The Bible contains a very profound thought that cannot be fathomed or perceived without revelation: God wants to enter into man to be man’s life that He and man might have the same life, the same nature, and the living of the same kind of being—a God-man. This is neither a religious notion nor a moral concept.
God created man to be a vessel for Himself. Man is God’s vessel to contain God. Regardless of how noble and excellent you may be, you are nevertheless just a vessel for God. Only God should be your content. If you do not have God’s life and nature and if you are not filled with God, you are an empty vessel, and your human life, your living, your feeling, and your activities are all vain. They come to nothing. This is what God has planned and ordained for man.
How can God achieve His purpose? Consider the physical symbols. In order for something, such as chicken, to come into us to be our element and to be one with us, we have to eat it, digest it, and assimilate it. This is the way it becomes our blood, our cells, and our essence.
With a view to this, the Lord said, “I am the bread of life....He who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me” (John 6:48, 57b). Only by eating the Lord can we receive God into us as our content. Not only do we need to understand, apprehend, know, love, believe, follow, and worship the Lord; even more we need to eat Him.
Christianity tells people to believe in Jesus, love the Lord, follow Christ, and serve Christ; but it has lost the goal. We do these things for the purpose of receiving the Lord into us as our life. They are the procedures to reach the goal—eating Christ.
Today the Lord wants to recover the goal. To believe in the Lord is not just for our sins to be forgiven or for us to go to heaven; rather, it is for us to receive the Lord into us that He may be mingled with us as one essence. This is the goal. The apostle Paul said, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). He was even able to say, “For to me, to live is Christ” (Phil. 1:21), because Christ in him was his life and his essence and Christ had become one with him.
God’s desire for man is that man may eat Him. After God created man, He did not tell him to do anything. Instead, He placed Himself before man in the form of food to be received by man. God is edible for man to take Him in. He wants to enter into us, not only to be our life, but also to be our continuing life supply.
The line of eating is consistent throughout the whole Bible. From the first two chapters of Genesis to the last chapter of Revelation, the matter of eating is repeatedly referred to. When the children of Israel were leaving Egypt, they had to eat the lamb. In the wilderness they ate the manna. After they entered into Canaan, they ate the rich produce of the land. When they offered sacrifices in their worship to God, they ate the various offerings. When the Lord Jesus came, He said that He is the bread of life and that we have to eat Him and enjoy Him. Even in the Lord’s table meetings when we remember the Lord, our emphasis should not be on meditation and worship but on eating. Concerning the bread, He told the disciples, “Take, eat; this is My body” (Matt. 26:26b). Moreover, He said, “Do this in remembrance of Me” (Luke 22:19b). Therefore, the true remembrance of the Lord is eating, which is for us to exercise our spirit to receive the Lord into us again and again. The more we eat and drink the Lord, the more real our worship to Him is. True worship is for us to open our inner being to the Lord for Him to fill and saturate us more.