Lord, we pay attention to You and we want to look at nothing but You. You are our only focus. We want to eat You, enjoy You, and partake of You, looking at Jesus only and taking Him as our everything. Make us Your reproduction today so that the Father may be satisfied and man may be at rest.
Enjoying the Lord Jesus who Lived a Life under the Cross to live a Crucified Life
The meal offering was seasoned with salt; salt signifies the death, the cross of Christ (Lev. 2:13). Salt functions to season, kill germs, and preserve.
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).
He came to cast fire on the earth, and He wished it were already kindled, and He came to have a baptism to be baptized with, and He was pressed until it is accomplished.
The fire that He wanted to cast is the fire of the divine life, the fire that will burn all over the world. Before the Lord Jesus was actually crucified, Christ already lived a crucified life.
He denied Himself and His natural life, and He lived the Father’s life in resurrection (John 6:38; 7:6, 16-18; cf. Gal. 2:20).
He came not to do His own will but the will of the Father. He denied Himself constantly and did what the Father wanted Him to do.
Others could go wherever they wanted and whenever they wanted, but He could not; He was on the Father’s schedule, not on His own schedule.
His teaching was not His own; He taught as He heard from the Father.
We cannot teach our own things. We cannot teach our own teaching; we have to teach the teaching of God’s economy.
When the Lord spoke, He did not seek His own glory but sought the glory of Him who sent Him. Because of this, he was true, and unrighteousness was not found in Him.
By the Lord’s mercy, we need to seek God’s glory and do His will, not do our own thing or teach our own teachings.
We do not want to express ourselves; like the Lord Jesus, we need to live a life under the cross, that is, live a crucifix life.
And we don’t preach ourselves but Christ Himself, and this One crucified.
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 (Heb. 13:20).
Christ is our Passover, and He has been sacrificed for us; let us therefore keep the feast, not with the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Leaven signifies something that is evil.
We need to eat Christ as the unleavened bread, even the feast of the unleavened bread, for the entire course of our Christian life and church life.
Day by day we need to eat the Lord as the unleavened bread, and our entire Christian life and church life should be a life of feasting on the Lord as the feast of the unleavened bread.
The fact 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).
On one hand, there is no natural affection or natural life in the Lord, for He is without any honey.
On the other hand, there is nothing evil in Him, for He is the unleavened bread.
The only way for us to eliminate sin is to daily eat Christ as the crucified, resurrected, and sinless life.
If we eat Him as such a One, if He becomes our diet, we will live because of Him. He’s absolutely pure, without mixture, and full of reality.
The fact 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).
One time someone came and said to Him, Good Teacher…and the Lord said, Why do you call Me good? Only God is good.
On the one hand, He is God, so He is good; on the other hand, only God is good. He took Jehovah as His lord (Psa. 16:2), and there was no good that He had beyond Him.
As a man, Christ took God as His Lord. We shouldn’t take this for granted. When we call, O Lord Jesus, we enthrone Him as our Lord.
We need to take the Lord as our God and have Him as our unique blessing, pleasure, and enjoyment; nothing and no one else is our portion. Amen!
The meal offering includes four elements and specifically excludes two elements. Knowing these elements will cause us to know Christ and enjoy Him in a practical and detailed way.
For example, even as it happened in the Lord’s case, our humanity can bear the aroma of His resurrection. Just as in Him there was no leaven or honey, so it should be with us today.
There was no honey or leaven in the meal offering.
Nothing of the natural life can be pleasing to God or satisfying to man.
Honey signifies the natural life in its good aspects, and leaven signifies the natural life in its evil aspects.
After a period of time, honey can ferment, and this fermentation issues in leaven.
Whether we are good by nature or evil, the result will be the same eventually.
If in married life, the love is like honey, it will eventually ferment and will issue in leaven.
The life that the Lord Jesus lived was without leaven and without honey; we should live the same kind of life today. We need to live in resurrection in our family life and our married life.
We need to live in our mingled spirit, learning to turn to our spirit and live in spirit by taking Christ as our meal offering.
Our testimony should be like Paul’s in Gal. 2:20, I am crucified with Christ. We are put to death, experiencing the salt in the meal offering, and Christ lives in us – in resurrection.
We need to bring these matters to the Lord in prayer and ask Him to make these real to us, even to make them our reality, so that we may eat Christ as the meal offering and become His duplication as the meal offering today.
Lord Jesus, thank You for giving us Your life and humanity for us to enjoy, partake of, experience, and be constituted with. Thank You for living a crucified life daily by denying Your natural life and living the Father’s life in resurrection. We come to You, Lord, in Your word, and we want to eat You. We want to eat Your humanity. May the cross of Christ operate in us to season us, kill any germs, and preserve us. Amen, Lord, with You there is no sin or any negative thing, for You are without any leaven. We want to keep the feast of unleavened bread by partaking of You day by day, even moment by moment, so that we may be constituted with You and even become Your reproduction as the meal offering. We take Your sinless life. We partake of Your life and nature, and we take in what You are and what You have accomplished. Amen, Lord, You are our portion. You are our everything. We take You in and we want to be constituted with You!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration for this article/sharing comes from the Word of God, the enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by the brothers in the message for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Leviticus, msgs. 13-15, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Knowing, Experiencing, and Living the All-inclusive Christ for the Genuine Church Life (2023 spring ITERO), week 2, entitled, 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.
- Hymns on this topic:
– Gentle and lowly is Thy heart, / Willing to suffer all Thou art, / To God and man complaining not; / Lord, I remember Thee! / Thou as a man art tender, sweet, / Balanced in every way, complete, / Meal-offering to the Father meet; / Lord, I remember Thee! (Hymns #86 stanzas 4-5)
– Thou art the meal-oblation, / With “oil” and “frankincense”; / ’Tis holy, fine, and perfect, / And sweet to every sense. (Hymns #195 stanza 3)
– Lord, separate us from the devil’s “tares,” / Each one deliver from the monstrous “tree,” / From all the “leaven” may Thou purify, / That we may be as food to man and Thee. (Hymns #829 stanza 8)
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