“Let us eat, and be merry.” The joy came in the feasting on the fatted calf. Our salvation is one of eating. Christ is our fatted calf, our bread of life, to supply us and to bring us joy. In contrast to the robe, the ring, and the shoes, which are visible, the calf is eaten and disappears from sight. It is digested and assimilated to become part of the fibers of our being. Its effect on us is to strengthen, empower, sustain, support, comfort, and satisfy. Such is our subjective Savior to us. That is why eating brings joy.
You are not changed by power or magic. Your present height is probably over five feet and your weight more than a hundred pounds. Were you born that size? Did you become that big by fasting for three days and then instantly change from infant to adult? By no means. Your growth came about gradually by regular eating. You could not have grown by eating pearls or diamonds, because they are not food and your body could not have digested them. The fatted calf is not an empty term. It is a picture that Christ satisfies us by being taken into us as food.
Day by day we cooperate with Him by opening to take Him in as we pray-read His Word. This is the way Christ is formed in us, makes His home in our hearts, and transforms us into His image from glory to glory. As you read the word for nourishment, take only a small portion at a time. Don’t try to swallow the fatted calf in one gulp! Four or five small meals a day is best for your gradual and steady spiritual growth.
Though the eating of Jesus is the focal point of the New Testament, it has been neglected by Christians. In 1958 the Lord began to recover this. In 1965 we had a series of messages in Los Angeles on the matter of eating. Right after that the Lord gave us pray-reading. How rich the pray-reading of the Word was in 1968 and 1969! I hope the saints will come back to this nourishing way of taking in the Word and will thus eat of Jesus as the fatted calf.
The story of the prodigal son ends with the conversation between the father and the elder son. What made the elder son angry in the father’s treatment of the returned prodigal? Notice that the complaint was not about the robe, the ring, or the shoes, but “Thou hast killed for him the fatted calf” (Luke 15:30). The outward gifts of the father did not cause the elder son’s resentment. It was the killing of the fatted calf that enraged him.
Just as the Pharisees and scribes murmured that the Lord was eating with sinners, so in our day religious people are offended when they hear of eating Jesus. The objective teachings they do not oppose, but the subjective experience of Christ as our food they reject.
There are other parables in the Gospels which also refer to eating. In Luke 14:16-24 there is the parable of the great supper, where those who were invited made excuses. Eventually the house was filled, not with them, but with the poor, the crippled, and even some who were compelled to attend. What a picture this is of how the chosen ones spurned the Lord’s offer of Himself as a feast!
Matthew 22:1-14 recounts that a king made a marriage feast for his son. When everything was ready-the oxen and the fatted beasts killed-the invited ones again would not attend, and others were found in the thoroughfares and invited instead. One of the guests at the table was found not to have on a marriage garment and was cast into outer darkness. The oxen and the fatted beasts refer to Christ, who was killed that God’s chosen people might enjoy Him as a feast. The Gentiles were sought in the thoroughfares after the Jews’ rejection of Him. To enjoy the marriage feast requires not only the “best robe” but the marriage garment as well, a picture of Christ experienced as our subjective righteousness.
Notice how Christ portrays His coming, in both its first and second aspects, as a king’s marriage feast for his son. Christ came that His people might have their hunger satisfied by taking Him as their feast. That feast was opened to all when “those who were His own did not receive Him” (John 1:11). This feast in fullness will be enjoyed by the overcoming believers in the next age.
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