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Scripture Reading: John 1:14; 4:14, 24; 6:35, 57b, 63; 7:37-39; 10:9, 16; 15:5; 17:21, 23; 20:22; 21:15, 17
The book of Ephesians shows that God has a plan to dispense Himself as the riches of Christ into us for the producing of the church as the fullness of Christ and of God (3:8, 10; 1:22-23; 3:19). The way to take Jesus Christ into us is by eating (John 6:57). By eating Jesus as our spiritual food, we grow in His life. A baby boy has all the necessary organs, but he cannot function adequately because he lacks the growth in life. So you have to feed him in order that he may grow. This growth will bring him the proper functions in all his organs. Then this little boy will become a functioning one. We all are the members of Christ, and we are complete in our organs. But we may still be short of function because we do not have the adequate growth in life. So we all need to eat Jesus, to take Jesus into us as our nourishment, that we may grow. By this growth we will have the function, and by this function the Body is directly built up in love (Eph. 4:16). This is the Lord’s building of His church.
Now we come to the last of the four Gospels. John is the final word of all the Gospels. The final word is always the final decision. To know what is here in this Gospel is not so easy. John’s long Gospel is of twenty-one chapters, and the many things contained in this book are profound.
John 1:1 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” No one can understand or apprehend this verse in a full way. It is difficult to say what the beginning is and who the Word is. First, the Word was with God, so it seems that the Word and God are two, but eventually the Word is God. This means that the Word and God are one. It is really hard to say whether They are one or two. If you say one, I say two. If you say two, I say one. This is so profound. We do not know so much, but we do have so much. When you are invited to a feast, you may have many courses about which you know very little. You may not know so much about them, but you have them. It is the same in the spiritual realm. We may not know what the beginning is, but we have the beginning. We do not fully know the Word, but we have the Word.
John 1:14 says that the Word, who was God, became flesh, and He was full of grace and reality. He was not full of doctrines and gifts, full of teachings and ordinances, full of forms and regulations, or full of miracles and signs. He was full of grace and reality. Grace is God enjoyed by us. Full of grace means full of enjoyment. Reality, or truth, is God realized by us.
Let me illustrate in the following way. In order to make bread, grains of wheat are ground into powder. Then the powder is blended and baked to become bread. So we could say, “In the beginning was the wheat, and the wheat was the fine flour, and the wheat became bread, full of enjoyment.” Once, I was invited to take care of a conference in Copenhagen. Every morning the saints there served us different kinds of Danish bread for our enjoyment. If you enjoy the bread, you get the reality. The reality is the rich nourishment of all the ingredients of the wheat. This is an example of the Word becoming flesh, full of grace and reality for our enjoyment and realization.
In this light we can see how much Christianity has missed and how much it has frustrated us from the enjoyment of such a wonderful and unsearchable Christ. Christ is God Himself. There is no God without Christ. He is the rich embodiment of God for our enjoyment (Col. 2:9). But we have to realize that He is not the “raw” God but the processed God. He is the very God who has been “cooked,” processed. Most of the foods we eat are processed, especially bread. Jesus said, “I am the bread of life” (John 6:35). Christ today is not the uncooked dough but the bread. Bread is something made of wheat through a process. As long as the wheat remains raw, it can never be bread. If the wheat is going to be bread for your enjoyment, surely it has to be processed. It has to be cooked.
Christ is also the Lamb of God (1:29). The lamb of the passover was processed. It was slain, and the meat of the lamb was roasted with fire. Then the redeemed people struck the blood on their homes and ate the processed meat, not the raw meat (Exo. 12:6-8). Christ was also processed as the real Passover lamb (1 Cor. 5:7). He was slain, killed on the cross. He was processed by being “burned” on the cross. The holy fire of God fell upon Him and burned Him. He was really roasted. Christ was the roasted mutton.
When we enjoy Christ, we get the reality, which may be likened to the realization of all the ingredients of wheat. There are many ingredients in wheat, but without enjoying them, these ingredients are not yours; they are not real to you. But after you enjoy the bread, the ingredients of the wheat become real to you, and this is the reality. In the beginning was the Word, the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us, full of enjoyment and reality. In John 1 we are told that Christ was God Himself processed for our enjoyment. If we get this enjoyment, surely we get the reality, which is the nourishment of all that Christ is, the ingredients of the riches of Christ. If we enjoy Him, we get the reality.
Now we have to find out how to enjoy Christ. Verse 14 of chapter 4 tells us that He is drinkable. Are you thirsty? If you are, come to Jesus and drink of Him. You may ask, “How could Jesus be drinkable?” Verse 24 follows verse 14 to give the definite meaning of drinking Jesus. To drink Jesus is to exercise your spirit to contact God, the divine Spirit. God is Spirit. Whoever shall contact Him has to contact Him in his spirit. The living water in verse 14 is nothing less than the Spirit of God in verse 24, and the drinking in verse 14 is the worshipping in verse 24.
To worship God is not to prostrate yourself, to kneel down. That is the human, religious way. It is not the worship that God wants. God would say, “Come and drink Me. The more you drink Me, the more you take Me in, the more I get the worship.” In 1958 I visited Jerusalem. In that city there is a great mosque of the Moslems. I saw many Arabs there kneeling and prostrating themselves on the ground in their worship to God. But the more you worship in this way, the hungrier and thirstier you become. You get nothing to drink or to eat. God does not want us to have that kind of worship. That is absolutely the religious way, the worship invented by man. That is not the worship that God really wants. God’s way is that you enjoy Him. The more you enjoy Him, the more He gets the worship.
When I was young, I was taught that to remember the Lord at holy communion I had to be quiet and concentrate to recall all that Jesus is and all that Jesus had done for me. I thought that this was the way to remember the Lord and worship God. Eventually, I realized that the Lord Jesus said, “Take, eat; this is My body...This do unto the remembrance of Me” (Matt. 26:26; 1 Cor. 11:24). The more you eat Jesus, the more Jesus gets your remembrance. Then the Lord told us to drink the cup in remembrance of Him (v. 25). If you exercise your spirit to contact the Spirit of God, this is to take God in, to drink Him. To drink is to take some liquid outside of you into you. Now you have to take God into you, and God today is the Spirit. You have to exercise your spirit to take Him in.
In John 6 we see that the hungry people did not realize what they needed. They thought that Jesus might be a great prophet or a great king. By that time they were trying to force Jesus to be their king. But Jesus ran away from that (vv. 14-15). Later, Jesus came back in a secret way and said to them, “I am the bread of life. I came not to be the king. I came to be the bread to you. I don’t want your exaltation. I don’t want your worship in a religious sense. I want you to eat Me.”
If you think that this is extreme, you are still under the influence of human culture and religion. This is not according to the traditional teaching of Christianity but according to the pure word of the Bible. Jesus said, “I am the bread of life...He who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me” (vv. 35, 57). Jesus came to be the bread for us to eat. If we eat Him, that is the real worship to Him. He will not be satisfied until He gets into us. His intention is not to receive our outward, religious adoration but to get into us as the bread of life. When we eat Jesus and He gets into us, He is so happy. Galatians 1 says it pleases God, that is, it makes God so happy, to reveal His Son in us (vv. 15-16). Nothing makes God so happy as Jesus getting into us. We have to eat Him.
On Thanksgiving Day in the United States many mothers prepare a big turkey for the entire family to enjoy. What if the family sat down to eat, and one of the boys knelt down and said, “How I thank you, mother; how I appreciate you, mother!” The mother would think that something was wrong with her son if he did this. Instead, what would please her would be for him to thank her for the turkey and eat the turkey. The more he ate the turkey, the happier she would be. We all have to take Jesus in this way. The more we take Him in by eating Him, the happier He is.
Let us consider the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15. Actually, in this parable the main point is not the son’s repentance and receiving forgiveness. The main point is eating. When the son was away from the father, he came into a situation in which he became so hungry. He had nothing to eat. Even he tried to eat the carob pods for the swine. Then he said, “How many of my father’s hired servants abound in bread, but I am perishing here in famine! I will rise up and go to my father” (vv. 17-18a). The goal of his going back was to get food, to eat. He prepared something to say to his father, which was actually a religious speech. He said, “I will say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants” (vv. 18b-19). This shows that once a fallen sinner has repented, he always thinks of working for God or of serving God to obtain His favor, not knowing that this thought is against God’s love and grace and is an insult to His heart and intent.
When the son came to his father, he began to say his prepared statement, but the father interrupted him and said to his slaves, “Bring out quickly the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet” (v. 22). The best robe enabled the prodigal son to meet his father’s requirements, but the son was still hungry. He did not come back home for the robe but for something to eat. Right away, after telling his slaves to bring out the best robe, the father said, “Bring the fattened calf; slaughter it, and let us eat and be merry” (v. 23). The father did not ask the son to worship him or to say any words of regret to him. The son came back for eating. It was the eating that made both the son and the father happy. In the Lord’s recovery we should just care for eating.
Now the problem again is — how to eat? When the Lord told the disciples to eat Him, the Jews were offended. They wondered how Jesus could be eaten. Then the Lord Jesus told them, “It is the Spirit who gives life...the words which I have spoken to you are spirit and are life” (John 6:63). In other words, the Lord was saying, “You have to take Me by taking the word; then you eat Me. I am the Spirit and My words are spirit. If you take Me by taking My word as the Spirit, I will get into you to be your nourishment.”
In John 7 the Lord said that whoever is thirsty should come to Him and drink of Him (vv. 37-39). Then in chapter 10 He said that He is the door (v. 7). Many Christians would say, “Jesus is the door for us to go to heaven.” But if this were the door for you to go to heaven, it would be awful because it is also the door for you to go out (v. 9). That would mean that Jesus one day would bring you out of heaven. The door in John 10 is not the door of heaven; it is the door for you to get out of the fold (vv. 1-3). The fold signifies any religious organization, or religious society. Jesus is the door to the fold for you to get out of the fold and get into the pasture. The fold is the organization of any religion, and the pasture is outside of the fold. The pasture is Jesus! The pasture is the place where you can eat and rest. He is not only the door for you to get out of religion but also the pasture for you to feed on.
Many years ago I experienced Christ as my door. Through Him I came out of religion. Since that time He has been a green pasture to me. Day and night I feed on Him and rest in Him. He is my pasture. Here I have something to drink. Here I have something to eat, and all that I eat and drink is Jesus Himself. He is my drink and my food. He is my pasture for my enjoyment. The Word was made flesh, full of enjoyment and reality. He is the living water, the bread of life, and the green tender pasture, full of enjoyment and reality.
The enjoyment of Jesus makes us all one. In John 10 Jesus said, “I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; I must lead them also, and they shall hear My voice, and there shall be one flock, one Shepherd” (v. 16). The church is not a fold. The church is the flock. The fold is the place to hold the sheep, but the flock is the body of the sheep. We are the flock in the pasture, and we are not scattered. We are gathered. Some of us were gathered from the Southern Baptist fold, others were gathered, collected, from the Presbyterian fold, and still others were gathered from the Lutheran fold. We all were gathered from different folds, but today we are gathered to the one pasture. Now we are one flock. We are one by enjoying Jesus. The eating of Jesus brings us together.
With a flock feeding on the pasture, there is the enjoyment, without any manners. The sheep as a flock just feed on the pasture. They have no regulations, no forms, no good manners. But they are full of enjoyment and reality. What a failure and a fall we see in Christianity, where the people on Sunday morning come together to have a service full of manners, regulations, forms, and a good sermon. There is no eating. But in the Lord’s recovery, He has brought us back to eating. He has brought us out of all the folds with all the regulations and manners. In the fold there are many regulations. But when you get into the pasture, there is freedom.
John 15 tells us that He is the vine and we are the branches (v. 5). Could you teach the branches to bear the fruit? Would you teach a branch by saying to it, “You have to put out leaves. Then you have to blossom and bring forth fruit. The fruit you are going to bring forth shouldn’t be that big, like a grapefruit. You have to take the regulation to bring forth little grapes in clusters”? Do you believe these teachings work, and do you believe all the regulations and ordinances work? They absolutely do not work. What does work? If you water and fertilize the vine, the branches absorb and receive the nourishment. Then they grow and bring forth fruit. The life within the vine will spontaneously shape the fruit. It is not the regulation, but the inner shaping, the shaping of life. This illustration shows that we do not need outward, doctrinal teachings. We need to grow in life. We need the inner nourishment to have the inner life regulation. This inner life will take care of the shaping to conform us to the image of Christ.
I am saying this because in today’s Christianity there are mostly teachings and ordinances. They do not realize that the teachings and ordinances divide the Body. But today in the Lord’s recovery, the Lord is the door to His people so that many will come out of the fold. They will be liberated to eat, to drink, and to enjoy the riches of Christ. Then this eating will afford them the nourishment to grow and to bring forth fruit in clusters. All the clusters will belong to one tree. This is the one flock, the one Body, the one church.
We can never be one if we still care for doctrines and ordinances. If we drop all the doctrines and ordinances and only care for eating, we will be one. We have no interest in talking about doctrine. We are just happy to say, “O Lord Jesus! Let us eat the Lord.” In this way we have the real oneness, without any dissension or division. Eating affords us the real oneness. In John 17 the Lord prayed, “That they all may be one” (v. 21a). He did not pray that we would be one in doctrine but that we would be one in the Triune God. The Lord said, “Even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us” (v. 21b), that is, in the Triune God.
After the Lord’s resurrection, He came back to the disciples, but not to charge them with good teachings. In John 20 the Lord Jesus came back after resurrection and breathed Himself into them (v. 22). He did not teach them. He did not say to Peter, John, James, and Andrew, “You have to remember what I spoke to you on the mount. You have to keep all those doctrines.” He came back to them not as a teacher but as a breather. His mouth was not teaching. His mouth was breathing. He did not tell them to receive the good teachings, good doctrines, good regulations, or good ordinances. Instead, He breathed into them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Breath” (v. 22, lit.). The Lord did not give them any teaching or ordinance. Instead, He breathed Himself into them.
Then in John 21 the Lord checked with Peter by asking him, “Do you love Me?” When Peter said that he did, the Lord did not say, “If you love Me, you have to remember My doctrines and all My good teachings. Then you have to teach all your younger brothers.” Instead, the Lord told Peter, “Feed My lambs” (v. 15). We feed the lambs with the very Jesus whom we enjoy and experience. This is like a mother feeding her little babe with her milk, that is, with something that she has enjoyed, digested, and assimilated. We have to feed others with the Christ whom we experience and enjoy.
Now we have seen something from the entire Gospel of John. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and this Word became flesh, full of enjoyment and reality. We enjoy Him by drinking Him, eating Him, and breathing Him. He is drinkable, eatable, and breathable to get into us. Today He is altogether the Spirit. He was God, and He became flesh and died on the cross as the Lamb of God for our redemption. After this death He was resurrected. In resurrection He was transformed into the Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b), so He came back as the breath, the Spirit. Now it is so easy for us to breathe Him in. When you breathe Him in, you drink of Him, and you eat Him. Then you can feed others with Him. This is the Gospel of John. This is how we can grow and function for the building up of the Body of Christ. This is the Lord’s recovery of the proper church building.
