The peace offering is for our thanksgiving to the Father (Lev. 7:12-13). Because we are grateful to God the Father, we offer something of Christ as the peace offering to Him. We offer Christ as either an ox, a sheep, a lamb, or a goat with unleavened cakes mingled with oil. This is very meaningful. These unleavened cakes were thin cakes with holes. This means that they were easy to partake of and enjoy. The peace offering was also offered with unleavened, hollow wafers anointed with oil and with cakes of fine flour saturated and mingled with oil. The fine flour mingled with oil signifies Christ's humanity mingled with the Spirit. Christ's humanity mingled with divinity becomes a cake for our satisfaction.
When we offer the required peace offering for our thanksgiving, we need to add these cakes and wafers, which signify our experiences of Christ. This means we have to experience Christ in these three ways: Christ as the unleavened cakes mingled with oil, with the Spirit; Christ as the unleavened wafers anointed with oil, with the Spirit; and Christ as the cakes of fine flour saturated and mingled with oil, with the Spirit.
In addition to these cakes, the offerer also presented the peace offering to God with leavened bread. The leavened bread indicates that the presentation of Christ as the peace offering is initiated by us. Regardless of how spiritual we are, anything initiated by us has the element of sin, the element of leaven.
Leviticus 23 speaks of the Feast of Pentecost, in which two loaves of fine flour baked with leaven are offered to God (v. 17). These two loaves signify the two parts of the church as the Body of Christ, the Jewish part and the Gentile part, offered to God on the day of Pentecost. The two loaves are baked with leaven because both parts of the church are still sinful. In Christ Himself there is no leaven, but because we initiate this kind of thanksgiving offering, we bring in something unclean. This should help us to see that we should not have any trust in ourselves. Even in offering the peace offering for our thanksgiving toward God the Father, we are not clean because we are still in the flesh.
The focus of this lesson is as follows: when the problem of our trespass and sin is solved by Christ as the trespass offering and the sin offering, and when God and we are satisfied with Christ as the burnt offering and the meal offering, we can offer Christ to God the Father as the peace offering for our mutual enjoyment in peace.
The peace offering can be offered only after two things take place. First, on our side the problem of our trespass and sin should be solved by Christ as our trespass offering and as our sin offering. Second, God and we should be satisfied with Christ as the burnt offering and the meal offering. The burnt offering was fully for God, and the meal offering was for both God and man. When God and we are satisfied with Christ as the burnt offering and the meal offering, we can offer Christ as our peace offering for our mutual enjoyment in peace.