The Lord Being Our Savior by Entering into Us 
through Eating and Drinking

We always say that the Lord Jesus is our Savior. However, in what way is the Lord Jesus our Savior? Someone drew a picture with a man in a miry ditch and next to him was the Lord with an outstretched hand. This person considered that this is how Jesus saves us. That is, after a person is saved, he needs the Lord to hold him by his right hand in order to progress in his spiritual journey. But is this the way the Lord Jesus acts as our Savior? No! The Lord Jesus does not save us in an outward way or hold our hand in a physical way. Rather, He is the Lord whom we eat and drink. We eat Him and drink Him, and He saves us from within. As the edible and drinkable One, the Lord Jesus would say to the man in the miry ditch, “Poor man, are you hungry? Eat Me. Are you thirsty? Drink Me.” When this one takes the living Lord into him through eating and drinking, he will experience an inner operation, an inner strength, which will bring him out of the pit. After he is saved, the Lord does not need to hold him by the right hand. He is in him, supporting him and living and walking through him. There is no need to teach him to take the right way or to exhort him to be good. He only needs to take a drink of the Lord Jesus in the morning, and the Lord will live, move, and operate within him. Then it will be impossible for him not to take the right way.

This is our Savior. We often say that we trust in the Lord, but the New Testament never speaks of trusting in the Lord Jesus in an outward way. When the word trust is used in the Chinese Union Version, it is often an inaccurate rendering of the original language. For example, in Philippians 4:13 Paul says, “I am able to do all things in Him who empowers me.” The Chinese Union Version translates this as, “I am able to do all things by trusting in the One who empowers me.” We do not do things by trusting in Him. We are in Him. We can be in Him because He is in us. We have taken Him in through eating and drinking. He is mingled with us, and we are mingled with him. We are not merely trusting in Him, but we are joined to Him. He is mingled with us and has saturated our entire being. Hence, we are in Him. Because we are in Him, we can do all things. Actually, it is not we who are able to do all things, but it is He who is doing all things through mingling Himself with us. The Lord does not give us an outward, objective deliverance. He does not remain in Himself, and we remain in ourselves. He is not merely offering us a helping hand. He is not our Savior in an objective way. Our salvation is absolutely subjective. It is absolutely a matter of the Lord coming into us to become our food and our salvation.

Salvation Being a Matter of Eating and Drinking

In the Old Testament Types

This is clearly portrayed in the Old Testament types. In the picture of God delivering the children of Israel in the book of Exodus, He did not lift His mighty hand and pull His people out of Egypt one by one. Rather, in this picture of God’s salvation, God commanded His people to prepare one lamb per household. In the evening they slaughtered the lamb and ate its flesh. How did they eat it? They ate with their staff in their hand and their sandals on their feet. This typifies a journey. The strength for their journey came from the flesh of the lamb. There was not an outpouring of power from on high that delivered them out of Egypt. It was the flesh of the lamb, which they ate, that became their inward supply and strength and sustained them when they were thrust out of Egypt. They were able to leave Egypt by the strength of the food they ate.

Because there was no food, they became weary again when they reached the wilderness. However, God did not say, “Do this or do that”; rather, He sent manna from heaven and daily fed them to the full so that they had the strength to continue. When they became thirsty, God did not tell them to do this or that; instead, He cleft a rock and out came water, which quenched their thirst. Prior to reaching Mount Sinai, God’s deliverance of the children of Israel was altogether through eating and drinking. They ate the lamb, unleavened bread, and manna, and they drank water from the rock. This eating and drinking brought them onward in their journey. God did not command them to do anything other than eat and drink. It was their ignorance of God and of themselves that forced God to give them the law that spoke of His requirements upon them. The law was not God’s original intention. His original intention was for them to enjoy Him by eating and drinking.

What were they eating and drinking? In the Old Testament the people were not clear, but in the New Testament we are very clear. The lamb they ate was Christ. First Corinthians 5:7 says, “Our Passover, Christ, also has been sacrificed.” We are eating the same Lamb. Praise the Lord, He is not only the redeeming Lamb who takes away the sin of the world, but even more He is an edible Lamb who dispenses Himself into us. As a Lamb, He not only redeems us from our sins but also avails Himself to be our food and satisfaction.

We should read Exodus 12 again. The flesh of the lamb was eaten by the Israelites, and the blood was put on the doorposts and the lintel. The Israelites did not obtain their strength from the blood; the blood could only expiate their sins before God. It was the flesh of the lamb, which they consumed, that afforded them the strength for their journey. In the same principle, if the Son of God had shed His blood on the cross merely to redeem us from our sins, we would have received only the forgiveness of our trespasses before God. We must thank and praise Him that He also has given Himself to us. As we take Him in, He becomes our life. He is not only the Lamb who shed His blood but the Lamb who has become our food.

Why do we remember the Lord by breaking bread? Why do we eat the bread and drink the cup when we remember the Lord? The Lord seemed to say, “This bread is My body, broken for you; take and eat. This cup is my blood, shed for you; take and drink.” When He died on the cross for us, He not only made propitiation for our sins before God but also became food for us to eat. A lamb or chicken cannot be our food unless it is first killed. In the same way, the Son of God was slain in order for us to eat Him. It is a pity that poor, degraded, and deformed Christianity does not know anything concerning this aspect of the Lord Jesus’ death. Many Christians are only aware of a redeeming Christ who was crucified for them. They do not see that as a Lamb, who shed His blood for us, He is also our food who can be eaten by us.

Let us consider manna. Manna is a type of the Lord Jesus. When the Israelites were in the wilderness, God did not come down from heaven to hold Moses, Aaron, and Miriam by the hand to take them through the wilderness. Instead, God sent manna from heaven, and Moses, Aaron, and Miriam took it and were filled with it in order to continue with their journey. This is a type. What is manna? We know that manna is a type of Christ, but the people who ate it did not know this. They saw only a small, white thing that came down from heaven and looked like coriander seed and bdellium. They asked, “What is this?”—which is the meaning of the word manna. We are often like the Israelites, enjoying the Lord Jesus, eating and drinking Him, but we do not know that it is the Lord we are enjoying. We too ask, “What is this?” Perhaps we rise up in the morning to pray, and in our fellowship with Him we sense a power welling up from within that enables us to endure what we previously were unable to endure. In the past if our wife said something to us, we would lose our temper. But now we are happy and joyful no matter how much she complains. We may wonder, “What is happening? I used to lose my temper, but today I have not lost my temper once. What is this?” This is manna. This is Christ. Christ has another name that is given to Him by those who are not very familiar with Him: What is this? Because He is food that cannot be found anywhere in the world, we do not know Him, but we enjoy Him. We know the food that we regularly eat. However, here is a wonderful food that becomes our strength once it enters into us, yet we do not know what it is. Hence, we continually ask, “What is this?” Instead of asking what it is, we should joyfully declare, “This is Christ. This is our glorious Lord. He has become our food. He has become our satisfaction. Not only so, He has also become our living water that quenches our thirst whenever we drink Him. Christ is the spiritual rock that follows us.”

In the Old Testament the lamb, the unleavened bread, the manna, and the living water are all types. When the Lord Jesus came, the reality, the body of the shadows, came. The God who is the tree of life to man, who was the unleavened bread, the manna, and the living rock, became incarnated. He came among men for the purpose of presenting Himself to man to be his full contentment and satisfaction.