The humanity that we as believers in Christ should have in serving God is the humanity of Christ, which is not merely a perfect humanity but a humanity mingled with divinity; the proper humanity we need in serving God is divinity mingled with humanity for the expressing of the divine attributes in the human virtues.
We may love the Lord, pursue Him, and spend time with Him every day, but do we express Him in our daily living, or is it still us who live just like the rest? Who is expressed in us? Do we still strive to “express Christ” and “live Christ”, or is living Christ something spontaneous daily in our life?
On the one hand, we as believers in Christ should not seek to “perfect our humanity” or “develop our humanity” apart from Christ; God doesn’t want a “better Christian” or a Christian who lives “to please God” by striving to fulfill everything that God says in the Bible.
What God wants is that Christ would live again in us; He wants that Christ would be reproduced and expressed in our daily living as He lives in us. Christian humanity is the divine nature mingled with the human nature for God to be expressed through man.
In ourselves we cannot express God; we need to enjoy God, love God, be filled with God, and cooperate with God to allow Him to live in us.
Actually, the real humanity that is pleasing to God is Christ’s humanity: Christ is God’s beloved, and only He satisfies God in all that He is and does. Therefore, we need to become the same as Christ in life, nature, and expression, so that we may serve God through our daily living as we express Him.
Seeing the Humanity of Jesus, our Christian Life and our Church Life in the Meal Offering
On the one hand we can see the Lord’s humanity when He lived on earth as recorded in the Four Gospels; on the other hand, we can see the humanity of Jesus in the meal offering. The meal offering in Lev. 2:1-16 typifies the humanity of Jesus, that is, Christ in His God-man living; also, the meal-offering typifies our Christian life and church life as a duplication of Christ’s God-man living (see Lev. 2:1-16; Psa. 92:10; 1 Pet. 2:21; Rom. 8:2-3, 11, 13; 1 Cor. 12:12; 10:17).
The humanity of Jesus is not just “fine flour” but it is the mingling of fine flour with oil, frankincense, salt, and with no leaven or honey.
The Lord’s humanity is not merely His human nature with which He was born but it is a mingling of divinity with humanity, together with the essence of resurrection and the application of the cross, with no natural affection or sin. Let’s see in detail what each of the elements of the meal-offering signifies and how are they applied to Christ and to us.
The fine flour – Christ’s humanity: the main element of the meal-offering is fine flour, which signifies Christ’s humanity, which is fine, perfect, tender, balanced, and right in every way, with no excess and no deficiency (see Lev. 2:1; John 18:38; 19:4, 6b; Luke 2:40; 23:14; Isa. 53:3).
The flour used in the meal offering was grounded, fine, and perfect, signifying the beauty and excellence of Christ’s human living and daily walk. Of this One Pilate, the Roman governor, said three times, I find no fault in Him.
His humanity is fine, perfect, tender, balanced, right, with no excess or deficiency, and beautiful and excellent in every way; He lived such a perfect God-man living.
The oil – the Spirit of God; the oil used for mingling with the fine flour signifies the Spirit of God as the divine element of Christ (see Lev. 2:1; Luke 1:35; 3:22; 4:18; Heb. 1:9). Christ was conceived of the Holy Spirit; from His very birth He was constituted with the Spirit, with the divine essence. When He came out to minister, He was anointed by God with the Spirit.
Jesus Christ was full within and baptized without with the Spirit; He was a mingling of God with man, divinity with humanity, fine flour with oil. Christ didn’t live just by His humanity; He was a God-man, having God in Him, and He was full of the Spirit, living by the Spirit, working by the Spirit, and doing everything in Spirit.
The mingling of oil with flour – divinity mingled with humanity; the mingling of the fine flour with the oil in the meal offering signifies that Christ’s humanity is mingled with the Holy Spirit, and that His human nature is mingled with God’s divine nature, making Him a God-man (Lev. 2:4-5; Matt. 1:18, 20).
Christ’s humanity is a mingling: divinity mingled with humanity to produce a God-man who possesses both the divine nature and the human nature distinctly, without a third nature being produced. The humanity that we as believers should have is not mere “perfect humanity” but a mingling of divinity with humanity for the producing of a God-man with a God-man living.
The frankincense – the fragrance of Christ in His resurrection; frankincense was put on the fine flour, showing that Christ’s humanity bears the aroma of His resurrection (see Lev. 2:1-2; cf. Matt. 2:11; 11:20-30; Luke 10:21). The aroma that Christ spread while living on earth with such a humanity mingled with divinity was of resurrection life, so attractive and lovely.
His testimony was that He daily died to Himself to live in resurrection to God, allowing the divine attributes of God to be expressed in His human virtues; the aroma and flavor of His living was resurrection life.
The salt – the death of Christ; the meal offering was seasoned with salt, and salt signifies the death, or the cross of Christ (Lev. 2:13). The salt used in the meal offering is the salt of the covenant of God, the covenant which is incorruptible and unchangeable.
Salt functions to season (give taste), kill germs, and preserve; when the death of Christ is applied to our being in the Spirit, we are seasoned – we spread the aroma of Christ, any negative things within us are killed, and we are preserved in the Lord and His way.
What is needed today in the church life is first to realize that we are God-men, men mingled with God, and then to allow the cross of Christ to operate in us through the Spirit so that any negative element would be eliminated.
No honey and no leaven – no ambition, natural affection, or evil things; in the meal offering there is no honey (which ferments) and no leaven (which causes the dough to puff up).
That the meal offering was without leaven signifies that in Christ there is NO sin or any negative thing (see Lev. 2:4-5, 11a; 2 Cor. 5:21; Heb. 4:15; 1 Pet. 2:22; Luke 23:14; cf. 1 Cor. 5:6-8). That the meal offering was without honey signifies that in Christ there is NO natural affection or natural goodness (see Lev. 2:11; Matt. 10:34-39; 12:46-50; Mark 10:18).
The problems in the church life many times arise because of some natural affection, natural goodness, sinful things, or ambition for position. Instead of having such “leaven and honey” we should have frankincense and salt: death and resurrection. If we have an adequate experience of the cross of Christ in the church life, the germs will be killed, natural affection will be crossed out, and we will have pure humility and love.
Lord Jesus, thank You for setting up a pattern of the perfect God-man living by living a mingled life with the aroma of resurrection while being under the killing of death. We want to eat You in Your humanity, taking in all that You are by pray-reading Your word. Mingle Yourself with us more today. May our living and service be seasoned by the cross and bearing the aroma of resurrection. Lord, may any natural affection, anything evil, and any ambition for position be eliminated by the operation of the cross by the Spirit. May our CHristian life and church life be a duplication of Christ’s God-man living!
Eating Christ as the Meal Offering in His Word to Live out His Human Living Today
Looking at the Lord’s perfect human living, a real and genuine God-man living not by His humanity but by being mingled with God, under the cross, by the Spirit, and in resurrection, we realize that in ourselves we cannot live such a life. Only Christ can live a perfect human life with an uplifted humanity.
But praise the Lord, we can take Jesus at any time in His word by exercising our spirit to pray-read the word of God! When we pray-read the word of God, we touch the living Spirit in the word and we are supplied with Jesus as our nourishment.
When we pray-read the word of God, we eat Christ as our meal offering, and we will become what we eat – and we will live by what we eat (John 6:57, 63); for us to live will be Christ, and everything will turn out to salvation (Phil. 1:19-21).
We simply need to exercise our spirit, come to the word of God, and pray over God’s word, finding His word and eating it so that we may be made the same as Christ (Eph. 6:17-18; Jer. 15:16; Gal. 6:17). The more we eat Jesus in His word, the more we are constituted with Jesus.
By our eating of the Lord in His word day by day, His human living becomes our human living in a spontaneous way, without any self-effort.
Hallelujah, God has prepared the Bible, the word of God, and has put it in our hands; also, we have the Spirit with our spirit – now we simply need to daily come to the word of God, exercise our spirit to pray-read the word, and we will eat Christ as the meal offering.
When we exercise our spirit to pray over God’s word, we touch the Spirit with our spirit and we enjoy Christ’s human living; we are being infused with Christ, and our living will be the living out of His human living today.
The only way we can have the humanity God desires us to have is by eating Jesus in His humanity so that we may live by what we eat, that is, spontaneously live out the human life of Jesus. The only way for us is to eat the human life and living of Jesus to become truly human and have a proper human living with a proper humanity that is useful to God and pleasing to man.
When we eat Jesus in His word (which are Spirit and are life), the negative things in us are killed, we live under the cross, we bear the aroma of resurrection, and we are mingled with the Spirit much more to live in spirit and walk according to the Spirit, thus living the same kind of life that Jesus lived when on earth.
Lord Jesus, we don’t want to outwardly imitate Your human living but eat You in Your word so that we may live because of You. We want to exercise our spirit to touch the Spirit consolidated in the Word so that we may eat the human life and living of Jesus, be constituted with Jesus, and have the human living of Jesus become our human living. Amen! Lord, thank You for giving us Your word, the Bible, and the Spirit with our spirit; we want to eat You, eat Your humanity, and eat Your human life by pray-reading Your word so that we may have the same kind of living that You had on earth!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by brother Minoru C. for this week, and Life-study of Leviticus, msgs. 11, 13-15 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Service for the Building up of the Church (2016 Spring ITERO), week 5 / msg. 5, The Humanity of One who Serves the Lord.
- All Bible verses are taken from, Holy Bible Recovery Version.
- Hymns on this topic:
# Thou art the meal-oblation, / With “oil” and “frankincense”; / ’Tis holy, fine, and perfect, / And sweet to every sense. / Thou art the peace-oblation, / The peace for us to make, / That we with God may share Thee, / As food of Thee partake. (Hymns #195)
# 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)
# Feeding and drinking, Lord Jesus, of Thee, / Feeding by reading, and drinking by prayer; / Reading and praying, I eat and I drink, / Praying and reading-Lord, Thou art my fare. (Hymns #811)
About aGodMan
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. The fine flour of the meal offering was produced out of wheat that had passed through many processes, which signify the various sufferings of Christ that made Him “a man of sorrows” (Isa. 53:3). (Lev. 2:1, footnote 2, Recovery Version Bible)
Living Christ is such a freedom! “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom!” (2 Corinthians 3:17) Where is He? He is in His economy. In my mingled human Sspirit! Accessed by call His Name, Lord Jesus!