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Scripture Reading: Gen. 3:15; 22:18a; Gal. 3:16; Rom. 5:15b, 19; 1 Cor. 15:21; 1 Tim. 2:5; Heb. 2:9, 14-18; Rev. 1:13; John 19:5
In Christianity there are two extreme views concerning the person of Jesus. The modernists talk much about Jesus as a man. They say that Jesus was only a Jewish man, denying the Lord’s divinity and not recognizing that He is the very God incarnated to be a man. In other words, they do not recognize the incarnation. Of course, this is not just an extreme teaching but the greatest heresy on the earth and in the universe. Not to recognize that Jesus is God incarnated to be a man is the greatest heresy.
Due possibly to the heresy of the modernists, the fundamental Christians have gone to another extreme. They preach and teach so much concerning Christ as the Son of God. There is nothing wrong with this, but they have neglected the humanity of Jesus. They stress the divinity of Christ so much, but they teach and preach very little regarding the humanity of Christ. This is the hidden subtlety of the enemy. On the one hand, the enemy would not let people believe that the Lord Jesus is the Son of God, and on the other hand, the subtle one would have us preach concerning His divinity while neglecting the Lord’s humanity. We must realize that although Christ is the Son of God, whatever He did and all that He is today depend not only on His divinity but even more on His humanity.
We have mentioned that the basic framework and structure of the Ark and the tabernacle was not gold but wood. This signifies that what Christ is and what He has done does not depend on the divine nature so much as on the human nature. The humanity of Christ is the main structure. He is God, but whatever He did and whatever He is today requires His humanity.
We must be clear, however, that His humanity is not of the same source as ours. This is why we were born of men and He was born of a woman. We are the descendants of man, but He was the seed of a woman. Both He and we are human, but the sources are different. He is a man, but He is a man of a different category. Yet it is meaningful and wonderful that these two sources are very much related to one another. Only the Holy Spirit can make this matter clear to us. The woman was also a descendant of our source, but Jesus did not come from that source. Jesus came from the woman, from another source. This other source has something to do with our source, yet the two are different.
He took humanity upon Himself, and this very humanity is the main structure for Him to destroy the serpent, the enemy of God. It is by this structure, this humanity, that God could bring the blessing upon all the nations of the earth. “I will put enmity / Between you and the woman / And between your seed and her seed; / He will bruise you on the head, / But you will bruise him on the heel” (Gen. 3:15). “In your [Abraham’s] seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed” (22:18a). “To Abraham were the promises spoken and to his seed. He does not say, And to the seeds, as concerning many, but as concerning one: ‘And to your seed,’ who is Christ” (Gal. 3:16). Satan, the serpent, was bruised and destroyed by this humanity, and the blessing of God came to all the nations of the earth through this humanity. Even the grace with all its gifts abounded by this humanity. “If by the offense of the one the many died, much more the grace of God and the free gift in grace of the one man Jesus Christ have abounded to the many” (Rom. 5:15b).
We were also constituted righteous by this man. “Just as through the disobedience of one man the many were constituted sinners, so also through the obedience of the One the many will be constituted righteous” (v. 19). By the one man, Adam, we were all constituted sinners, but by another man, Jesus, we were all constituted righteous. We were made righteous simply by this man alone.
We appreciate the work and the teachings of Martin Luther. He pioneered God’s recovery by recovering the teaching of justification by faith. He fought the battle against the Catholic Church on this matter, saying that if man is to be justified by God, it is not by works but by faith. While this is right, I feel today we must tell people that justification is just Christ. Today some Lutheran pastors hold the teaching of justification by faith, yet they themselves have never been justified. They hold the doctrine, but they are not in Christ. There may be a person who knows nothing concerning justification by faith, yet he believes in Christ and says, “Hallelujah, Jesus is mine, and I am His!” Do you not believe that this person is justified already? Though you may read a great dictionary defining justification by faith, if you have never enjoyed Christ as a person, you could never be justified. Justification is not a matter of a teaching; it is a person. We are constituted righteous not by a teaching but by a person. Hallelujah! Christ is our justification. By receiving Him, we are constituted righteous.
First Corinthians 15:21 tells us that through man came death, and through man also came the resurrection of the dead. Resurrection came through the man Jesus. We have already seen many items that come to us through the humanity of Jesus. The destruction of the old serpent, the blessing upon all the people, grace abounding with all its gifts, being constituted righteous, and the resurrection from the dead all come to us through the humanity of Jesus.
Satan, on the one hand, has been bruised and destroyed on the cross, yet on the other hand, he is still here making trouble. As human beings, we are under the damaging influence of Satan. How can we destroy this damaging serpent? There is only one way — by feeding on the humanity of Jesus. If we enjoy and eat His humanity, the serpent is destroyed. In John 6:57 the Lord said, “He who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me.” The word eats in this verse is a special word, a word which is different from the other words used in this chapter for eating. One version translates this word as “masticate.” This means to chew finely, to eat bit by bit in a slow and fine way. We have to eat the Lord, and sometimes we need to masticate Him. This is not to eat roughly but bit by bit. When we eat too fast, our digestion is impaired. So we must learn to masticate the Lord’s humanity. If we eat Him in this way, the old serpent will be nailed to the cross again. This kind of masticating will bruise the head of the serpent. We need to feast on Jesus as the man.
In Jesus all the nations are blessed, and through us as Christians, the people around us should also be blessed. But is this our real situation? God told Abraham that through Christ all the nations would be blessed. Thus, as a Christian, we should bring God’s blessing upon the people surrounding us. Many times, however, the people around us are not blessed but cursed. Is our wife or husband blessed through us or cursed through us? This is the real problem. If we are feeding on the humanity of Jesus, surely we will bring God’s blessing to those around us.
In 1938 I was told a story concerning a sister who really loved the Lord. Her husband had accused us exceedingly because she, since she became a Christian, neglected her family. She was too busy “preaching Christ.” Her husband was not yet a Christian and was a professor in one of the largest universities in China. When I contacted some of the brothers and sisters about this sister, they all told me the same thing. The sister told them that now she was just for Jesus; she was not for her husband or her children. It was clear that this sister had never tasted the humanity of Christ. At that time I did not see the light of the enjoyment of Jesus’ humanity, so I told her that she needed to be balanced a little. She needed to be balanced like the fine flour. If today, however, the same problem were to come to me, I would tell them to go home and pray-read all the verses from Luke on the humanity of Jesus. Then they would know what they must do and what kind of wife or husband, mother or father, they must be.
On the one hand, the Lord said to His mother that He was wholly for His heavenly Father. Yet on the other hand, He went down with His parents and was subject to them (Luke 2:49-51). This is the humanity of the Lord Jesus. It is through this kind of humanity that the people around us can be blessed. I am afraid that the neighbors living around us are not blessed, because we are like “angels.” We do not have the proper humanity. We all need to be human, but not human in a natural way. We need the humanity of Jesus. The more we behave like an angel, the more people around us will be cursed. But the more we live as proper human beings, the more people around us will be blessed.
In 1938 another sister in China also came to me, asking, “What can I do with my husband? He will not believe in the Lord Jesus. I have prayed for him, and I have talked to him much about the Lord. But the more I have talked, the more he has gone away.” Then I discovered that she was very much like an angel, so I asked her to adjust herself a little and be an ordinary wife to her husband. I assured her that if she would be adjusted, her husband would be saved. Not long after that, I received a letter from her telling me that her husband had been saved.
God never entrusted His gospel of grace to the angels. Only human beings are qualified to preach the gospel. An angel could tell Cornelius to send for a man named Peter, but that angel was not able to speak a word about the gospel (Acts 10:3-5). Angels are not qualified to preach the gospel; only man is qualified. We must be human to preach the gospel, but we must not be human according to our natural self — that is devilish. We need another category of humanity, the humanity of Jesus. By His humanity we can bring the blessing of God upon all those around us. Wherever we are — in our offices, in our schools, on the campuses, in the neighborhoods, in our families — we can cause all the people to be much blessed if we will take the humanity of Jesus. Then the gospel will be prevailing.
Now we must go on to see the supply of the Lord’s humanity in Hebrews 2. “Since therefore the children have shared in blood and flesh, He also Himself in like manner partook of the same, that through death He might destroy him who has the might of death, that is, the devil, and might release those who because of the fear of death through all their life were held in slavery. For assuredly it is not to angels that He gives help, but He gives help to the seed of Abraham. Hence He should have been made like His brothers in all things that He might become a merciful and faithful High Priest in the things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For being tempted in that which He Himself has suffered, He is able to help those who are being tempted” (vv. 14-18).
The Lord Jesus partook of our blood and flesh that He might destroy the devil who has the might of death. The deliverance is here, the propitiation is here, and the help is here. The word help is not adequate. In Greek it means to support, to render a certain kind of aid, or to supply. If we masticate the humanity of Jesus all the time, it will afford us a kind of aid, help, and supply. Whatever we need, we will receive. Jesus is able to help those who are being tempted.
Christians today have the religious concept that Jesus is the almighty Savior, yet they do not realize that He is so human, and they do not know how to appreciate His humanity. But of all the offerings, the meal offering is the most important. Only this offering can satisfy God and be a kind of memorial to Him, and only this offering can afford a living for the priesthood. We need to see something of Christ as the meal offering. This matter is greatly neglected in today’s Christianity. May the Lord recover the proper humanity of Jesus. This is all we need today. So many Christians have been praying for power from on high, but look at their situation. Perhaps five years ago they received the so-called power from on high, but what about their life today? Even this power did not deliver them from their temper. It seems that the more we look to the Lord as the mighty Savior to deliver us from our temper, the more temper we have. The Lord Jesus will hardly answer this kind of prayer. But if we simply learn to enjoy Christ as the meal offering and masticate His humanity all day long, we will see what will happen to our temper. We will receive help, aid, support, and supply from the humanity of Jesus.
Medical doctors tell us that if we have a certain kind of disease, it indicates that we are short of life supply or vitamins. If you are short of life supply, surely you will have a kind of disease. In my native country there was a village where the people seemed to lose their sight in the evenings. This was because of a kind of disease. They had no knowledge concerning vitamins to realize that they had a shortage of vitamin A, but they lived on the seashore and caught great quantities of a certain kind of fish. When they began to eat the liver of that fish, they were healed. Of course, we know today that that kind of fish liver is very high in vitamin A. The point is this: if we are short of vitamin A and lose our sight, and then we kneel down to pray to the almighty Savior to heal us, it will not work. The more we pray in that way, the more we will lose our sight. We simply need to eat a large amount of a certain kind of fish liver. What is the “fish liver” for us today? That is the meal offering, the humanity of Jesus.
To lose our temper easily is a kind of disease. It comes from the shortage of Christ’s humanity. If we will masticate the humanity of Jesus just like the people in that village ate the fish liver, we will be healed spontaneously. It is so clear in the Bible that we need the Lord’s humanity as our meal offering. But we have not seen it. We have been reading the Scriptures for years, and still we have not seen it, simply because we are veiled by our natural concepts. We must forget our natural concepts and come to the pure Word without any kind of religious understanding. If we do this, we will see the importance of Christ’s humanity in the Bible.
Some Christians tried to argue with me in the past, saying that it is wrong to tell people that Christ is in heaven as a man. They said that Christ was a man only up to the time when He was crucified. Then after being resurrected, He was no longer a man. Those were preachers who said that they believed in the Bible word for word. So I replied, “What about Acts 7:55-56, where Stephen, while he was being stoned, looked up and saw Jesus as the Son of Man in the heavens? My Jesus, according to the Bible, is still a man in the heavens. And what about the time when the high priest asked Jesus at the judgment whether He was the Son of God? Jesus told him that he would see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of God in the heavens and that he would also see the Son of Man coming back on the clouds (Matt. 26:63-64).” Of course, there was nothing they could say to such Scriptures. And I must add today that we will see the Son of Man for eternity. In the New Jerusalem Jesus is there as the Lamb. For the Lord to be the Lamb, He must have humanity. The Son of God, without His humanity, could never be the Lamb. When He became flesh and tabernacled among us, He was called the Lamb of God. The Lamb always has something to do with the matter of incarnation. If He were not incarnated as a man, how could He be the Lamb of God? In eternity He will be the Son of Man forever.
In Revelation 1:13 John saw a vision of the Son of Man in the midst of the local churches. “In the midst of the lampstands One like the Son of Man, clothed with a garment reaching to the feet, and girded about at the breasts with a golden girdle.” After the Lord’s resurrection and ascension, John saw Him walking in the midst of the local churches as the Son of Man. We all need His humanity.
I have the full assurance that if we will spend our time to enjoy Christ in His humanity, all the local churches will be so bright and shining, practical and real. Christ did not reveal Himself to John as the Son of God. He is the Son of God, but He did not come in that way. He came in the form of the Son of Man. This shows us that the Son of Man is for the local churches. All the local churches need the humanity of Jesus. We must take Him as our food, enjoy Him, and masticate His humanity all the time. We must even pray, “O Lord Jesus, You are the real man, and You are the food of the priesthood. You are the fine flour with which we make the meal offering to bring to the Tent of Meeting as a present to God the Father.” We will see that even to pray in this way will make a difference; there will be the nourishment. We will be nourished with His humanity, and this nourishing will swallow up all our weaknesses. The humanity of Jesus will make us spiritually healthy. If you do not believe me, put it into practice and see. When you are going to lose your temper, just say, “O Lord Jesus, I take Your humanity. I am going to lose my temper, but I take Your humanity, Lord.” Then you will see what will happen to your temper.
I am sure that we all have seen the difference between Hebrews 1 and 2. Chapter 1 shows us that Christ is the Son of God; it even mentions that He is God Himself. Chapter 1 tells us of His divinity, but chapter 2 speaks of His humanity. In chapter 1 He is God, but in chapter 2 He is man. It is at the end of chapter 2 that we find the succor, aid, support, help, and supply. This comes not so much from Jesus as the Son of God but from the humanity of Jesus. The man Jesus is the helping One; He is the aiding One; He is the supporting One; and He is the supplying One. Our help and support come mainly from His humanity. His divinity may be sufficient to help and supply some angels, but to help and supply us, He must have His humanity. If we are going to enjoy His helping, we must feed upon His humanity. This is the meal offering.
Many of you have been in Christianity for years. But according to your realization, was there any meal offering in the so-called Christian service? Was there any nourishment from the humanity of Jesus in those services? From my experience, I can tell you that there was nothing but words. There was no meal offering. Even among the local churches I feel that we do not have enough of the meal offering. We must look to the Lord for His mercy that from now on, in all the meetings, what we present to God would be mainly the meal offering. We must bring something of our experience of the humanity of Jesus to the meetings. Then our meetings will be so enriched, and we will be nourished in a priestly way to have the real priesthood.
Eventually, I must say, “Behold, the man!” This is what we find in John 19:5: “Then Jesus came out, wearing the thorny crown and the purple garment. And he said to them, Behold, the man!” He was crowned then with a crown of thorns, but He is crowned today with a crown of glory. At that time He wore a purple robe, but now He wears a priestly robe. He is crowned with glory and clothed with the priestly robe to care for all the local churches. So, “Behold, the man!” We all need to see this man, for this man is our aid, our help, our support, our supply, and our all. This man is our food for the priesthood.
