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Scripture Reading: John 6:38; 7:16-18, 32, 45-46; 18:38b; 19:4, 6; 14:2-3, 6, 23
The entire Bible of sixty-six books shows us a complete picture composed with the tabernacle, many offerings, and a high priest. Also, this picture has an outcome, a result. In the Old Testament the central item of the history of the children of Israel was the tabernacle and, later on, the temple. The tabernacle and the temple are actually one thing in two stages. The tabernacle and the temple are the focus of the Old Testament history. The Old Testament is a book of history, and its center, its focus, is God’s dwelling place.
According to the teaching of the Old Testament, this dwelling place of God was not only for Him to dwell in upon the earth but also for God’s people to enter into so that they might enjoy God and experience God and even stay with God. This dwelling place was so that God’s people might abide with God and might dwell together with God on the earth. It is not a small thing that, first, God would come to the earth to dwell among man and, second, that man can enter into God’s dwelling place. Actually, God’s dwelling place is just Himself. On the one hand, the tabernacle was God’s dwelling place, and on the other hand, it was just God Himself. In the New Testament, according to John 1, God Himself was incarnated to be such a dwelling place, not only for Him to dwell in but also for His chosen ones to enter into and to dwell in with Him.
For God to come down to dwell among man on the earth is not a small thing. And for us, the fallen human race, to enter into God Himself as our dwelling place to abide with God is too great! How could we, the sinners, come to enter into God and to enjoy Him and to dwell with Him? There is no other way except by the offerings. And all the offerings are Christ.
According to the typology of the Old Testament, this wonderful Christ, on the one hand, is the tabernacle and, on the other hand, is also the offerings. He is the offerings for us to partake of so that we may share Him. All Christians know that the Lord Jesus is our Savior, our Redeemer. This is absolutely right. But we have to see that for Him to be our Savior and Redeemer, He has to be all the offerings. He has to be our sin offering, our trespass offering, our burnt offering, our meal offering, and eventually, all-inclusively, our peace offering. If He is not all these offerings, He could not be our Savior. Very few Christians realize that for Christ to be our Savior and our Redeemer, He has to be the five basic offerings plus all the subordinate offerings, including the wave offering, the heave offering, and the drink offering. Some have been Christians for years and yet have not realized that our Savior is composed of all these offerings.
Our Savior, our Redeemer, Jesus Christ, is composed of all the offerings. This is typified by a complete picture in the Old Testament. In the Old Testament the history was mainly composed of a tabernacle or a temple with all the offerings. Those people chosen by God in the Old Testament did nothing but contact this tabernacle or temple. The way for them to contact the tabernacle or temple was to offer something day by day. They offered the sin offering, the trespass offering, the burnt offering, the meal offering, the peace offering, the heave offering, the wave offering, and the drink offering. Their worship was nothing but the offering of these sacrifices to God. Then after offering these things, they shared and ate a part of the things that they had offered to God.
That was a picture in the Old Testament. Now let us consider the entire Bible. What does the entire Bible portray? The entire Bible portrays just one matter: that the second of the Godhead, the second of the Trinity, the Son of God, became tabernacled. He became flesh. John 1:1 and 14 tell us clearly that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and this Word became flesh and tabernacled among us. The apostle John, who wrote this Gospel, used a word very meaningfully. He used the word tabernacled as a verb. Many translators, however, do not have the boldness to translate it in this way. Rather, they translate this word for tabernacled into “dwelt.” It is right to say dwelt, but the dwelling of the incarnated God among man was not a common dwelling. That dwelling was something very particular. That dwelling was the tabernacle.
While He was on the earth dwelling among man, He was tabernacling. This verb indicates that the One who is the subject of the sentence was a tabernacle. He was God becoming a man. And this man was a tabernacle. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and this Word became flesh, and this flesh was the tabernacle.
In the same chapter John declares that this One who is the Word and who is God and who became flesh and who is the tabernacle is also the Lamb of God (v. 29). He is both the tabernacle and the Lamb of God. The Lamb of God no doubt signifies the offering. The Lamb of God is the basic offering. Among all the five offerings, the most basic one is the sin offering. The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world is the sin offering. Here it says sin in the singular number, not sins in the plural number. In the New Testament the singular sin indicates something deeper within our nature, not just our outward conduct. Matters of our outward conduct are sins, which are trespasses. But this is the sin that is the very source, the very root, of all our sins. It is in our nature. So the Lamb of God here is a sin offering. In the opening chapter of the Gospel of John, you have the tabernacle and you have the offerings. Both of these items are just one person by the name of Jesus Christ.
When this person came, grace came. Grace was not given as the law was given. The law in the Old Testament was given through Moses. But grace came along with this person. When this person came, grace came, because He is just grace. He tabernacled among us full of grace, and from His fullness we all received grace upon grace.
In the past we have pointed out that grace is just Christ Himself, but if Christ had never been the offerings, He could never be the grace to us. For Christ to be grace to us, He has to be the offerings.
Many Christians love John 3:16, which says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that everyone who believes into Him would not perish, but would have eternal life.” But few Christians have noticed that this verse begins with the little word for. In the New Testament for is a very important word. It indicates that something that has gone before needs further definition. This means you have to go back to verse 15. Verse 15 reads, “That everyone who believes into Him may have eternal life.” A number of the different versions of the Bible use a paragraph sign between these two verses, indicating that verse 16 is a new beginning. But to separate verse 16 from verse 15 is a big mistake. Verse 15 begins with the word that, which also indicates that you need to refer to something preceding it. This means that you have to go back to verse 14.
Verse 14 says, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” To get the proper meaning, you have to put all three of these verses together. The Lord Jesus came as the tabernacle among people, but if He had never been lifted up on the cross, He could never be grace to us. So grace is the incarnated Christ offered on the altar as our offerings. The incarnated Christ crucified on the cross became grace to us. If He had only been incarnated to be the tabernacle and was abiding among men, but had not been crucified, He could not be grace to us. If He were only incarnated and not crucified, how could we partake of Him? How could He be our portion?
In chapter 1 you have the word grace, and in 3:16 there is the word gave. Giving is a gift, and a gift is a grace. The Greek word, charis, can be translated into both “gift” and “grace.” It is a gift, and the gift is grace. Grace is God’s giving. God has given us His only begotten Son on the cross. Without being crucified, Christ could never be given to us. Without His being crucified, we cannot partake of Christ. Hallelujah! He was crucified. He was given. Actually, the giving was the crucifixion. It was on the cross that Christ became all the offerings. And all these offerings are grace to us. The sin offering is a grace. The trespass offering is a grace. The burnt offering is a grace. The meal offering is a grace. Eventually, the peace offering also is a grace. And of this grace we all have received and grace upon grace.
In this same Gospel we see not only the sin offering but also the trespass offering. This is a wonderful Gospel! Actually, the Gospel of John is an abstract of the entire Bible. It portrays how God Himself became a man to tabernacle among men and how He in the flesh became all the offerings. And the first offering is the sin offering.
The first case concerning the offerings in the Gospel of John is the case of Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a proper gentleman, full of qualifications. He was old with a high position as a ruler and teacher of the people. He was also a Pharisee. He came to the Lord Jesus not realizing that he had been bitten by the poisonous serpent. He never realized that he himself was a little serpent. Outside he was a gentleman and perfect, but inside he had a serpentine nature, so the Lord Jesus told him that he needed to be born again. Because he did not understand rightly, the Lord Jesus explained to him that to be born again is to be born of water and the Spirit (v. 5). Eventually, he understood, so he asked how this could be.
The Lord Jesus then referred him to the story of the bronze serpent in Numbers 21. The children of Israel had been bitten by the serpents and were dying. Then God designed a way of salvation. He told Moses to lift a bronze serpent up on a pole, and whosoever would look upon that bronze serpent would live. This word should have indicated to Nicodemus that he was a serpent. He had been bitten by the old serpent. Satan had bitten his forefather Adam, and Nicodemus was born of Adam. This was to help Nicodemus realize that he was a bona fide and typical sinner. So he needed the sin offering.
Christ knew no sin, but He was made sin for us. He came in the likeness of the flesh of sin. He was not a serpent, but He took the form of a serpent. He did not have the nature or the poison, but He had the form of a serpent. This was the sin offering. This is not just a matter of washing away your sinful doings. This also is a matter of regenerating you. The problem is not mainly the outside wrongdoing. The main problem is the inside sinful nature. Inside, you are a serpent. You need another life. You need to have another person, another nature. The only way to have another life is by Jesus Christ, who died on the cross in the form of a serpent to terminate your serpentine being. If you believe into Him, you receive the eternal life, the life of God. When you receive this life of God, you will have another life. You will have another birth. You will be born of the life of God to be another person. You will be a reborn person, a new person with a new nature. This is Christ as the sin offering.
Following chapter 3 of John there is another case, that of the Samaritan woman. This person was not moral; she was immoral. The Lord Jesus did not talk to her about the bronze serpent. She pretended to be very religious, although she was altogether immoral. She talked with the Lord Jesus about worshipping God. How good this seems to be! What a wonderful subject! But the Lord Jesus knew her story, and He had a way to attract her and to cause her to desire the living water. Once she thirsted for the living water, the Lord asked concerning her husband. Then she lied by telling the truth. She said, “I do not have a husband” (4:17). This sounds very good. The Lord agreed with her that she did not have a husband, but He said that she had had five already and that the one she had now was not hers. This was the Lord’s confession of her sins, her trespasses. By changing from one husband to another, she was living a life full of trespasses. So the Lord presented Himself to her as the trespass offering, whereas He presented Himself to Nicodemus as the sin offering. No doubt in these two chapters you have these two basic offerings — the sin offering and the trespass offering.
You have to realize that we all are Nicodemus inwardly, and we all are the Samaritan woman outwardly. Outwardly, everything seems good, but inwardly, we are sin. So we all are Nicodemus, needing Christ to be our sin offering. We also are the Samaritan woman, needing Christ to be our trespass offering. Hallelujah! He is both the sin offering and the trespass offering to us. He has been given, and He has been offered on the altar. This is grace. We can surely lay our hands upon Him, taking Him as our sin offering and as our trespass offering. What a grace this is! Grace is not merely an unmerited favor. That is too vague. The real grace is very solid. Grace is Christ as all our offerings.
In the initial cases in the Gospel of John, such as the case of Nicodemus and the case of the Samaritan woman, you have the sin offering and the trespass offering. In the following cases you have the burnt offering and the meal offering. The main and striking characteristic of the burnt offering is the matter of absoluteness. The burnt offering was absolutely for God. The whole offering was burnt unto God. Nothing was left for man. The entire burnt offering was burnt for God’s food and for God’s enjoyment and for God’s satisfaction. That is a full portrait of Christ’s absoluteness. Christ was not only for man; Christ was absolutely for God.
In John 7:16-18 you could see the absoluteness of Christ. Christ was so absolute for God. He was for nothing else. He did not care for what His flesh brothers thought. He did not care for His own name or His own will. He only cared for God’s will. These verses show us that Christ is not only the sin offering and the trespass offering but also the burnt offering. He is not only the sin offering for sinners and the trespass offering for trespassers, but He is also the burnt offering for God Himself. He is not only for Nicodemus or only for the Samaritan woman; He is also for God absolutely.
Where then is the meal offering in the Gospel of John? The meal offering has a character of fineness, evenness, and perfectness. The meal offering was mainly made of fine flour that had been ground so finely, so evenly, and so perfectly. The Gospel of John shows us that the dear One portrayed is not only altogether absolute to God, but in the eyes of God He is altogether fine, even, and perfect. There is nothing coarse with Him. There is no defect, no imperfection. He is perfect; He is even; He is fine.
Among your friends you may seem to be very perfect because all your friends are for you. Your friends, your parents, your wife, or your husband would try their best to cover your shortcomings. But your opposers, your adversaries, would try their best to find your faults. In John 7 the Pharisees and the Jewish leaders were around the Lord Jesus seeking to find out His faults. But they could not find any faults. They sent deputies to arrest Him, but they came back empty-handed. When the Pharisee asked why they had not brought Him, the deputies answered, “Never has a man spoken as this man has” (v. 46). This shows how fine, how perfect, how balanced the Lord Jesus was.
By your speaking, people may know how fine or how rough you are. A fine man always speaks in a fine way, and a rough man always speaks roughly. The speaking of the Lord Jesus was so fine, so even, so perfect, so convincing. This is the meal offering.
Later in chapters 18 and 19 Pilate judged the Lord Jesus. Three times he declared that he found no fault in this Man (18:38; 19:4, 6). Of course, these three verses could be applied to Christ as the Lamb of God. As the Lamb of God, He had no blemish and no fault. But these verses can be applied also to the fine flour. He is fine, perfect, even, and fully balanced. With Him there is no fault. Pilate did not say that he could not find any sin; he said he could not find any fault. This means that he could not find even the smallest wrongdoing. With Him there was absolutely nothing wrong. There was absolutely no fault. Before God He was absolute, and before man He was perfect, without fault.
The Gospel of John is the fulfillment of the picture in the Old Testament. The tabernacle is here, and all the offerings are here. The sin offering is here, the trespass offering is here, the burnt offering is here, and the meal offering is here. Christ as the sin offering for us is based on His absoluteness toward God. His being our trespass offering is based upon His perfection, His fineness, in the eyes of God and all men. He is absolute, so He can be the sin offering. He is perfect, so He can be the trespass offering. Hallelujah! We do partake of such a Christ who is all the offerings — the sin offering, the trespass offering, the burnt offering, and the meal offering.
Then you may ask, Where is the peace offering in the Gospel of John? In this Gospel as well as in other portions of the Bible, the fulfillment of such a thing as the peace offering needs two steps, the initial step and the consummate step. Let me illustrate with the matter of salvation. With salvation there is the initial step, and there is the consummate step. On the one hand, we all have been saved. But on the other hand, we still need to be saved. First Peter 1:5 and 9 indicate that when the Lord Jesus comes, He will bring the consummate salvation to us.
In like manner the fulfillment of the peace offering has the initial fulfillment and also has the consummate fulfillment. The initial fulfillment is in John 12, where there was a feast prepared in the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. The Lord Jesus was there. Look at the picture. When they were feasting, that was a miniature of the fulfillment of the peace offering. God was there, in the form of man, with His chosen people, and they were eating with Him. There was peace, there was enjoyment, and there was satisfaction. Surely that was the peace offering. But that was only the initial fulfillment of the peace offering.
The consummate fulfillment of the peace offering was after His resurrection, after He was offered to God as every kind of offering. After His resurrection He came back and said to them, “Peace be to you” (20:21).
At the beginning of the Gospel of John, you have grace. When the Lord Jesus came, grace came. At the end of the Gospel, peace comes to you. How could this be? This could be only because Christ was offered on the cross as all the offerings. First, He became grace to us, and then in resurrection He became the peace offering to us. When He met with His disciples after His resurrection, that meeting was a feast, and that feast was a peace offering. From that time on, even up until today, whenever we believers meet together with the resurrected Christ as our peace, we have a feast. Our Christian meeting must be a feast. This feast is the feast of the peace offering.
When we meet together, we offer Christ as our sin offering, as our trespass offering, as our burnt offering, and as our meal offering. Eventually, when all the offerings are added together, we also enjoy the peace offering for our satisfaction and also for His satisfaction.
You have to realize that John’s Gospel does not stand alone. There are also John’s Epistles and John’s book of Revelation. In these books you could see that this peace offering was continuing. Eventually, in Revelation there is the ultimate tabernacle. Today we are enjoying the initial tabernacle, but in Revelation 21 and 22 there is the ultimate tabernacle of God among men. This is all the offerings added together resulting in the ultimate peace offering. The entire new heaven and new earth with the New Jerusalem will enjoy the ultimate universal peace offering. The entire universe will be attending a feast of the peace offering.
Do not forget that we are talking about the meetings. This is how we must meet: enjoying Christ and offering Christ as all the offerings and eventually feasting with God and with one another.
In John chapter 1 through chapter 12 there are all the offerings. They are good to usher you into the tabernacle. The tabernacle begins in chapter 14. The Lord Jesus said that in His Father’s house, which is the tabernacle, there are many abodes. The tabernacle is in chapters 14, 15, and 16. Between chapter 12 and chapter 14 there is chapter 13 with the laver for the washing of your feet. This is to get rid of all the earthly dirt and all the defilement from the earthly touch so that you may enter into the tabernacle. So you can see that the Gospel of John fits into the entire picture of the tabernacle and all the offerings.
We must look to the Lord for His grace to put all these points into our daily practice. Every day, again and again, we have to lay our hands upon Christ, taking Him as our sin offering and as our trespass offering. By taking Him as these two offerings, we will be reminded of how lovely He is, how dear He is, how precious He is, how absolute He is toward God. We will be reminded of how even, how perfect, how fine He is in the eyes of man. Spontaneously, His absolute life will be ours, and His fine living will be ours. Then we will enjoy Him as our burnt offering and our meal offering. We will have a lot of experiences seven days a week. We will accumulate a lot of the experiences of such a rich Christ. Then when we come together in the church meetings, our hands will be full of Christ. We will come with the experiences of Christ. Then whatever we present will be a peace offering. In whatever we present there will be something of the sin offering, something of the trespass offering, something of the burnt offering, and something of the meal offering. These are the components of the peace offering. We will enjoy all these in the presence of God, and we will enjoy these with one another. So we will have the peace and the enjoyment and the satisfaction. This is the way to meet.
