EATING, DRINKING, AND BREATHING CHRIST
The Gospel of John tells us the way to take this very Christ, who is God as the Spirit and as the Word. The first way is by eating. This is revealed in chapter six. The Lord said, "I am the bread of life...he who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me" (vv. 35, 57). The way to take Christ is to eat Him. Christ is eatable. Some may think that it is too wild or crude to say that we have to eat Christ. But the Lord Himself told us to eat Him. Only the things that we eat, that we take into us as food, can be our life supply.
One day the Lord Jesus said, "I am the bread of life...eat Me." This was simple to such an extent that it bothered and puzzled even many of His disciples. They said to one another, "This word is hard; who can hear it?" (v. 60). They did not understand how they could eat Him. The Lord was simple to such an extent that people would not believe.
Also today it is so simple to be saved and have Christ within us as our life. "Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved" (Rom. 10:13). It seems hard to believe that we could be saved in such a simple way. It is so marvelous, yet so simple. When God created man, He did not give man many instructions about how to behave himself. God only put him in front of the tree of life that he might take in the tree of life (Gen. 2:8-9). This is the unique thing we need. We need to take in Christ. We need to eat Christ. This is why we have to know that Christ is the Spirit and the Word. Where is Christ? Christ is in the Spirit and Christ is in the Word. We surely know that Christ is in the heavens, but if He were only in the heavens, we could not eat Him. He would be too far away from us. Christ today is the Spirit and is the Word. Whenever I touch the Spirit and contact the Word, I eat Christ.
Eating Christ is revealed in John 6, and drinking Him is revealed in chapter seven. The Lord said, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink" (v. 37). Following the eating is the drinking. To eat is to take in the bread. To drink is to take in the water. So we need the eating and the drinking. But this is not all. At the end of the Gospel of John, in 20:22, there is the breathing. We need eating, drinking, and breathing. After the Lord was resurrected, He came back to His disciples, breathed into them, and asked them to receive the holy breath.
I say again, in this book we are told what Christ is, and we are also told how we can take this Christ in. He is the very God, He is the Spirit, and He is the Word. We can take Him in by eating, drinking, and breathing. We have to eat, drink, and breathe Christ day by day to sustain our spiritual life. It is so simple.
(The Fulfillment of God's Purpose by the Growth of Christ in Us, Chapter 2, by Witness Lee)
