CHAPTER ELEVEN
HOW GOD BECOMES MAN’S ENJOYMENT
Scripture Reading: Eph. 3:16-20; Phil. 2:13; Rom. 8:2; John 6:57; 15:7-8; Eph. 6:18; 1 Thes. 5:17, 19
THE CHRISTIAN LIFE BEING TO EAT AND DRINK GOD
Let us consider further the way to enjoy God by eating and drinking Him, that is, by breathing in God. I bear a heavy burden and feel that it is very difficult to speak concerning how to eat and drink God. Without a clear explanation, however, the saints may have a wrong understanding. If my speaking is taken as a method, it will result in an artificial practice. The more we imitate, the less we will eat God, and the less we will touch Him. The more we imitate, the more we are in ourselves and are artificial. It is difficult to explain how to enjoy God. There are methods we can use to touch God; we are not without a way. There is a way to touch God, receive God, and breathe in God. There is a way to do everything. However, I do not feel to give the brothers and sisters methods. Methods can become something artificial. If all we have are methods, we cannot exercise them in a normal way.
God has no desire for us to do anything for Him. He has done everything for us. However, even though He is our food, we still bear a certain amount of responsibility. Although we do not need to do anything, we still need to eat and drink Him. It is our responsibility to receive Him. We need to do only one thing: we need to receive Him, absorb Him, eat Him, and drink Him. Whether we are up to the proper standard as a Christian depends on whether we are right in the matter of eating, drinking, and enjoying God. Being a Christian depends only on our receiving God. If we have a problem with receiving God and are even a little off, we are not up to God’s standard as a Christian. However, if we are proper in absorbing God, all our problems will be solved, and we will be proper Christians who match God’s standard. For this reason I have stressed that only one thing matters in the Christian life—eating, drinking, and absorbing God.
THE MEANING OF EATING AND DRINKING GOD
In the preceding chapters we pointed out that God requires man only to receive Him as food. He desires man only to receive Him as life by eating Him as food. God’s being life to man means that He becomes every element in man. God simply desires to enter into us as food to be life and everything to us. Our responsibility is to eat and drink Him, to absorb Him. These expressions are new even in Christianity. The Christian life is simply a matter of eating and drinking God. Although this is a simple word, it is very profound.
First, eating and drinking denote a union. Brother Hwang and I are two persons. We can never be fully united. Although we can join hands, embrace each other, or even be bound together by chains, we still cannot be fully united. His breathing is his breathing, and my breathing is my breathing; there is no perfect union. The best and most thorough way for us to have a union is for me to eat him so that he can enter into me. If it were possible, I would demonstrate this. I would get a knife, cut up Brother Hwang, cook him in a pot, and eat him. Then tomorrow morning Brother Hwang and I would be fully one; we would be united and joined to such an extent that we would no longer be two persons. My breathing would be his breathing, and he would breathe within me. This shows you that the best way to be united is through eating and drinking. Many chickens, ducks, fish, and pigs have been united with us, because they have been eaten by us. In eating and drinking, two entities become one; they are joined and united together. Those who know God know that His greatest desire is to be joined to man and for man to be joined to Him. This union can take place only by eating and drinking. God comes to us as food, and we take Him in by eating. In this way God and we become absolutely one; there is a perfect union. This is the first meaning of eating and drinking.
Second, eating and drinking imply digestion and assimilation. Twelve hours after eating Brother Hwang, he will be fully digested and assimilated into me. This shows that eating and drinking include a transformation. When God is eaten by us, He becomes us.
Some may think that it is presumptuous to say this. They may consider it sufficient to say that man, who is small, low, in darkness, and evil, draws near to God. After all, God is great, high, holy, and in light, but man is small, low, evil, and in darkness. Man is privileged to be able to touch such a God. Others may think that to say that man can draw near to God through the blood of Jesus Christ is an affront to God’s holiness. However, I am saying that man can eat God, and I will even go further to say that we can digest and assimilate God. Is this word too risky? No, we should not think that God will disappear by our digesting Him. To say that is heresy. However, God’s intention is to become us. The only way for God, who is outside of us, to become us from within is by eating and drinking. Whatever we take into us eventually becomes us. In the same way, when we eat and drink God, He becomes us.
Third, what we eat and drink becomes our inward constituent. What I eat and drink not only is digested and transformed into me, but it also becomes part of my inward constitution.
A brother once noted that because some people eat too much beef or mutton, they have a strong smell of cow or sheep. If one eats beef three meals a day, after a while he will smell like a cow. He has not become a cow, but others will sense that he smells like a cow because the cow he has digested has become him. It has become his constitution. What we eat becomes our constitution. In the same way, when we eat and drink God, He is digested and transformed within us to become our constitution.
Finally, what we eat and drink becomes our nutrition and nourishment, and we live by it. All the things that we eat become our nourishment and inward supply; we live by them. If we do not eat, or if we do not eat enough, we will be short of an inward nourishment and supply, and we will not be able to survive. When we eat God, He becomes our nourishment and supply, and we can live by Him. Hence, the Lord Jesus says that he who eats Him will live because of Him (John 6:57). When we eat the Lord, He is mingled with us, digested by us, and He becomes our constitution, nourishment, and supply, enabling us to live because of Him. We can live, move, and work because we have eaten Him and have received Him into us as our nourishment and supply.