It is so sweet, calm, fragrant, and peaceful to see our wonderful all-inclusive Christ who was processed through incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection to become the ingredients of both the anointing (as God reaching man to fill and saturate man) and the incense (as the Christ wrought into us ascending to God for His satisfaction).
The incense was made of five main ingredients: stacte, onycha, and galbanum, to which frankincense was added, and then salt was added. The three spices of stacte, onycha, and galbanum (though quite unusual and even strange, not being mentioned in other portions in the Bible) indicate that Christ’s death in His generating life and His redeeming life has three main functions: to generate us as sons of God, to redeem us from the fall, and to expel the serpent, the Devil (see Exo. 30:34-35; John 12:24; 1 Pet. 1:18-19; Heb. 2:14).
It is interesting and wonderful to realize that the ingredients of both the anointing and the incense point to the all-inclusive Christ who went through a process and who has the elements divinity, humanity, death, and resurrection to be compounded together.
With the anointing, the Spirit is the base, and He is compounded with Christ’s death, the sweetness and effectiveness of His death, Christ’s resurrection, and the power of His resurrection, together with His humanity and His divinity, to be a compound ointment, the compound Spirit, to anoint the believers as God coming to man to reach man, anoint man, paint man with His elements, and fill man with all that God is.
With the incense, the base is the cross of Christ – the salt added to the spices, and the elements of Christ’s death, resurrection, humanity, and divinity are compounded together without measure, being grounded, beaten, and burned to be offered to the Father for His satisfaction. Wow!
All we can do is be full of appreciation for our wonderful Christ who satisfies God and man to be everything to God and man for the fulfillment of God’s purpose!
Being Salted by the Cross in our Prayer for a Pleasant Fragrance to Ascend to God
In Exo. 30 we see no measure for the stacte, onycha, galbanum, and frankincense as the spices compounded in the incense; it only says that they were of equal parts. This signifies that Christ in His ingredients for the Father’s satisfaction is unlimited. All these spices were tempered with salt (Exo. 30:35); salt works to kill any negative things and functions as a preservative (Lev. 2:13).
Salt in type signifies the preserving power of Christ’s death and its killing power. The base for the anointing oil was the Spirit as the pure olive oil, but the base for the incense was the salt, the death of Christ with its killing and preserving power.
What does this mean and how does this apply to our Christian experience? Whenever we pray, whether personally or corporately in the meeting, our prayer needs to be “salted”, that is, it needs to be salted by the cross, salted with the element of the cross.
When God comes to us, He comes as the wonderful, anointing, compound Spirit; when we bring Christ to God in prayer, our prayer as our going to God has to be through the cross in a thorough way. We need to experience the killing death of Christ in our prayer.
Many times when we pray we are impure: we may pray for good things, we may even pray for something that God wants us to pray for, but our intention is impure, we are biased, and our motives are not right. When we pray with impure motives and biased intentions, it is as if we offer incense to God without any salt, offering a strange and unpleasant fragrance to Him.
![If we would experience the Christian life in a finer way, we shall learn that our prayer must be thoroughly salted...[with the] element [of] the cross....We need to experience the killing death of Christ in our prayer....Do you intend to pray? As you are about to pray, you need to be crossed out. Your natural being, your natural way, your natural thought, your natural desire, your natural preference, your natural choice—all must be crossed out. Witness Lee](https://i0.wp.com/agodman.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/If-we-would-experience-the-Christian-life-in-a-finer-way-we-shall-learn-that-our-prayer-must-be-thoroughly-salted1.jpg?resize=450%2C675&ssl=1 "If we would experience the Christian life in a finer way, we shall learn that our prayer must be thoroughly salted...[with the] element [of] the cross....We need to experience the killing death of Christ in our prayer....Do you intend to pray? As you are about to pray, you need to be crossed out. Your natural being, your natural way, your natural thought, your natural desire, your natural preference, your natural choice—all must be crossed out. Witness Lee")
It is not only the sins that hinder us from praying, but even a little bias in our spirit can keep us from praying properly. Many prayers are offered to God, and many of these prayers express the good intentions offered by a good heart, but are these prayers offered with the addition of the cross of Christ as the salt?
We may still pray while our spirit is not dealt with by the cross, but we will have the feeling that this is not the kind of prayer He desires. When we are biased and don’t have the cross applied to our being as we pray, we don’t offer a pleasant fragrance to Him – He even finds this kind of prayer offensive.
We need to go on in our experience with the Lord to come to a finer stage in our spiritual life where we deal not only with sins, the world, or the flesh, but even with the motives, intentions, and biases in our spirit, so that when we pray we would be crossed out in our natural being.
Our natural being cannot pray the prayers that the Lord wants; we need to have the cross applied to us in the Spirit, and our natural thoughts, ways, desires, preferences, and choices need to be crossed out, so that the Christ wrought into us would ascend and be salted to become a pleasant fragrance for God’s satisfaction.
If we check with the Lord and with our experience we will realize that much of our prayer has been unsalted, without the element of the cross of Christ. The seasoning of the four ingredients of the incense with salt shows us that our prayer needs to be salted by the cross so that all the impurity and bias within us may be killed.
The Father yearns to have the pure incense with the salt added to it ascending to Him in our prayers especially at the Table Meeting…
Lord Jesus, give us the experiences we need so that our prayer would be seasoned with the salt of the cross and thus be a pleasant fragrance to God. Lord, save us from offering prayers to God in our natural man according to our natural concepts, and give us the inward sense when we pray yet have a bias in our spirit. Shine on us, Lord, and expose our impure motives and intentions. Apply the salt of the cross to our prayer so that all impurity and bias within us may be killed, and pure incense would ascend to God in prayer!
What does it mean that the Incense must be Salted, Beaten, and Burned?
On the one hand, the ingredients of the incense were compounded together, salt was added, and then the entire incense was to be salted, beaten, and burnt. What does it mean and how can we experience this in our Christian life?
The footnote on Exo. 30:36 in the Recovery Version really opens up this matter of the incense being salted, beaten, and burned,
According to Exodus 30:35-36, the incense must be salted, beaten, and burned. Beating the incense and putting it before the Testimony in the Tent of Meeting signify the blending of Christ’s sweet death and His fragrant resurrection and the offering of His death and resurrection to God on the incense altar as a base for the intercession of Christ and His members. In order to have Christ as the incense to offer to God as a sweet-smelling fragrance, we need the genuine experiences of Christ with all the ingredients of the incense, and these experiences must be salted, beaten, and burned. (Exo. 30:36, footnote 1)
We need to have the genuine experiences of Christ in our daily living, and these experiences of Christ need to be salted, beaten, and burned.
The danger is that, even though we may mean business with the Lord and we are hungry to experience Christ, we may cause more problems as we testify of our experience of Him because what comes out of us is something other than the experienced Christ – something of the self, the natural life, the peculiarity, and some odd spirituality…Oh Lord Jesus!
We need to have the genuine experiences of Christ with all the ingredients of His humanity, His divinity, His death, and His resurrection, and then these experiences must be salted by Christ’s death, beaten, and burned to be reduced, and then they can ascend to God in prayer with Christ and in Christ for God’s satisfaction.
This is a deeper experience of Christ: having Christ wrought into our being in many ways and through many experiences, then these experiences are burned, beaten, and grounded, and then they can ascend to God in Christ and with Christ in our prayer as incense.
Oh, may the Lord have a way to work this out in us! We don’t have to pray for “more salting”, “more beating”, or “more grounding” – we simply need to enjoy and experience Christ every day, and learn to deal with our spirit in prayer so that Christ as the Spirit would apply Christ’s death to us and He would burn, beat, and ground these experiences to compound them together with Himself to ascend as incense for God’s satisfaction.
Lord, we love You, we want to experience You, and we want to be here for Your satisfaction. Give us genuine experiences of Christ in our daily living, and may these experiences be salted, beaten, and burned to be offered to God in prayer with Christ and in Christ as the incense for His satisfaction. Lord, may there be much incense ascending from all Your saints who seek to experience You in a deeper way and offer Christ to God for His satisfaction! Keep us in our spirit, enjoying and experiencing the blending of Christ’s sweet death and His fragrant resurrection to offer this Christ to God for His satisfaction!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, brother Ron Kangas’ sharing in the message for this week, and Life-study of Exodus, msg. 168 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-Study of Exodus (3), week 12 (week 36), The Incense.
- All Bible verses are taken from, Holy Bible Recovery Version.
- Hymns on this topic:
# Equal proportion, / In resurrection; / Seasoned with salt are they. / Ground into powder fine, / Consumed with fire divine— / O what an incense this, / Jesus my Lord! (Hymns #1116)
# Thou art the incense unto God, / In Thee acceptance is complete; / I want to pray yet more and more, / To offer up this fragrance sweet. (Hymns #813)
# In spirit only we would pray, / Ourselves by Thee possessed, / That from our spirit Christ the Lord / As incense be expressed. (Hymns #771)
About aGodMan
Just deeply open to the Lord and ask Him to shine within you as you pray and pray while maintaining sensitivity to your spirit.
Young people may realize that if they commit sins, they will find it very difficult to pray. But as we grow in the Lord and come to a finer stage in the spiritual life, we shall see that even a little bias in our spirit can keep us from praying properly. It is not necessary to sin in order to have your prayer hindered. Even a small amount of bias in your spirit can hinder your prayer. You may still pray if you have bias in your spirit, but deep within you may realize that this is not the kind of prayer the Lord desires. I dare not say whether or not the Lord will answer a prayer that issues from a biased spirit. However, I am assured that this is not the kind of prayer He desires.
I also know that such prayer does not have a pleasant fragrance to Him. Instead, He finds the odor of that kind of prayer very offensive. Many times our prayer has been altogether offensive and unpleasant to the Lord’s sense of smell. I believe that those saints with experience can endorse this word and say amen to it. From their experience they know that prayer which issues from impure motives or from bias in our spirit is offensive to the Lord.
Do you intend to pray? As you are about to pray, you need to be crossed out. Your natural being, your natural way, your natural thought, your natural desire, your natural preference, your natural choice—all must be crossed out. (Witness Lee, Life-study of Exodus, pp. 1792-1793)