Although all the offerings are types of Christ and are for our experience, there is a difference between the basic offerings and the drink offering. The sin offering, one of the basic offerings, was a type of Christ for the experience of sinners. Before sinners come to offer the sin offering, they do not have any experience. They gain experience by presenting the sin offering to God. No experience is required beforehand. Before you can pour out a drink offering, however, you must have a measure of experience. Without experience, you will not be able to have this offering because the drink offering is composed of our experience of Christ.
In the first seven chapters of Leviticus we have the five basic offerings: the burnt offering, the meal offering, the peace offering, the sin offering, and the trespass offering. There is no need to experience Christ before you offer Him as these basic offerings. But the drink offering is absolutely dependent upon our experience. This is quite important. Many believers have no understanding of the basic offerings, much less an understanding of the drink offering. The reason for this is that they are short of the real experiences of Christ. By the Lord's mercy we in His recovery must experience Christ in a practical, daily way. Daily we should experience Him as our burnt offering, meal offering, peace offering, sin offering, and trespass offering. In the beginning we offer Christ only in this way. But as we progress in our experience of Christ, we eventually discover an offering that is in addition to these basic offerings—the drink offering.
Suppose a certain man has been saved for just one day. He certainly has had no time to have the experience of Christ. But if he remains in the proper church life, the saints will help him to realize that he needs to live by Christ, taking Christ as his life in a practical way. As he learns to live by Christ, he will gradually realize that Christ is so much to him. The saints will no doubt help him to see that Christ is his burnt offering. He will realize that he should be absolutely for God; however, he will find that he is not able to be absolute. Nevertheless, Christ is his absoluteness. Through this experience, Christ will become his burnt offering for God's satisfaction. Furthermore, he will enjoy Christ as his meal offering, as the One who not only satisfies God, but who also feeds and supplies him. Then he will daily take Christ as his food, and Christ will nourish him and support him to live in the presence of God that God might be satisfied. In this way he will experience Christ as the meal offering. In like manner, he will experience the other basic offerings. By experiencing Christ in this way, he will eventually become a person filled and saturated with Christ. The very Christ who saturates him will be his wine, and the brother himself will be saturated with this wine and actually become one with the wine.
Some may wonder what ground we have for saying that Christ is wine. This is not my word; it is the Lord's word in Matthew 9:17. In this verse the Lord said, "Neither do they put new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wineskins burst, and the wine pours out, and the wineskins are destroyed; but they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved." The Lord spoke this word in His answer to some disciples of John the Baptist who asked Him why His disciples did not fast (Matt. 9:14). The Lord wisely answered their question in a marvelous way with two parables. Firstly, He said, "No one puts a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for that which fills it up pulls away from the garment, and a worse tear is made" (Matt. 9:16). Secondly, He spoke about not putting new wine into old wineskins. What is this new cloth and new wine? Both the new cloth and the new wine are Christ. The new cloth is Christ as our new, unique, complete, and perfect righteousness for us to be justified before God. As the new cloth Christ is our righteousness to cover us. The new wine is Christ as the stirring life, as the life that stirs us up to make us happy and even "crazy." To be "crazy" is to be drunken. Christ as the new cloth covers us outwardly and Christ as the new wine stirs us and makes us "crazy" inwardly. In other words, Christ causes us to be drunken. All Christians must be "crazy" like this.
In the summer of 1935 Brother Nee stayed in my home town. During this time we had a conference in which we were all "crazy." Brother Nee did not stir us up to be "crazy"; we were "crazy" already. When he saw how "crazy" we were, he gave us a supplementary message telling us that we all need to be "crazy," beside ourselves (2 Cor. 5:13). He said that if any Christian has never been "crazy," then he is not yet up to standard. He said, "If you are always nice, formal, gentle, and regulated, you are below standard. You must be `crazy' in the Lord like a drunkard."