Eating the Lord’s Humanity for our Life to be a Duplication of Christ’s God-man Living

The meal offering typifies first Christ in His God-man living, and it also typifies our Christian life as a duplication of Christ’s God-man living, for when we eat the human life and living of Jesus, His human living becomes ours.

We praise the Lord for coming to be the reality of all the offerings, and especially the reality of the meal offering. His humanity is high, fine, perfect, and pure, and He was mingled with the Spirit in all He did and said; furthermore, He lived a crucified life bearing the fragrance of resurrection, and He didn’t have any natural affection or natural goodness.

Such a One is our food, and as we pray-read the word of God, the humanity of Jesus with His human life and human living is infused into us to constitute us as the duplication of Christ with His God-man living.

We need to be daily mingled with fresh oil so that our whole system be invigorated and strengthened with the freshness of the Spirit. We need to be saturated, soaked, permeated, and poured upon by the Spirit, so that we may be fully mingled with the Spirit.

The characteristics of Christ’s humanity are extraordinary love, boundless forbearance, unparalleled faithfulness, absolute humility, utmost purity, supreme holiness and righteousness, and brightness and uprightness. He as such a One lives in us, and we need to enjoy Him and be mingled with Him every day.

If we are going to be mingled with the Lord, we first need to love the Lord and also love His appearing! We need to love the Lord’s appearing every day (2 Tim. 4:8; Acts 6:16), seeking to have Him appear to us again and again.

When we love the Lord, we are kept in the realm of having Christ as our humanity, and our humanity is safeguarded by the restraint of His affection.

Otherwise, if we don’t love the Lord, we are liable to do anything and everything; if we are constrained by the Lord’s love and love Him, we enjoy Christ as the deep things of God (1 Cor. 2:9), but if we don’t love the Lord, we are set apart to woe (1 Cor. 16:22).

To be mingled with the Lord every day, we need to have a fresh consecration to the Lord every day, eat Jesus in His word, walk by the Spirit of reality in our spirit, and live in the blending life of the entire Body of Christ.

When we are being blended, we are tempered, mingled, harmonized, and adjusted. To be blended we need to do everything through the cross and by the Spirit to minister life to others for the building up of the Body of Christ. Before we do anything, we need to stop and fellowship with the other members of the Body, and we will be tempered and adjusted.

To be mingled with the Lord we need to minister the Spirit to others, for when we live and walk by the Spirit we honor God, and when we minister the Spirit we honor man. When we enjoy Christ as life, we make God happy, and when we minister Christ as life, we make man happy.

To be mingled with the Lord we must serve by the Spirit of God, having no confidence in the flesh (Phil. 3:3). We must let our forbearance be known to all men (Phil. 4:5), with the divine attributes being expressed in our human virtues by the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ (Phil. 1:19), by the inner operating God (2:13), by the power of His resurrection (3:10), and by the Christ who empowers us from within (4:14).

The Meal Offering Typifies our Christian Life as a Duplication of Christ’s God-man Living

How can we live the same kind of life that Jesus lived? How can our Christian life be a duplication of Christ’s God-man living?

Christ Himself lived a God-man life – He was the reality of the meal offering, with a pure and perfect humanity (the fine flour), being mingled with the Spirit (the oil), living a crucified life (being salted), and with no natural affection or sin (no leaven or honey).

How can our Christian life be a duplication of Christ’s God-man living, so that we may also be a meal offering today?

The key is found in Romans 8: here we have Christ’s humanity (v. 3), the Spirit of life (v. 2), the cross (v. 13), and resurrection (v. 11). We should live the same kind of life that Jesus lived, and our Christian life should be a duplication of Christ’s God-man living.

How? Just as He was a man, so we have His humanity in our spirit. Just as Christ was mingled with the Spirit, so we need to be mingled with the Spirit. Just as He bore the fragrance of resurrection as He lived a crucified life, so we by the Spirit need to put the death the practices of the body and live in spirit.

How can this be worked out practically? It is very simple: we need to eat Christ as the meal offering, and we will become what we eat and live by what we eat (see John 6:57, 63; 1 Cor. 10:17; Phil. 1:19-21).

If we eat the Lord Jesus in His word as the meal offering, we will live because of Him; that is, He becomes our sustaining, energizing, empowering, and supplying factor for us to live Him.

When we exercise our spirit to touch the Spirit consolidated in the Word of God, we eat the human life and living of Jesus, we are constituted with Jesus, and the human living of Jesus becomes our human living (see Eph. 6:17-18; Jer. 15:16; Eph. 5:26; Gal. 6:17).

This is our need today. We need to eat the Lord with His humanity in His word, so that we may spontaneously live Christ and thus our life would become a duplication of Christ’s God-man living.

We need to come to the word of God and pray over God’s word, exercising our spirit, our eyes, our mind, and our mouth to pray-read the word of God; outwardly we may just read the word in a prayerful way, but actually, we are touching the Spirit.

As we touch the Spirit in the word of God with the exercise of our spirit, we enjoy and eat the humanity of Christ, and we eat the human life and living of Christ.

In ourselves we can’t live a human life like that of Christ; only He can live such a life, so we need to come to Him in His word and eat Jesus so that our Christian life would be a duplication of Christ’s God-man living. The more we eat Jesus, the more we live Jesus!

Lord Jesus, we admit that in ourselves we cannot live a human life-like the one You lived on earth – only You can live such a life. Lord, we come to You in Your word to eat Your humanity by pray-reading the Word, so that we may eat and be constituted with the humanity of Jesus! Oh, hallelujah, the Spirit in the word supplies us with the humanity of Jesus, and as we eat Him in His word our Christian life will become a duplication of Christ’s God-man living! Lord, we believe that by eating Your word we eat Your humanity, and we will become what we eat! Hallelujah, Jesus is our food!

Eating the Lord in His Word to be Constituted with Jesus and have His Human Living

Our need is to eat the Lord in His humanity by pray-reading His word, so that we may be constituted with Jesus and have His human living as our human living.

The only way for us to live Christ is by eating Christ; just as Christ fed on the Father and lived a life for the Father’s expression, so we can eat Jesus and live because of Him (John 6:57).

By exercising our spirit to touch the Spirit consolidated in God’s word, we eat the human life and living of Jesus, and His human living becomes our human living with the following characteristics of His divinely enriched humanity:

1. The humanity of Jesus fulfills all righteousness (Matt. 3:13-15). Before He began His ministry, the Lord as a man entered into the ministry of the age, which was the ministry of John the Baptist; He went to John to be baptized so that He may fulfill all righteousness.

As a man, the Lord declared that He wanted to be right with God by living, working, and doing things in the way God ordained; God ordained baptism, so the Lord Jesus as a man had to be baptised.

Through His baptism the Lord declared that, even though He was in the likeness of the flesh of sin yet without any sin in the flesh, He was worthy of nothing but death and burial, and His ministry was not to be carried out by the flesh but by the Father’s life in resurrection.

When we eat Christ in His word, our Christian life will become a duplication of Christ’s God-man living, and in particular, we will fulfill all righteousness as God has ordained it – just as Jesus did.

2. The humanity of Jesus had no resting place (Matt. 8:20). The foxes have holes, the birds have nests, but Christ had no place where He would lie His head. His home was not on this earth but in God.

Our home today is not on this earth, and we are not citizens of this world; our home is in the Triune God, and our resting place is God Himself. God Himself is our dwelling place, and Christ is our home.

3. The humanity of Jesus is lowly in heart (Matt. 11:29). He was meek and lowly in heart; He wasn’t meek or lowly merely outwardly, for others to see as a show or display, but He was such a One in His heart.

When we eat Christ in His word, we will be like Him, meek and lowly in heart, having no self-esteem, not wanting to do anything for ourselves or expecting to gain anything for ourselves.

4. The humanity of Jesus loves the weak ones (Matt. 12:19-20). He didn’t break a bruised reed, neither did He quench a smoking flax. Reeds were used to make musical instruments, but when they were bruised, people would break them for they didn’t give a musical sound.

The Lord doesn’t break us if we don’t sound good in what we say, neither does He quench us when we give out smoke rather than light. He cherishes and nourishes us in our weakness. When we eat Him as such a One, we will also cherish and nourish the weak ones in the humanity of Jesus.

5. The humanity of Jesus is flexible (Matt. 17:27). Peter was quick to reply that Jesus does pay His taxes when the Jews asked him, and the Lord didn’t rebuke him but rather sent him fishing and, with the coin in the fish’ mouth, he would pay both the Lord’s and his taxes.

Even though the Lord didn’t have to pay the tax since He was the Son of the King, He was flexible, so as not to stumble others. When we eat Christ in His humanity in His word, we will also be flexible as He was.

6. The humanity of Jesus serves others (see Mark 10:45; 1:35). He didn’t come to be served but to serve. When we eat Jesus with His human living in His word, our life will be a duplication of Christ’s God-man living, and we will be most happy to serve others by being one with the serving Son of Man. Furthermore, as we serve others, we will be perfected.

7. The humanity of Jesus cherishes people (Luke 4:16-22; 7:34; 19:1-10). He was called the friend of the tax collectors and sinners; He didn’t reject sinners or condemn them but spent time with them, lodged with sinful people like Zaccheus, and led them to repentance. When we eat Jesus in His humanity, we will not reject or judge people but cherish them in the Lord’s humanity.

8. The humanity of Jesus is orderly, not sloppy (Mark 6:39-40; John 6:12). When He fed the 5000 men, He had them recline in groups; then, after they finished eating, He asked the disciples to gather the broken pieces left over. As we eat the Lord’s humanity in His word, we will serve in an orderly way, not in a sloppy way.

9. The humanity of Jesus is limited by time (John 7:6). For those in the world, they can do whatever they want to do whenever they want to do it, but as we eat the Lord’s humanity in His word, we will be limited by the Lord’s life within us.

10. The humanity of Jesus is unique (John 7:46). When the temple servants came to arrest Him, they returned empty-handed, saying, We have never seen a man like this before. As we eat the humanity of this unique One, we become unique like Him.

11. The humanity of Jesus knows when to weep (John 11:33, 35). When the Jews were weeping with Mary and Martha for the loss of Lazarus, the Lord was indignant in His spirit; later, just before He raised Lazarus, He wept. He knows when to weep. Just eat Him, and you will weep when He weeps.

12. The humanity of Jesus is humble (John 13:4-5). He put aside His pride and humbled Himself to serve His disciples. As we eat the Lord, we will be humble like Jesus, and our life will be a duplication of Christ’s God-man living.

Lord Jesus, we exercise our spirit to touch the Spirit consolidated in Your Word and eat the human life and living of Jesus so that our Christian life would be a duplication of Christ’s God-man living! We want to be constituted with Jesus so that the human living of Jesus would become our human living. May Your divinely enriched humanity be infused into us and be lived out of us in our Christian life. We want to eat You Lord in Your humanity to fulfill all righteousness, be lowly in heart, love the weak ones, be flexible, serve others, cherish people, be orderly and not sloppy, be limited by time, know when to weep, and be humble just as You are.

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by Ed Marks for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1971, vol. 2, “Christ as the Reality,” chs. 6-7, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-Study of Leviticus (1), week 4, The Vision and Enjoyment of the Meal Offering.
• Hymns on this topic:
  # Jesus, O living Word of God, / Wash me and cleanse me with Your blood / So You can speak to me. / Just let me hear Your words of grace, / Just let me see Your radiant face, / Beholding constantly. / Jesus, living Word, / My heart thirsts for Thee; / Of Thee I’d eat and drink, / Enjoy Thee thoroughly. (Song on, Jesus, O living Word of God)
  # We must eat Jesus till God can / Have the fulfillment of His plan— / One man expressed for all to see, / One church in each locality. (Hymns #1146)
  # Thou in the Word art the Spirit and life, / Thus by the Word I may feed upon Thee; / Thou dost as Spirit in my spirit live, / Thus I may drink in the spirit of Thee. / Feed me, Lord Jesus, give me to drink, / Fill all my hunger, quench all my thirst. (Hymns #811)