In our Christian life, there are at least three stages of eating, corresponding to the picture seek with the people of Israel’s eating: eating Christ as our Passover, eating Christ as our heavenly food to be reconstituted with Him, and eating Him as the rich produce of the good land to become His overcomers.
These stages of eating are progressive, and all three are needed. God has given us the all-inclusive Christ, His Son, to be the good land for our enjoyment and possession; He has qualified us for a share of the allotted portion of the saints in the light.
He didn’t just give us the land in general; He allotted each one of us a certain portion, just as the good land of Canaan was allotted tribe by tribe, family by family, even person by person.
The all-inclusive Christ is so vast and immense that all the saints are needed to comprehend what His universally vast dimensions are. We all have a portion of Christ, and we cannot experience the entirety of the all-inclusive Christ by ourselves.
An important focus we see in the Bible is not only on doing this or that for God but on our eating; God cares for our eating, and He wants us to eat Him in different ways, different stages, and different aspects, so that He in us may live the Christian life and fulfil the eternal purpose of God.
When the people of Israel entered the good land, as soon as they crossed the Jordan river, the manna stopped; for forty years they ate the manna, the heavenly food given to them by God to be reconstituted to be God’s heavenly people, but now the manna stopped.
They ate of the produce of the land. This rich produce is nothing else but Christ, the all-inclusive Christ, who is the consummated life supply given to us, the believers in Christ; such a One requires us to labor on Him.
Christ is not only freely given to us; He is also the good land for us to labor on so that we may obtain the rich produce of Christ, eat Christ, be constituted with Christ, and become the dwelling place of God.
It may sound odd that we need to “labor on Christ”, but in our Christian experience we need to struggle to gain Christ, that is, we need to pursue Christ by losing sight of anything else but Him.
We are here to gain Christ, to obtain Him, and to be constituted with Him, so that He in us may do what is in His heart.
So we need to spend time with the Lord in His word and continually turn to Him during the day, realizing that our labor is required in order for us to obtain not just a temporary inspiration but lasting, long-effect nourishment and supply.
As it regards to their eating, the children of Israel had at least three main stages of eating: eating the Passover in Egypt for them to be strengthened to get out of Egypt, the manna in the wilderness to be reconstituted into a heavenly people and build up God’s movable dwelling place, and the produce of the good land on which they had to labor in order to be the overcomers who build up the church as the Body of Christ.
Eating Christ by Taking Him in His entirety as our Life Supply to be Delivered from the World
When the children of Israel were in Egypt, God gave them a provision that was to supply them to be delivered from Egypt and its usurpation: the Passover. In Egypt, the people of Israel ate the Passover lamb (Exo. 12:3, 8-9).
Just as the roasted flesh of the Passover lamb was to be eaten for life supply, so we need to eat Christ for our life supply (vv. 8-10; John 6:53, 55-57).
First, they had to put the blood on the doorpost, signifying the judicial redemption; but that was not all. They also had to eat the flesh of the lamb, roasted with fire.
They ate the entire lamb – every part, along with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.
To eat the flesh of the lamb signifies that Christ doesn’t only redeem us in an objective way by shedding His blood for us; He also supplies us inwardly with the life-supply for us to be delivered from the world, just as the children of Israel ate the lamb and were supplied to escape Egypt.
We were in bondage in the world, just as Israel was in bondage in Egypt for four hundred years; we were in bondage in the world under Satan, the ruler of the world.
Just an objective redemption isn’t going to get us out of the world; we need to eat Christ as the Lamb, together with the unleavened bread – Christ’s sin-dealing life.
When we take in Christ as the sin-dealing life, He will change our sinful way of life.
And we eat Him along with bitter herbs; this signifies that, whenever we try to return to Egypt, whenever we try to return to the pleasures and enjoyment in the world, we will have a bitter feeling within.
This bitter feeling is the sense of life, which becomes a sense of discomfort, uneasiness, and death whenever we try to go back to the world.
The divine life within us gives us a bitter feeling once we as redeemed people of God try to go back to the world.
Many times we can testify that we have had such a feeling, a bitter feeling because we drifted into the world.
To solve the problem of the fall of man and to accomplish God’s original intention, both life and redemption are needed.
God’s judicial redemption through the blood of Christ is the procedure to reach God’s goal, which is the dispensing of Christ as life into us for our organic salvation (Rom. 5:10).
The judicial redemption can be seen in the blood of the lamb shed and sprinkled on the doorposts, and the organic salvation can be seen in the eating of the lamb for the life supply.
The children of Israel were to eat the Passover lamb with its head, legs, and inward parts (see Exo. 12:9); every part was to be eaten, without picking and choosing.
We can’t just take the parts of Christ that we like; we can’t take the parts in the Bible that we enjoy – we need to take Christ in His word in its entirety.
If something is in the Word of God, we need it; if there’s an aspect of Christ that is unveiled to us, we need it.
The head of the lamb signifies wisdom, the legs signify activity and move, and the inward parts signify the inward parts of Christ’s being, including His mind, emotion, will, and heart with all their functions.
We need to eat Christ and take Him as our wisdom; we need to enjoy and experience His inward parts, including His mind, emotion, will, and heart with all their functions.
Like Paul did in Phil. 1:8, we can experience Christ in His inward parts. We need to take Christ in His entirety with His wisdom, His activity and move, and His inward parts (John 6:57; 1 Cor. 1:24; Rev. 14:4; Phil. 1:8).
This is so that we may be inwardly supplied and made strong to not remain under the usurpation of Satan and the world.
Lord Jesus, we apply Your precious blood and we take You as our life and life supply. We want to eat You and partake of You in all that You are. You are the Lamb of God who was roasted on the cross for us to eat, partake of, and be inwardly supplied to be delivered from the world and its usurpation. Amen, Lord, we open to You to partake of Your sin-dealing life. Thank You for Your judicial redemption and Your organic salvation; we come to You to partake of what You are to be rescued and delivered from the world and Satan’s usurpation. Amen, Lord, we take You in Your entirety with Your wisdom, Your activity and move, and Your inward parts.
Eating Christ as the Heavenly Food to be Constituted with Christ and Live Christ
The second stage of Israel’s eating was eating the manna in the wilderness; as soon as they left Egypt and crossed the Red Sea, the manna began to fall immediately.
And they ate the manna for many years; this was so that they would be reconstituted to be the people of God.
They left Egypt, but the Egyptian constitution was still in them; in name, they were not Egyptian, but in their constitution they were.
This is something that is happening in our human life also; we may move from one country to another, or we may move to a different continent, but what we are by constitution doesn’t change – we still crave what we used to eat.
God wants to change our diet from a worldly diet to a heavenly diet.
In the wilderness, the people of Israel ate manna (Exo. 16:14-16, 31; Num. 11:7).
By giving His people manna to eat, God indicated that His intention was to change their constitution by changing their diet (Exo. 16:14-15).
They were not Egyptians in name, but they surely were Egyptian in their constitution. The Egyptian diet denotes all the things that we desire to feed in order to find satisfaction (Num. 11:4-6).
The children of Israel desired to have the fish, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic; in the wilderness, all they had to eat was the manna.
They lacked the view that God had, which is to have a change of diet from the Egyptian diet to the heavenly food so that they would be inwardly reconstituted to be the people of God.
God gives us only one thing to eat and partake of: Christ; He is the heavenly food given to us by God. He wants to change our diet from anything that the world has to offer to what Christ is.
We need to acquire the excellency of the knowledge of Christ, and when we see such a One, we will consider everything else as being refuse on account of gaining Christ.
The more we eat Christ, the more we correspond to God, the more we’re identified with Him, and the more we live and walk according to what He is.
What helps us most in our daily living with the Lord is eating Christ as the heavenly food; as we eat Christ, we are constituted with Him and we become the same as He is, living Christ because of the Christ we have eaten and assimilated (John 6:56-58).
As we eat Christ as our heavenly food, He is metabolically assimilated into our being to become our very constituent.
God’s intention in His salvation is to work Himself into us, the believers in Christ, and to change us not merely outwardly but in our very constitution, in the intrinsic element of our being.
He wants us to be reconstituted with Christ as our unique heavenly food so that we may live Christ because of Christ, and we would be qualified to build up the church as God’s dwelling place.
The Lord Jesus lived a life of expressing God the Father; He lived a God-man life by living because of the Father, and when we eat Christ as our unique heavenly food, we also live because of Him.
We shouldn’t try to analyze what’s wrong with us, why this and why that; we should simply eat Christ. Eating Christ helps us.
Trying to figure this and that out doesn’t work; we need to take in Christ, for this Christ is the solution to any kind of problem we have.
He is our all-inclusive life supply, and when we eat Christ as our heavenly food, we live because of Him and build up the church as God’s dwelling place.
Actually, as we eat Christ, we spontaneously become God’s dwelling place.
Lord Jesus, You are our heavenly food – You are the bread of life that came down from heaven for us to eat, digest, assimilate, and be constituted with. Amen, Lord, we come to You in Your word every day to partake of You. We open to You to have our diet changed from anything this world has to offer to the heavenly food, Christ Himself. Change our diet and change our appetite. May we realize that what helps us most in our daily living with the Lord is eating Christ as the heavenly food. Amen, we want to eat Christ to be reconstituted with Christ and become Christ, having Christ as our constituent. Hallelujah, eating Jesus is the way for us to live Christ and to become God’s dwelling place!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by bro. Raabe for this week, and portions from, The Conclusion of the New Testament, msg. 42, by Witness Lee, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-study of Joshua, Judges, and Ruth (2021 summer training), week 5, The Produce of the Land of Canaan and the Intrinsic Significance of the Allotment of the Good Land.
- Hymns on this topic:
– Lord, Thou art our true Passover, / God passed over us thru Thee; / By Thyself and Thy redemption / We with God have harmony. / Thou, the Lamb of God, redeemedst us / With Thyself and with Thy blood; / We apply Thy blood, our ransom, / Eating Thee, our real food. (Hymns #196)
– Christ is our manna true, / Our bread of life indeed; / He’s our supply of nourishment, / As on Him now we feed. (Hymns #1147)
– The heavenly diet fulfills God’s great plan / Because it supplies and reconstitutes man / To build up the church, His unique dwelling place. / For this heavenly manna, Lord give us the taste! (Song on, Manna)
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