The meal offering to be eaten by the priests signifies Christ in His humanity to be dispensed into us for us to live a priestly life (Lev. 2:1-3; 6:14-18; 7:9-10). The meal offering was a piece of bread, or a cake (2:4-5). These cakes entered into the priests by the priests' eating, and the element of these cakes was dispensed into the priests. Since the meal offering was a type of Jesus, the eating of the meal offering by the priests indicates that we must eat Jesus. However, the Jesus whom we eat is not a cake. According to the New Testament, today this Jesus in His resurrection is a Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). The cake that we eat is a spiritual cake, which is just the Spirit Himself. Christ is the cake and the bread of the meal offering, and this Christ is the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17). We eat physical bread with our hands and mouth and receive it into our stomach. But today the spiritual bread, the spiritual cake, is Christ Himself as the Spirit. We eat this spiritual bread not with our physical organs but with our spiritual organ, our spirit. This shows us clearly that the way to eat Jesus is to exercise our spirit to contact Him and to dwell on Him. Hence, through our spirit we can take Christ the Spirit as our spiritual cake.
The sin offering and trespass offering to be eaten by the offering priests signify Christ in His redemption from sin and sins to be dispensed into us that we may enjoy Him with others as the Redeemer from sin and sins (Lev. 6:26, 29-30; 7:5-7). The sin offering and the trespass offering are two offerings, and they are also one offering. In Leviticus 5 these offerings are referred to interchangeably (vv. 7-12). All the priests were qualified to eat the meal offering (2:3, 10; 6:16, 18; 7:10); however, only the serving priests, the offering priests, had the right to enjoy the sin offering (6:26; 7:7).
Christ as the Spirit is the meal offering, and He is also the offering for sin and trespasses. When we exercise our spirit to enjoy, dwell upon, and receive Christ as the sin offering and the trespass offering, we are filled with Christ as the Spirit, and we sense that all our sins are gone. We no longer have sins or sin; we have only Christ as the Spirit. Then, as the serving priests we offer to God the Christ whom we have enjoyed as the sin and trespass offering. However, we do not offer Him for ourselves but for others. After enjoying Christ for ourselves, we need to come to God to offer Him for others. This is to contact sinners to minister to them the Christ whom we have received and enjoyed. In this way we enjoy Christ even more as our sin and trespass offering. In our ministering of Him to others as the sin and trespass offering, we enjoy Him as these offerings for ourselves. This is the meaning of the type of the sin and trespass offering.
The sin offering from which any blood was brought into the tent of meeting to make propitiation in the holy place was not to be eaten by anyone; it was to be burned with fire (6:30). However, the offering whose blood was sprinkled at the altar could be enjoyed not by the sinner but by the offering priests. The sinner brought an offering for sin, and a priest offered this sin offering for the sinner. The offering priests then had the right to enjoy what the sinner had offered to God. The enjoyment of Christ as the sin and trespass offering is very subjective and particular. We must first enjoy Christ as the sin and trespass offering in our spirit and be filled with Him as the Spirit. Then we can help others by ministering Christ as such an offering to them, that is, by offering Christ as the sin and trespass offering for them. Then both we and they will receive the benefit of Christ as our sin offering. On our side, we will enjoy Him, while on His side, He will have more opportunity to dispense Himself into us as the sinless element, the element for overcoming sin. Then this sinless, sin-overcoming element will be dispensed into us to constitute our being, and we will overcome sin.
It is easy for us to lose our temper. This is one of many of our sins, and we cannot overcome it in ourselves. However, every morning we can spend a time to exercise our spirit to look on Him, to dwell on Him, as the Spirit. This is to eat Him, enjoy Him, and absorb Him as the very element that is sinless and overcomes sin. His element is dispensed into us and constitutes our being. In this way our constitution will change. When the occasions for sin come, we will have a constitution within that is more than able to overcome sin. This is what it means to live by the Spirit. To live by the Spirit is not merely to reckon that we have died with Christ; it is to live by a positive element that constitutes us continually. This element is the offering that we eat.