In the same way the meal offering is for the trespass offering. The meal offering is a type of Christ’s humanity. His human life was just like the fine flour, so even, so perfect, so fine, having no defect and no coarseness. So He is qualified to be our trespass offering. Trespasses are the defects in our human life. We have a lot of defects, a lot of imperfections. We have a lot of shortcomings, a lot of mistakes, and a lot of wrongdoings. We need One who in His human life was perfect, balanced, fine, One with whom nothing was rough or tough or coarse. This qualifies Him to be our trespass offering. The meal offering backs up the trespass offering.
We can know this by our experiences. When you apply Christ as your trespass offering, at first you may not realize the matter of Christ as the meal offering. But gradually you will begin to realize there are so many defects and mistakes and imperfections and transgressions in your daily walk. At the same time you will realize that the Lord Jesus is the perfect One. He is so fine and complete and balanced. With Him there is no imperfection. Because of this you realize that He can be your trespass offering. You would begin to realize how the Lord Jesus as a man could die on the cross as your trespass offering. It is because He was so perfect. By reading the four Gospels you can see that His human living was even and perfect, just like the fine flour.
It is in the same way that you can realize something of the sin offering and the burnt offering. Perhaps you have been born again for twenty-five years and growing in the Lord, yet you realize that you are still sinful. Sin, such an ugly and troublesome thing, is still in your nature. Spontaneously you would apply the Lord Jesus as your sin offering. At the same time you would realize that He is for God, but you are not. You would realize that you may be partially for God, but you are not absolutely for God. You would realize that He is so absolute for God, so He is qualified to deal with your sin and even with your nature. He was qualified to nail on the cross your sin including your nature. This means in your experiential prayer there is something mentioned concerning Christ as the support and the backing of the sin offering. This means that when you experience Him as the sin offering, you realize at the same time He is the burnt offering so absolute for God that He is qualified to be your burnt offering. His perfection in His human living qualifies Him to deal with our trespasses, and His absoluteness for God qualifies Him to deal with our sin.
Don’t take this as a mere doctrine. You have to practice this continually. We have to know the truths not just by teaching, but by our experiences, especially realized in our prayer. What kind of prayer we have depends upon our experience.
The first two offerings, the burnt offering and the meal offering, support the last two offerings, the sin offering and the trespass offering. This shows us the offerings from the side of the supports. But there is another side, the side of our enjoyment.
According to our experience we don’t start our enjoyment of the offerings from the first two, the burnt offering and the meal offering, but from the last two, the trespass and the sin offerings. Firstly, we enjoy Christ as our trespass offering. Even at the time of our conversion we experienced Christ as our trespass offering. According to 1 Peter 2:24 He bore our sins, our trespasses on the tree. But after the experience of Christ as the trespass offering we discover that we are still sinful. In our nature there is nothing but sin. So we then come to Christ as the sin offering. This was Paul’s experience in Romans 7. He discovered that in his flesh there was nothing good (v. 18). He discovered that sin was dwelling in his flesh (v. 17). At that time he began to enjoy Christ as the sin offering. Paul discovered his sinful nature in Romans 7, and he experienced Christ as the sin offering in chapter eight. Romans 8:3 says that, “God sending His own Son in the likeness of the flesh of sin and concerning sin, condemned sin in the flesh.” J. N. Darby in his notes on Romans 8:3 indicates that the phrase “for sin” refers to a sacrifice for sin or a sin offering. In Romans 8 the dealing is with sin, not with the sins in our behavior, but the very sin in our flesh and nature. When you experience these matters and when you enjoy these things, spontaneously you will realize that to be such a complete trespass offering, Christ needs to be so perfect as the meal offering. Also to deal with the sin in your nature, Christ needed to be absolute as the burnt offering to God.
This is why I encourage you to practice taking Christ as your sin offering and as your trespass offering. Then you will realize that Christ is your burnt offering for the sin offering and that Christ is your meal offering for the trespass offering.
Suppose we have experienced all these matters. This brings us then to the peace offering. The peace offering is just a composition of all the other four offerings. In the peace offering a part would be burned to God as the burnt offering (Lev. 7:30, 31). Another part would be given for a meal offering (7:11-13).
Furthermore, within the peace offering the trespass offering is also implied. The peace offering is constituted with the animal life and the vegetable life. Firstly, there is the need of some sacrifice to shed the blood. This shedding of the blood implies the shedding of the blood of the sin offering and the shedding of the blood of the trespass offering. This is an all-inclusive shedding of the all-inclusive blood of the two offerings, the sin offering and the trespass offering.
Then there is the vegetable life with the cakes of fine flour for the meal offering. Also a part of the peace offering which is offered for sin and a trespass offering is burned on the altar as a burnt offering. This means that with this one central offering, the peace offering, all the other four kinds of offerings are included. In other words you cannot enjoy Christ as the peace offering if you have not enjoyed Him as the sin offering and trespass offering based upon the burnt offering and the meal offering.