In the last chapter, we saw that a priest is the type of person that God planned to have for the fulfillment of His purpose. He is not merely a person serving the Lord, but one who is in reality mingled with the Lord to fulfill His purpose.
Not many Christians talk about the eternal purpose of the Lord, because very few are clear about God’s ultimate intention. In order to know the real priesthood, we must first know the spiritual, eternal intention of God. The Bible shows us that God’s intention is to work Himself into us that we and He may be fully one. This is the principle of incarnation. In other words, God comes into man to be fully one with man, so that it is hard to discern which part is God and which part is man. While the Lord was on the earth, He did many things, the source of which people could not discern. They could not tell whether they were done by God or by man. It was because Jesus, that wonderful person, was the God-man. As the very God, He became incarnated as man to be the expression of God. This is the principle of incarnation, and this principle reveals the real meaning of the priesthood.
One stronghold in the human mind is the concept that man must work for God. Before we were Christians, we simply forgot about the Lord and never talked about God. But once we turned to the Lord, we began to exercise our mind to think what we must do for the Lord. These thoughts flood into our mentality all the time. This is not of the Lord, but of the enemy.
Two sources exist in the whole universe—the divine source and the satanic source. The two trees in the garden reminded Adam of these two sources. The tree of knowledge reminded him that Satan is the source of death, and the tree of life, that God is the source of life. We may read the Bible many, many times, yet never realize that knowledge, work, and even good things other than God do not belong to the divine source. They always belong to the source of Satan. To do something for the Lord may be good, but its source is the wrong tree. We must realize that to do something for the Lord is awful, even terrible! What brought death into humanity? It was the tree of knowledge, and any consideration of doing something for the Lord comes from the same source.
The Lord’s only intention is for us to open ourselves to Him and let Him come into us to fill us and be one with us. Then He will do something through us. Whatever He does through us will flow out of Himself. This is the real service which God is seeking today.
If we have the spiritual understanding of the Bible from beginning to end, we will realize that this Book never commands us to do anything for God. God is continually presenting Himself to us as enjoyment. The Bible shows us that we must enjoy God; we must eat of Him and drink of Him. We must take Him as our life and as our life supply. This is why the tree of life is at the very beginning of the Bible. At the end of the Bible, we find the tree of life again. From the beginning to the end of the Bible, the tree of life signifies that God is our life supply and our enjoyment in life. The more we enjoy Him, the more we will be filled with Him. The more we enjoy Him, the more we will be saturated with Him. The more we enjoy Him, the more we will be taken over by Him; and the more we enjoy Him, the more we will be one with Him.
The Lord said, “I am the bread of life...he who eats Me shall also live because of Me” (John 6). And to those who receive Him, He will be in them a well or spring of water (John 4). We must forget about working. God only intends for us to enjoy Him all the time. There are many, many ways to speak about this one thing: to breathe Him, to take Him, to drink Him, and even to absorb Him as the sunlight. Only then will we be fully occupied, filled, saturated, and permeated with Him. Only when we are one with Him in this way will He work something out through us.
The Bible gives many different illustrations to show us this one thing. Look at the branches of the vine. They do nothing. They simply abide in the tree and absorb or enjoy the riches of the tree. When these branches are filled with the riches and saturated with the life-juice of the tree, something will be worked out through the branches. This is the real meaning of John 15. This very simple matter has been totally missed or lost by most Christians.
God intends to work Himself into us in such a way, for only then will we be in the priesthood. A priest is a person who is filled, saturated, and permeated with God until he is one with Him. God will then express something of Himself through such a person.