God wants us to eat, digest, and assimilate Him, so that He becomes the constituent of our being and we become the same as He is in life and nature.
Furthermore, for us to enter into and become the reality of the kingdom of the heavens, we need to eat Christ as the all-inclusive bread, and He in us can live the kingdom life on earth.
The key to our Christian life and living is simply eating the Lord. In Lev. 11 Jehovah gave ordinances concerning His people’s eating, their diet.
It is very important to pay attention to what we eat, for we are what we eat. If we eat healthy food physically, we have a healthy body. If we eat healthy food spiritually, that is, if we eat Christ as our food, we are healthy spiritually.
Christ came not to be a King to rule us outwardly but to be our food and come into our being so that we may eat, digest, and assimilate Him, and He will inwardly transform us, renew us, and conform us to His image until we look like Him, we are like Him, and we live like Him by becoming Him in life, nature, expression, and function.
But what does it mean to eat the Lord, how can we eat the Lord, and did we actually eat the Lord today?
From the very beginning of the Bible we see that God put man in a garden in front of two trees, and He commanded that man would not eat or the tree of knowledge but he could eat of the tree of life.
There’s no indication that man ate from the tree of life; this shows that we today may have Christ as the tree of life in front of us, but we may not eat of Him as life. Eating Jesus is coming to Him and believing into Him; this brings us into an organic union with the Lord, and we eat of Him as life.
Eating the Lord doesn’t mean merely that we read the Bible and we pray, but that we come to the Lord and contact Him as we read the Bible and pray. Contacting the Lord is the most important thing.
Reading the Bible is to know the Lord and be brought to Him, but our reading should not replace our contact with the Lord. Reading the morning revival and the ministry are to bring us to know God and love Him more, but they should be done in an attitude of contacting the Lord and coming to Him.
Whatever we do, we need to come to the Lord.
Our Lord Jesus passed through death and resurrection and He is now a life-giving Spirit, so we can exercise our spirit to enjoy Him in the word, contact Him, and be supplied by Him as the Spirit.
When we open the Bible and we come to the Lord to contact Him, He will supply us with life, and we will eat the bread of life, the living bread which came down out of heaven for us to eat and live by Him.
God Wants us to Eat, Digest, and Assimilate Him so that we Become God in Life, Nature, and Expression but not in the Godhead
The Lord Jesus is the word of God who was in the beginning with God, and He was incarnated to be flesh, tabernacling among us to express God and manifest Him, full of grace and reality (John 1:1, 14).
This One went through a process to become a life-giving Spirit to be received by us. He came as the bread of life – He is the bread of God, the living bread, the true bread out of heaven (John 6:32-33, 48, 51).
We are not only vessels to contain God (Rom. 9:21, 23; 2 Cor. 4:7) but we also are those who eat the Lord.
God wants us to eat, digest, and assimilate Him (John 6:57) so that we can live because of Him, even as He lived because of the Father.
The principle of eating is very wonderful and mysterious – the food that we eat comes into us, is masticate, broken down into small pieces, and it is digested, entering the blood stream to be supplied to all the parts of our being and be assimilated into us. How wonderful!
What we eat is what we will become, the very cells and tissues of our being.
In the same way, God’s eternal plan is to dispense Himself into us, His chosen people, by our eating, digesting, and assimilating Him, so that He becomes the very fiber of our inward being.
God wants that He would be digested, assimilated, and wrought into us so that He becomes the very constituent of our inner being.
This is why the Lord Jesus came as life, as the tree of life; He came to be life and give us life, and He is the vine tree in which we are as branches (John 15).
He as the tree of life is good for food, and when we eat the Lord, we are filled with His life and we are constituted with God. If we eat Jesus all the time, we will be constituted with him and composed with Him.
God’s desire from beginning to the end is that we take Him in as life – He came as the tree of life, good for food, and He is the bread of life, the living bread, and the bread which came down out of heaven that we may eat, digest, and assimilate Him and become the same as He is life, nature, and expression, but not in the Godhead.
It is God’s desire to be eaten by us, and we cooperate with Him by taking Him into us daily. The reality of the constituent of our being is the proof that we have been eating the Lord.
If others see Christ in us and touch Him when they speak to us and see us, this is a proof that we have been eating Christ. But if there’s no radical dealing with the natural constitution and there’s no expression of Christ in us, then there may be a problem with our eating and our cooperation with the Lord to digest and assimilate the food we eat.
May we be those who eat, digest, and assimilate Christ so that He becomes the very constituent of our being and we become the same as Him in life, nature, expression, and function, but not in the Godhead.
Lord Jesus, we come to eat, digest, and assimilate You as the bread of life, the living bread, the bread that came out of heaven. You are our food, our nourishment, and our supply. Thank You for coming to us, Lord, to be digested and assimilated into us so that You may become the very constituent of our inward being. Amen, Lord, we want to eat You daily, taking You in as our food, so that we may be one with God and even become God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead!
We become the Reality of the Kingdom by Eating Christ as the All-inclusive Bread
The Lord Jesus came as the kingdom of God; He came as the heavenly King to bring in the kingdom of God, and He Himself is the kingdom of God.
When the Pharisees asked Him when is the kingdom of God coming, He told them that the kingdom of God is among them (Luke 17:22-24). Wherever the Lord Jesus is, that’s where the kingdom of God is.
However, we need to realize that the Lord didn’t come to bring in His kingdom by forcing others to submit to His authority or by ruling over us outwardly; He came as the heavenly King to be our bread of life that we may eat of Him and digest Him, and thus be ruled by Him inwardly.
The way for us to realize Christ as the kingdom is not to outwardly submit to Him and humble before Him, but by us eating and drinking Him as the tree of life and the water of life.
When we eat Christ as the tree of life and drink Him as the water of life, we are brought under Him as the throne of God, and we will be in the kingdom of God. God’s economy is not a matter of outward rules, rituals, or practices, but a matter of Christ coming into us inwardly by our eating of Him.
Christ as the heavenly King rules over us, His people, by feeding us with Himself as bread.
We can be proper people in the kingdom of the heavens only by being nourished with the Lord as our food.
The way for us to be in the reality of the kingdom of the heavens is by eating the Lord as the bread of life.
We can do God’s will in the kingdom of God by taking Jesus in. We shouldn’t try to do God’s will or obey God outwardly by our own strength; this will lead only to failure. The way for us to fulfill God’s will is to take in the One who obeys God all the time; the way is to eat Christ, and He as the kingdom of obedience will rule and reign in us inwardly.
We simply need to take Christ in, eat Him as the children’s bread, and enjoy Him as our portion (see Matt. 15:22-28).
When we eat Jesus as the kingly bread, the all-inclusive bread, the kingly elements are imparted into our being and we are constituted with these royal ingredients! Wow! Hallelujah!
The Lord becomes the very ruling element within us by our eating Him as the kingly bread, and we will live in the reality of the kingdom of the heavens!
We can be the reality of the kingdom of the heavens only by being nourished with Christ as our food (vv. 26-27, 32-37).
The more we eat Christ as the all-inclusive bread, the more the royal ingredients are constituted into us to become the ruling element within us and to cause us to become the increase of Christ as the reality of the kingdom of the heavens (Dan. 2:34, 35b, 44-45).
When we eat the kingdom bread, we eat the King as bread, and this will enable us to live the kingdom life. May we all learn to do this little-by-little and day-by-day.
Lord Jesus, may we stop our doing and working and just eat You as the all-inclusive bread so that we may become the reality of the kingdom of the heavens! Amen, Lord, save us from merely doing things outwardly and bring us to take Christ by eating Him inwardly. May we all learn to eat the heavenly King as the kingdom bread so that He may rule in us by feeding us with Himself as the bread. Oh Lord, it is only when we’re nourished with You as our food that we can be the reality of the kingdom of the heavens!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by Ron Kangas for this week, and portions from, The Wonderful Christ in the Canon of the New Testament, ch. 2 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-Study of Leviticus (2), week 4, The Significance of Eating and the Defeat of Death.
- Hymns on this topic:
# When the Word of God I study, / I must touch the Lord; / If in mind and not in spirit, / Dead is the Word. / When to messages I listen, / I must pray them in; / Thus the word will be digested / From within. / All God’s being, all His riches / In the Spirit flow; / I must exercise my spirit / Him to know. (Hymns #612)
# I am the living bread, which came down out of heaven; / If anyone, if anyone eats of this bread he shall live forever. (Scripture Song)
# We are feeding on the living bread, / Eating of the feast our Lord has spread, / And whoso eateth, Jesus said, / Shall hunger nevermore. (Hymns #1150)
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