Moreover, Christ became God’s food to satisfy God’s need; He also became our food to satisfy our need. God is fully satisfied in Christ, and we too are fully satisfied in Christ. At this moment within us we are joyful, at ease, peaceful, and comfortable; moreover, our heart is full of thanksgiving and praise. We have a sense that Christ is so good and so precious and that He is our peace, our reconciliation, and our acceptance to God. In this way we experience Christ as the peace offering. The peace offering is based on the trespass offering and the sin offering. Our trespasses and our sin were dealt with through Christ’s redemption, so there is no more problem between God and us. God is satisfied, and we are also satisfied; thus, we have peace with God.
Furthermore, we will eventually say to the Lord, “Lord, I want to be like You. You are so balanced, so fine, so obedient, and so blameless. Lord, I want to be like You in experiencing the death of the cross with the power of resurrection. You are without sin and You are not natural.” At this time we will experience Him as unleavened cakes, made with fine flour mingled with oil, having frankincense and salt added into it, but without honey or leaven. We bring the cakes before God, offering them as food to God, and they also become our food. We bring the Lord’s life, the Lord’s living, and the Lord’s conduct and walk and offer them all to God as an offering for our enjoyment as well as God’s enjoyment. This is the experience of the meal offering. Perhaps what we experience is a very small cake, and what Paul experienced was a very large cake; however, no matter what the size of the offering, we who have been saved all have a certain amount of experience of Christ as the meal offering.
For a person to experience Christ as the meal offering is still not enough. At this moment he will see that just as Christ was absolutely for God, he also ought to be for God; just as Christ offered Himself to live for God, he also ought to present himself as a living sacrifice. Romans 12:1 says, “Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, well pleasing to God, which is your reasonable service.” The one who is offering the burnt offering does not let the priest slaughter the sacrificial animal for him; rather, he himself has to slaughter it, skin it, cut it into pieces, and then arrange the pieces on the altar to be burnt for God’s acceptance. The result is that with God there is a satisfying fragrance, but on the earth there is only a heap of ashes. In the same manner, all that we have must be for God alone; if God accepts us, then all that we have will become ashes. When we become ashes before men, we will be a satisfying fragrance before God. We do not regard ashes as something pleasant, yet God delights in the satisfying fragrance that comes from the burning which turns the sacrifice into ashes.
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