In Fellowship with God we Realise we’re Sinful & we take Christ as our Sin Offering

In order for us to remain in the enjoyment of the divine fellowship, we need to take Christ as our sin offering for the indwelling sin in our nature and as our trespass offering for the sinful deeds in our conduct; we partake of Him as our sin offering in the sense of enjoying Him as our life, even as the life that bears our sin and others sins.

Oh Lord, we want to maintain the divine fellowship in our Christian life. We love You, Lord, and we want to fellowship with You! Keep us in fellowship today. May we deal with anything that hinders this fellowship. We take You, Lord, as our sin offering for the sin in our nature. We take You as our trespass offering for the sins we commit daily. Bring us on with You and keep us in fellowship with You! Amen!

Thank the Lord that we have been brought into a lifelong relationship with God, for He is our Father and we are His children.

As we fellowship with the Lord, He is faithful to shine on us, for He is light, and our sins are exposed and shined on (1 John 1:8-9; 3:20-21; Lev. 4:3; 5:6; John 1:29; Rom. 8:3; 2 Cor. 5:21; 1 Pet. 2:24-25).

We realise that we need to maintain our fellowship with the Lord so that we may remain in the enjoyment of the divine fellowship.

If we read 1 John 1 we will see that one thing that hinders our fellowship with God is sin and also sins.

Our God is a loving God and we love Him, for His love has been poured out into our hearts.

He has dispensed His life into us, and we now fellowship with Him and with the saints, because we have His life and in His life we are one. It is easy to enter into the fellowship with God, but to maintain this fellowship is not so easy.

Our cooperation is required in order for us to maintain our fellowship with God.

We need to understand the difference between our relationship with God and our fellowship with God. Our relationship with God is not conditional, and it cannot be broken.

Once we receive the divine life and are a believer in Christ, a regenerated person, God is our Father.

We are born anew, and we can never be unborn. But just as in a family, suppose one of the children is naughty, and they may even say, I don’t like you anymore, dad! This interrupts the fellowship, even though the relationship is there.

The child is still the child of the parents, no matter how he behaves, but the fellowship is interrupted by different things. There is a need to be reconciled so that the fellowship is restored.

In our fellowship with God, the first thing that interrupts our fellowship is sin. And sin has two aspects: first, there’s the sin in our nature, and second, there are the sins in our conduct.

We see this in 1 John 1:8-9; if we say we do not have sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. This is the sin in our nature.

But if we confess our sins – these are plural, for these are the sins in our conduct – He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Hallelujah, we can confess our sins, taking Christ as our trespass offering, and we can take Christ as our sin offering for the sin in our nature so that our fellowship with God is maintained!

Take Christ as our Sin Offering to Deal with the Sinful Nature in our Flesh

What is sin? Sin is the evil nature of Satan, who injected himself into man through Adam’s fall and has now become the sinful nature of lawlessness that is dwelling, acting, and working as a law in us, the fallen men (Rom. 5:12, 19a, 21a; 6:14; 7:11, 14, 17-23; Psa. 51:5; 1 John 3:4; cf. 2 Thes. 2:3, 7-8).

Sin is not just a thing; sin is a person, even the person of Satan, the evil nature of Satan, and this sin is in us today, for we are fallen human beings.

We are constituted sinners because sin reigns in us, lords it over us, and seizes the opportunity to deceive us and kill us.

Many times we commit sins not because we want to but because of the sin that dwells in us; therefore, it is no longer we who work but the sin that dwells in us, even the evil that is present with us.

We all have this realisation; we have sin in our being.

Even as those who serve the Lord, as regenerated people who love the Lord and serve Him, we realise, as Moses did, that we are full of leprosy, that we have the flesh, and that sin is in us.

We can’t flee from ourselves; we have sin in our very nature. So we need to take Christ as our sin offering.

We take Christ as our sin offering for the sin in our nature. When we take Christ as our sin offering through prayer, we are no longer condemned, but we live a life of dependence. We depend on the Lord all the time.

We realise that we can commit sins at any time; we have the potential to commit sins, for sin is there, crouching, waiting for an opportunity to break our fellowship with God.

Our fellowship with God will bring us to become the New Jerusalem, for it is the very reality of the Body of Christ.

If we are not in the fellowship, God disappears, but when we are in the divine fellowship, we have God and we have everything we need to fulfil God’s purpose.

So Satan wants to destroy and interrupt our fellowship with God by means of sin. We should never take sin for granted, and we should never think that sins are something small.

We can apply the blood of Christ as we confess our sins, the evil deeds we commit, and we can take Christ as our sin offering for the sin in our nature.

Taking Christ as our sin offering means that our old man is dealt with (Rom. 6:6), that sin in the nature of fallen man is condemned (8:3), that Satan as sin itself is destroyed (Heb. 2:14), that the world is judged, and that the ruler of the world is cast out (John 12:31).

These five negative things – our old man, sin, Satan, the world, and the ruler of the world – all are dealt with by Christ as our sin offering.

The ruler of this world implies authority or power and the struggle for power (see Luke 4:5-8; cf. Matt. 20:20-21, 24; 3 John 9).

Satan is God’s adversary, His enemy, for he struggles for power. And now the entire humankind, including you and me, are struggling for power.

Even in serving the Lord, many times we are like the mother of the sons of Zebedee, trying to get more power or position for ourselves or for those close to us. Oh Lord Jesus!

We need to give the Lord the preeminence in all things and give Him the first place in all things.

As we do things such as shopping, going to work, doing chores around the house, or even resting, in all things, we need to give Christ the preeminence. We need to give Him the first place.

The struggle for power is the result, the issue, of the flesh, sin, Satan, the world, and the ruler of the world (Gal. 5:16-17, 24-26).

May we not become vainglorious, provoking one another and envying one another.

Sometimes, even among us, we may be envying one another or provoking one another. When others appreciate another brother or sister and it seems we are not that appreciated, envy rises up in us.

Satan is the ruler of this world in this age, and he wants worship. But we need to worship only God, and give only Christ the first place.

The law of sin in our flesh is the spontaneous power, strength, and energy to struggle with God. Oh Lord!

There’s such a law of sin in our flesh, which always defeats us, for it enables the flesh to struggle with God.

The law of the sin offering is the law of life of the pneumatic Christ, whom we enjoy, to automatically and spontaneously free us from the law of sin (Rom. 7:23; 8:2; Lev. 6:24-30; cf. 7:1-10).

Hallelujah for the law of the Spirit of life in our spirit! May we learn to take Christ as the sin offering for the sin in our nature and as the trespass offering for the sinful deeds we commit in our living!

Lord Jesus, we love You and we want to maintain our fellowship with You day by day. We want to remain in the enjoyment of the divine fellowship. Amen, Lord, we want to walk in the light even as You are in the light, so that we may have fellowship with one another. We take You as our sin offering for the indwelling sin in our nature. We take You as our trespass offering for the sinful deeds in our conduct. Oh Lord, we realise that we have sin in our nature, for the very evil nature of Satan has been injected into us to become the sinful nature of lawlessness dwelling, acting, and working as a law in every fallen man. We turn to You, Lord, and we take You as our sin offering. We depend on You. We take You as our life and as our everything. You are our sin offering. Praise the Lord, when we take Christ as our sin offering, our old man is dealt with, sin in the nature of the fallen man is condemned, Satan as sin is destroyed, the world is judged, and the ruler of the world is cast out! Hallelujah!

Through our Living Fellowship with God we Realise we’re Sinful and we Take Christ as our Sin Offering and Trespass Offering

How do we partake of Christ as the sin offering and the trespass offering? Why do we need to partake of Christ as our sin offering? And how do we do it?

As we fellowship with the Lord, who is light, we are exposed of our sins, the unrighteous deeds in our conduct, and we also realise that we have sin in our nature, in our flesh.

Through our genuine, intimate, living, and loving fellowship with God, who is light (1 John 1:5; Col. 1:12), we will realise that we are sinful, and we will take Christ as our sin offering and trespass offering.

It is not by introspection or self-analysis that we see how sinful we are and how our very nature is sin; it is under the Lord’s light as we fellowship with Him.

The more we love the Lord and enjoy Him, the more we will know how evil we are.

We have this as our experience in our Christian life many times. As we take time to behold the Lord, spending time with Him in His word or even just to confess our sins to Him, we realise how sinful we are.

On the one hand, we love the Lord and we enjoy Him; on the other hand, we realise how sinful and evil we are (Isa. 6:5; Luke 5:8; Rom. 7:18).

On the one hand, God is love; on the other hand, God is light. His being light is His being love, for when He shines on us in His love, we are not left in self-deception.

We shouldn’t take His shining and exposing in a negative way; rather, as He touches us and exposes the sins in our conduct and the very sin in our nature, may we remain with Him and take Christ as our sin offering and as our trespass offering.

We can apply His precious blood for all our sins to be washed and cleansed, and we can take Christ as our sin offering for the sin in our nature.

We may take some time to be with the Lord in a secluded place, where we have no distractions, and simply allow Him to shine on us and shine within us to expose our sins.

Under His light, we realise how sinful we are. The more we confess our sins, the more we realise that we have more to confess.

In our alone time with the Lord, even kneeling down before Him, we confess our sins, and His light exposes more and more sins.

We are a constitution of sin, a sin-producing factory, and even our very nature is sin in the flesh. Oh Lord Jesus!

As we fellowship with God, who is light, we see our sins, we confess our sins, and we maintain our fellowship with God by taking Christ as our sin offering for the sin in our nature and as our trespass offering for the sinful deeds in our conduct.

Under His light, we realise that we have sin in our nature and sins in our conduct.

Realising that we have a sinful nature and taking Christ as our sin offering causes us to be judged and subdued, and this realisation preserves us, for it causes us not to have any confidence in ourselves (Phil. 3:3; Exo. 4:6).

We realise we are sinful and we have no confidence in ourselves; we only take Christ as our sin offering and also as our trespass offering. Oh Lord!

We partake of Christ as our sin offering in the sense of enjoying Him as our life, the life that bears others’ sins, so that we may be able to bear the problems of God’s people by ministering Christ to them as the sin-dealing life for them to be kept in the oneness of the Spirit (see 1 John 5:16; Lev. 10:17).

On the one hand, we take Christ as our sin offering for the sin in our nature; on the other hand, we can be one with Him in this, in bearing others’ sins by ministering Christ to them as the sin-dealing life.

May we have such an experience today for the building up of the church as the Body of Christ through our maintaining our fellowship with God.

Lord Jesus, we come to You as we are; we want to touch You and walk in the light, even as You are light. We want to remain in an intimate, loving, living, and genuine fellowship with You day by day. We love You, Lord, and we open to You. We open to Your light. Shine on us. Shine within us. May we realise that we are sinful and may we take Christ as our sin offering for the sin in our nature. Amen, Lord, we love You and we enjoy You, and under Your light we see how sinful we are. Oh, how evil we are in our nature, for our very nature in the flesh is sin! We come to You to fellowship with You in an intimate, living, and loving way; we say Amen to Your shining. Oh Lord, the more we love You and enjoy You, the more we see and realise how sinful we are. We give ourselves to You today. We take You as our sin offering for the sin in our nature. We take You as our trespass offering for the sinful deeds in our conduct. We want to maintain our fellowship with You throughout the day! Amen!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration for this article/sharing comes from the Word of God, the enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by the brother Ricky Acosta on this topic, and portions from, Life-study of Leviticus, pp. 174-180, by Witness Lee, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Experiencing, Enjoying, and Expressing Christ (part 3 – 2025 Summer Training), week 35, The Fellowship of the Eternal Life— the Reality of Living in the Body of Christ – day 4.
• Similar articles on this topic:
  – What is it to Take Christ as the Sin Offering? More via, The Hearing of Faith.
  – Jesus the Lamb of God, via, Bibles for America blog.
  – Touchstones of God’s economy – Leviticus, via, Affirmation and Critique.
  – Leviticus (Program #21) – The Law of the Sin, Trespass, Peace Offerings, via, Bible study radio.
  – The need of Christ as the offerings, a portion from, Christ as the Reality, Chapter 2, by Witness Lee.
  – What is Redemption? How is Salvation Different? More via, Holding to truth in love.
  – Two needs, a portion from, Christ as the Reality, Chapter 21, by Witness Lee.
  – Fellowship Based on the Lamb’s Redemption in the City of Glory, via, New Jerusalem blog.
  – The sin offering being slaughtered in the place where the burnt offering is slaughtered, a portion from, Life-Study of Leviticus, Chapter 20, by Witness Lee.
• Hymns on this topic:
  – God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all! / Oh, how we love within His presence to dwell! / In this light we enjoy a constant cleansing within— / From every sin! / In the light, / We are walking— / Fellowship, / We’re enjoying; / And the blood / Of God’s Son / Is cleansing us from sin. / We confess, / He is faithful / To forgive— / He is righteous. / What a joy! / We are cleansed / From every sin! (Hymns #1197)
  – Thou art the sin-oblation, / For us Thou sin wast made; / By death for our redemption / The ransom Thou hast paid. / Thou art the trespass-offering, / Thou all our sins didst bear / To satisfy God’s justice, / That we His pardon share. (Hymns #195 stanza 4)
  – ’Tis here Thy light illuminates / My true condition unto me; / ’Tis here Thy blood’s effectiveness / To cleanse from sin I gladly see. / Thy Spirit too anoints me here / And makes Thy very substance mine; / Thy very self I thus enjoy / And know Thy very heart’s design. (Hymns #813 stanzas 3-4)