Search
Scripture Reading: John 4:14; 6:35, 57, 63; 7:37-39; 1 Cor. 3:2; 10:3-4; Heb. 5:12b-14a; 1 Pet. 2:2-3; Rev. 2:7b; 3:20; 7:16-17; 21:6b; 22:1-2, 17; Matt. 22:2-3; Luke 14:16-17; 15:22-23; 1 Cor. 10:21; Rev. 19:9
Eating and drinking Christ is the central thought in God’s economy. This central thought of eating and drinking is not only in the Old Testament but also in the New Testament. The concept of eating and drinking starts at the very beginning of the Bible in Genesis and continues until the end of the Bible in Revelation. In God’s economy God does not present Himself to us as a kind of religion, but He presents Himself to us as food and drink. If we realize the proper significance of the verses in the Scripture reading, we will see that eating and drinking is the central thought in the New Testament.
In Matthew 22 the Lord Jesus likened the gospel of God to a marriage or wedding feast, a great supper, prepared by a king for his son (vv. 1-14). Thus, the gospel is a matter of enjoyment by eating and drinking.
In Luke 14:16-17 the Lord Jesus again likens the gospel to a great dinner. God, as the certain man, sent His slave to tell those who had been invited, “Come, for all things are now ready” (v. 17). God has prepared His full salvation as a great dinner. We come not to learn teachings but to enjoy by eating and drinking. When we were saved, we started the enjoyment of eating. After we are saved, the Lord always sets a feast before us.
When I was saved, although no one told me, I did have the sense that something within me was just for my enjoyment. It was so nourishing, so refreshing, so watering. I was so happy in spirit. But soon after my initial experience, I was turned to care only for teachings. I became filled with teachings, but within I was empty. Christianity is a religion full of teachings, but the Lord’s desire is to recover His gospel as a real feast. The gospel is a feast where all things are ready, and we simply come to eat, drink, and enjoy.
The central concept of the New Testament is eating and drinking Christ in order that we may feast on Christ. In Luke 15, when the prodigal son returned, the father told his slaves to put the best robe on him, a ring on his hand, and sandals on his feet (v. 22). For his body there was the robe, for his hand the ring, and for his feet the sandals. These items signify the Father’s outward justification through Christ. This outward clothing, however, was not sufficient to meet the son’s need since he was starving. He needed food within him. His father first adorned him to make him worthy, thus qualifying him to enter the father’s house and feast with the father. After the outward adornment, the father told his slaves, “Bring the fattened calf; slaughter it, and let us eat and be merry” (v. 23).
We need not only the outward adorning but also the inward filling. The robe, the ring, and the sandals are the outward side, the side of justification by the blood of Christ. In the observance of the passover, the blood covered the house (Exo. 12:7). Under the covering of the blood, the people enjoyed the meat of the lamb (v. 8). Likewise, under the covering of the robe, the prodigal son enjoyed the slaughtered, fattened calf with his father. This is the inward side, which signifies the inward enjoyment of Christ as our life supply. Christ is the robe, and Christ is also the fattened calf. Christ is for our outward covering, and Christ is also for our inward filling. We should enjoy Him as the fattened calf day by day. In the Father’s house we have a feast, a table.
Before the prodigal son came back, he prepared himself to be treated as a slave, laboring day by day for his father (Luke 15:19). But his father did not want his son to labor for him but to feast with him. When we come to the local church, we must drop the thought of coming to labor. We come to the Father’s house, the local church, for feasting. In the Father’s house there is a table waiting for us to come and feast. Just come to eat and be merry (v. 23). The Lord Jesus will be satisfied, the Father will be happy, and we will be filled. We all need such a feast.
The Lord’s table is also a feast to us. Week by week as we come to the Lord’s table, we have a feast. In the past when I attended the so-called communion service, I was never told that the Lord’s supper was a table, a feast. I was taught to take the holy communion by first examining myself to see whether I was sinful or not. I would ask myself about my heart, my mind, my thinking. I would ask how I was with my parents, teachers, schoolmates, neighbors, or friends. I was then taught to remember the Lord by remembering how He was God, how He became a man, how He was born in a manger, and so forth. However, I was not told that at the Lord’s table I have to enjoy Him; that is, I have to eat Him and to drink Him. To examine ourselves and to remember what the Lord did for us is certainly not wrong. However, the divine concept is that to remember the Lord is simply to eat and drink Him, to enjoy Him.
First Corinthians 11:24-25 says, “This is My body, which is given for you; this do unto the remembrance of Me...This cup...drink it, unto the remembrance of Me.” The real remembrance of the Lord is to eat the bread and drink the cup (v. 26), that is, to participate in, to enjoy, the Lord, who has given Himself to us through His redeeming death. To eat the bread and drink the cup is to take in the redeeming Lord as our portion, as our life and blessing. This is to remember Him in a genuine way. Thus, we remember the Lord not by thinking about Him but by eating, drinking, and enjoying Him. The Lord’s table is a weekly proclamation, a declaration to the whole universe, that we daily enjoy Christ as our food and drink. He is our feast, our enjoyment.
Eventually, when He comes, the overcoming believers will join Him to feast at the marriage dinner of the Lamb (Rev. 19:7, 9). That unique, universal wedding feast will last one thousand years. This feast of one thousand years will be a wedding day to Christ because to the Lord a thousand years are like one day (2 Pet. 3:8). During those one thousand years, the church is the bride, and after the one thousand years, the church is the wife (Rev. 21:9-10). The difference between a bride and a wife is that the bride is only the bride on the wedding day. After the wedding day, the bride becomes the wife. On the wedding day there is the bridegroom and the bride; on the following day there is the husband and the wife. The millennial kingdom of one thousand years will be a wedding day to Christ, in which the overcoming believers will be with Christ, enjoying His wedding feast.
The gospel is a feast that will last for eternity; therefore, the Lord’s table will never end. The Lord’s table today is a foretaste of the coming full taste in eternity. Eventually, that full taste will replace our present foretaste. On the table of this feast, we enjoy Christ Himself, who is for our eating and drinking. We are eating Christ (John 6:35, 57) and drinking the Spirit (7:37-39; 1 Cor. 12:13), who is also Christ Himself (15:45; 2 Cor. 3:17).
The eating and drinking of Christ is also revealed in the Gospel of John. Throughout the Gospel of John, the Lord Jesus speaks of Himself as life to us (10:10; 4:14; 6:35; 7:38; 14:6). In the first chapter of the Gospel of John, a book showing how the Lord Jesus as life can meet the need of every man, there are five major items: God, the Word, the flesh, the Lamb, and life. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God (1:1). This Word, who was God Himself, became flesh (v. 14), which means that He became a man. As a man He is the Lamb of God (v. 29), our Redeemer, and He is also our life (v. 4; 10:10). The Gospel of John begins with God, the Word, the flesh, the Lamb, and life.
In chapter 2 of the Gospel of John, there is a wonderful event — a wedding feast (vv. 1-11). When I was young, I studied this portion of the Word. I understood chapter 1 but not chapter 2. I did not know the meaning of the wedding and of the water being changed to wine. Now I realize much more. At this wedding feast the wine ran out, so the Lord Jesus asked the servants to fill up six stone waterpots with water. These waterpots were for the Jewish rite of purification with water, which signifies religion’s attempt to make people clean by certain dead practices. But the Lord changed the water in the waterpots, which were for purification, into wine. This wine was not good for outward cleansing, but for drinking. We must forget about how dirty we are outwardly and drink the Lord as our wine inwardly. Regardless of how much we may be cleansed and purified outwardly, we can still be dead inwardly. The Lord Jesus did not come to merely cleanse us outwardly, but He came for us to drink of Him. He turned the water into wine, changing the cleansing element into the drinking element.
The Lord’s life is a feast, not for purification, for outward cleansing, but for inward drinking. The inward drinking will take care of the cleansing. Whatever we drink into us will cleanse us, not from without but from within. This is a kind of metabolic cleansing — a cleansing of life. This is not a cleansing in an outward way but a metabolic cleansing from within by life.
Today I appreciate John 2 to the uttermost. In many places, when I was asked to preach the gospel, I used John 2. I have told people, “You are just the six waterpots because you are a man made on the sixth day (Gen. 1:26, 31); therefore, the number six represents man. Your need is the wine. Your need is life. Do not try to improve yourself, correct yourself, or better yourself. To do so is just to try to cleanse or purify yourself. Your need is not cleansing water but wine to drink.” John 2 shows us that our need is not outward cleansing but inward drinking. The concept of John 2 is the eating and drinking of the Lord.
In chapter 3 Nicodemus, a highly educated teacher and an experienced, older man, came to the Lord Jesus and said to Him, “Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher” (v. 2). The human concept is that we need a teacher and more teaching. The Lord Jesus is so wise. He did not argue with Nicodemus or rebuke him, nor did He speak too much with him. After listening to him, the Lord Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (v. 3). This word really puzzled Nicodemus. He may have thought, “I came to be taught by You, to seek teaching. I recognize You as a rabbi, a teacher, yet I do not understand what You mean by being born anew. An old man such as I cannot go back to my mother’s womb and come out again. What kind of teaching is this?”
The Lord Jesus indicated to Nicodemus that to be born anew was not to go back to his mother’s womb and come out again. To be born anew is to be born of water and the Spirit (v. 5). That which is born of the flesh is flesh (v. 6). Even if Nicodemus could go back to his mother’s womb and come out again, he would still be the same Nicodemus, the same flesh. He needed to be something else. He had to be born of the Spirit. “That which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (v. 6). The Lord’s word really puzzled Nicodemus. If you or I were there, we too may have been puzzled along with Nicodemus by the Lord’s heavenly language.
The Lord Jesus continued to tell Nicodemus that as Moses lifted up the serpent of bronze in the wilderness, He as the Son of Man must be lifted up (v. 14). All the dying people, bitten by the fiery serpents, had to look at the bronze serpent that Moses lifted up. Whoever looked at the bronze serpent lived (Num. 21:7-9). The Lord was there for Nicodemus to look at Him. Nicodemus had to believe in Him; then he would have eternal life. Nicodemus did not need teaching. His need was eternal life, the life which Christ could give him.
While John 3 is about a highly cultured, very religious, God-seeking, God-fearing, moral person, chapter 4 is about an immoral woman. Although she was quite evil, having had five husbands and living with a sixth who was not her husband, she still tried to speak about religion. She pretended to be religious because the Lord Jesus exposed her evil history. The Lord said to her, “Go, call your husband and come here” (v. 16). She said that she did not have a husband. This was a truth but a lie. She told the Lord Jesus a lie by speaking the truth. The Lord Jesus, responding to her, said, “You have well said, I do not have a husband, for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly” (vv. 17-18). Immediately, she changed the subject from her husbands to the worship of God (vv. 19-20). To talk about her husbands was unpleasant. Because the Lord’s word about her husbands touched her conscience, she changed the conversation to the matter of worship.
The Lord Jesus, in His wisdom, also began to speak about the worship of God, saying, “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truthfulness” (v. 24). Eventually, the Lord revealed to her that this Spirit, who is God Himself, and who is the One we must worship, is the very living water (vv. 24, 14). The very God who is Spirit is the water of life. We take the water of life by exercising our spirit to contact Him, that is, to worship Him.
In chapter 3 of the Gospel of John, we are told that we have to be born anew, that is, to have a second birth. Then in chapter 4 the Lord Jesus speaks about drinking (v. 14), in chapter 6 about eating (v. 57), and in chapter 7 about drinking again (vv. 37-38). Drinking and eating seem to be two separate things, yet actually they are one. John 6:35 says, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me shall by no means hunger, and he who believes into Me shall by no means ever thirst.” We eat the bread, and we shall never thirst. Is He the bread for eating or for drinking? It seems that John 4 is only about drinking and that John 6 is only about eating. Yet even in John 6, which is apparently a chapter only on eating, there is also a word about drinking. You cannot separate eating from drinking or drinking from eating. Isaiah 55:1 says, “Ho! Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters... / Come, buy and eat.” We come to the waters and obtain food. This proves that the eating and the drinking are just one thing. In our daily life it is hard for any of us to eat without drinking. Have you ever had a meal where you ate without drinking? Eating and drinking always go together. These two are one.
The Gospel of John reveals life to us. This life can only be maintained by the life supply, which is food and water. Since we have received the Lord Jesus as our life, we all have to learn how to drink and eat. The reason why so many Christians are weak today is because few know how to eat and drink. Most Christians know that Christ is the bread of life, but few know the way to eat. Many know that Christ is the water of life, but few know the way to drink. We need to be those who not only know how to eat and drink, but who are daily and even hourly eating and drinking. By eating the bread and drinking the water, we not only receive life but also obtain the life supply.
In chapter after chapter of the Gospel of John, the Lord reveals Himself as our life and life supply. We receive Him as our life and partake of Him as our life supply by eating and drinking Him. In chapter 1 the Lord, as the almighty God in the beginning, became flesh, became a man, to be the Lamb of God to accomplish God’s redemption for us so that He may be our life. As our life He is also the feast to us with the wine for us to drink and enjoy in chapter 2. The way for us to receive this wine according to chapter 3 is to be born anew. The day we received the Lord Jesus, we were born again, and we began to drink Christ as the wine and enjoy His life as a feast. Now we must drink and eat Christ, realizing that the food and drink are mingled together. Day by day we must drink and eat, and eat and drink, enjoying the Lord all the time.
The thought and the concept of eating and drinking is not only in the Gospels but also in the Epistles of the apostles Paul and Peter and in the book of Revelation. In 1 Corinthians 3:2 Paul said, “I gave you milk to drink.” On the one hand, milk is drink, and on the other hand, it is food. Milk is food and water together. It is water with food. In 1 Corinthians 10 Paul also spoke about drinking and eating, applying the type of the children of Israel to us (vv. 3-4, 6).
In Hebrews 5 Paul told the saints that they had need of milk and not of solid food because milk is for infants, while solid food is for the full-grown (vv. 12-14). To drink is to take liquid food, and to eat is to take solid food. The weaker you are, the more you need to drink, and the stronger you are, the more you need to eat. Furthermore, when we are sick, we drink more than we eat. When we are healthy, we eat more than we drink. In 1 Corinthians 3 Paul indicated that the saints in Corinth were still very weak. Therefore, he could not feed them with solid food. He could only feed them with milk, liquid food. First Peter 2:2-3 says, “As newborn babes, long for the guileless milk of the word in order that by it you may grow unto salvation, if you have tasted that the Lord is good.”
Finally, in Revelation the promises to those who overcome are to eat the tree of life (2:7), to enjoy the hidden manna (v. 17), and to dine with the Lord (3:20). The mention of the tree of life refers back to Genesis 2, and the hidden manna refers to the entire history of the children of Israel in the wilderness. For forty years they ate manna (Exo. 16:35); therefore, manna was the central point of their history. In Revelation 3:20 the Lord Jesus said, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, then I will come in to him and dine with him and he with Me.” To dine is not merely to eat one food but to eat the riches of a meal. This may refer to the eating of the rich produce of the good land of Canaan by the children of Israel (Josh. 5:10-12).
In Revelation 7 the redeemed saints who have been raptured to the heavens, to the presence of God, will enjoy the Lord Jesus as the Lamb and Shepherd, who guides them to springs of waters of life (v. 17). Shepherding includes feeding; therefore, we will eat as well as drink. I do not fully know what we shall do in eternity, but I do know that we will do at least three things — eat, drink, and praise. In eternity eating, drinking, and praising will be our living and our life. Our life in eternity will be an eating, drinking, and praising life. In the local churches we have a foretaste today. We must eat, drink, and praise. When we say, “O Lord, Amen,” this is our eating. To say “Hallelujah” is our drinking and praising. Praise the Lord! We are the eating, drinking, and praising people.
Ultimately, in Revelation 22 we are invited to freely drink of the water of life (v. 17). The Spirit and the bride together say to come and drink of the water of life freely. In the entire Bible, Revelation 22:17 is the last call given by God to the human race. This last divine call is to come and drink. If you come to drink, you will surely eat. In the water of life grows the tree of life (v. 2). When we come to the water, we have the tree. When we drink the water, we eat the tree of life. Eating and drinking is the central thought in God’s economy. We all must learn how to enjoy the divine life by eating and drinking Christ.
