LEVITICUS 3
The offerer of a peace-offering desired to be in communion with the altar. “See Israel according to flesh: are not they who eat the sacrifices in communion with the altar?” (1 Corinthians 10: 18). Offering precedes eating. Indeed, we do not get the eating in this chapter; it is”the altar” here; the eating or communion is in chapter 7. The one gives character to the other. Though it may be noted that “all that are clean may eat the flesh” (7: 19). That is, the communion is not limited to the offerer or the priests, but it is available for “all that are clean”. No doubt there is instruction in this.
To be an offerer supposes some degree of spiritual wealth in the apprehension of Christ, and an energy [p. 31] in the affections Godward that brings one near the altar to present to God that which has been found in Christ through death for Him. In approaching us God had nothing to say to us about anyone but Christ, and if we approach God what we say to Him in adoration and praise is the echo of what He has first said to us in grace and love. Christ came to us from the heart of God in the unspeakableness of divine giving, and we bring Him back to God in grateful affection and praise. But what we thus bring to God forms a divine bond of communion between saints. We cannot spiritually take up with one another what has not first been taken up with God. He must have the first and best portion. But Christ being brought in, the communion which can be enjoyed together is extended to “all that are clean”. Even those who were poor in Israel could partake, if clean, of that which another had brought, and enjoy the privilege of communion with the altar. What a character of grace this gives to the communion of saints! The prosperity in Christ of one becomes the joy and gain of all! But that which is enjoyed has no divine value unless its immediate relation to God as offered on His “most holy” altar is maintained in the consciousness of those who partake of it. And to bring what is unclean into connection with it is to be “cut off from his peoples”.
The offerer in this case commits himself to communion with the altar of God. It is emphasized that “his own hands” were to bring Jehovah’s offerings (Leviticus 7: 30). There is a definite personal committal first of all at the altar; that is, with God. Then in the eating we commit ourselves with our brethren to communion with the altar. If we are committed with [p. 32] God and with our brethren to such a holy communion it determines the character of our associations. Hence Paul says, “Ye cannot drink the Lord’s cup and the cup of demons: ye cannot partake of the Lord’s table and of the table of demons”. And he adds to this a very solemn enquiry, “Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? are we stronger than he?” (1 Corinthians 10: 21, 22).
All who have broken bread have committed themselves to this, that they have done with the world as a source of happiness. “The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of the Christ?” The One on whom we feed as the Source of our enjoyment, and who is the Substance of our communion with God and with one another, has died out of this world and has no part in it whatever. We have a happiness which is of the deepest character, for it is a divine happiness known in nearness to God and shared with our fellow-saints, but it is a happiness completely outside the world. “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of the Christ?” He went into death according to God’s will that He might open up to us an entirely new character of joy — joy in God as revealed in infinite love.
If we consider the intense holiness of the altar, how absolutely exclusive it is of all that is not in accord with it, we must understand that there can be no playing fast and loose as to communion with it. At the altar it is Christ and His death bringing in blessing according to the holiness of God. Every element in this world is idolatrous and unclean. How can the two be linked together? How could a soul pass from the one to the other, and have its portion in each? It is morally impossible.
[p. 33] The burnt-offering for acceptance, whether of the herd or of the flock, must be “a male without blemish”. For conscious acceptance there must be the apprehension of Christ in the energetic activity in which He was found here to do the will of God. But the fact that the peace-offering might be either “male or female” would suggest that the offerer in this case might have Christ before him either from the side of what was taken up for God in “male” energy, or from the side of what was necessitated by the state of fallen humanity. The known reference of the female in types to state would lead one to conclude that the “female” as an offering might intimate what was connected with the latter side. The “female” offering for the sin of “any one of the people of the land” (Leviticus 4: 28, 32; Leviticus 5: 6), and the “red heifer” of Numbers 19 would perhaps confirm this.
The spiritual action typified in this chapter is of great importance, for it is the basis of fellowship in the souls of saints. It is only hearts that have Christ before them that can know what fellowship is in any true or divine sense. I take it that this is the import of the offerer’s hand being laid on the head of his offering. He is fully committed to Christ, not only for acceptance, but as his present portion and joy with God, and as the substance of his communion with fellow-saints. We identify ourselves with Christ; we commit ourselves to Him in relation to the question of communion or fellowship.
A faithful God has called us into the “fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord” (1 Corinthians 1: 9). That shows the greatness and dignity of the fellowship into which we are called. But in 1 Corinthians 10: 16 we bless the cup, and we break the bread. It is what we do. Each [p. 34] one who drinks of the cup and eats the bread puts his own hand to it, and commits himself definitely to Christ, and to all that is the fruit of His death. And that constitutes the essence of our fellowship with one another. The exercise as to fellowship is often later in the soul’s history than that as to acceptance, and as to perfection in an Object for the heart. But there is an intuitive desire in saints for enjoyment in common of that which is our portion with God, and that which binds us together in separation from all that is of the world. If one had no desire to share spiritually with others it would indicate that he had not as yet much personal enjoyment of Christ. Even in the world it is recognized that company is essential to enjoyment. Man is so constituted that he derives the greatest part of his pleasure from sharing it. One may safely say that an isolated man has very little true enjoyment. One might have a crowd of people round one and yet be completely isolated because none of them shared one’s thoughts and feelings. “In the day of your gladness” (Numbers 10: 10), and “Thou shalt sacrifice peace-offerings, and shalt eat there, and rejoice before Jehovah thy God” (Deuteronomy 27: 7), and other passages show how peace-offerings were connected with the happiness of the people. The formal organizations of the religious world deprive those who are in them of a great deal of spiritual happiness because they furnish so little opportunity for christian fellowship.
If Christ has become our consciously enjoyed portion with God it kindles desire for the fellowship of saints — for participation in a holy partnership here in which we can feed on Christ together. Christian fellowship is in reference to Christ; the apostles’ doctrine forms [p. 35] the fellowship. It is not so many persons agreeing to walk and act on certain principles together; still less is it agreeing to differ: but it is that Christ has got a place with each one. It is all hearts appreciating One Person, and preferring what is of that Person to what is of the natural thoughts and tastes of men. Not all having the same measure, but all having the same Person in view, and declining to give place to any other.
The offerer’s purpose in offering is that he and others may eat together in communion with the altar. He desires a fellowship that is uncontaminated by the selfish and idolatrous associations of the world. He has found that which he can hold and enjoy with God.
“In Thy grace Thou now hast called us
Sharers of Thy joy to be;
And to know the blessed secret
Of His preciousness to Thee”.
Christian fellowship is the fellowship of the death of Christ; it is the fellowship of His body and of His blood. This is indicated by the offerer killing the animal which he offers. He discerns, in type, the Lord’s body given in death. How completely this removes the fellowship from all that is natural and material! The offerer recognizes that he could have no peace or prosperity, no festivity or communion of divine character, apart from the death of Christ. Indeed if we could conceive of Christ as excluding all thought of His death He would be of no value to men. In order to accomplish the will of God and our blessing He has died here. Are we in communion with that? Not simply owning that it is the ground of our blessing, but in communion with it? It puts one in spirit outside all that is of the world.
Then the priests “sprinkle the blood on the altar round about”. This implies spiritual intelligence as to the import of the act, for “the priests’ lips should keep knowledge” (Malachi 2: 7). In 1 Corinthians 10: 15, 16, we read, “I speak as to intelligent persons: do ye judge what I say. The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of the Christ?” The blood of the Christ has borne witness to all the wealth of new covenant blessing in the heart of God and has shown that God would bless men infinitely through death. Now there is priestly ability to spread abroad, as it were, the witness of what is in His heart.
The blood presented on man’s side Godward is for atonement; it is wholly for God. Hence “no blood shall ye eat”. So long as man is on the earth he must own the rights of God over life. The blood is for atonement, and therefore reserved for God. But in the New Testament we learn that the blood which has made atonement is also the witness of the love of God. This is what the blood is on God’s part towards us — the new covenant in the blood of Christ. This can be drunk; indeed, a man has no life if he does not drink it; it is open to us to appropriate it freely and fully. The cup of the new covenant in the blood of Christ is a cup of blessing, and we bless — eulogize — it. It speaks of all that is in the heart of the blessed God for men, now expressed in the blood of the Christ. This is the basis of our fellowship. It speaks of blessing outside the sphere of sin and death — blessing of a spiritual order which we can enjoy together — what God is as revealed in grace and love. The hearts of the saints break forth to speak well of all that the cup expresses; we bless the cup, and rejoice in the infinite [p. 37] thoughts of love which have come to light through the death of Christ.
Those who have to do with God in relation to Christ in peace-offering character can bring near to Him their apprehension of how the death and blood of Christ have made possible for men a new and divine joy in the blessing of God. The blood round the altar in this type intimates that it is God known in blessing that we approach, but that it is blessing that cannot be intermingled with the festivities of an idolatrous world. His blessing coming through death is spiritual; it lies outside the region of sight and sense; it is of a nature that death cannot touch. All this is realized by the one who draws near with his peace-offering, for the altar is that most holy spot where things are known with God in their true value and blessedness. We must know first what is true of us at the altar — that is, in nearness to God — before we can be marked in this world as those who have their associations in communion with the altar.
Then there is the presentation and burning of the fat of the peace-offering. It is that which the blessed God feeds upon, and in which none other can participate. Our communion together would lose its true and holy character if we did not think first of God’s portion; and if we did not recognize that it is due to Him that the richest and most excellent portion in Christ should be His. There is a peculiar joy in the recognition of this — that there is that in Christ which is reserved for God’s delight. If we think of WHO He was it must be so. Because all that He was in His Person gave character to what He became, and who but God could appreciate and appropriate all that? I say “appropriate” because [p. 38] it is twice in this chapter called the “food” or “bread” of the offering.
Think of the Person who said, “Lo, I come to do, O God, thy will”: His was a perfect and holy will, but it was surrendered in devoted obedience, at all possible cost to Himself. We see something of the cost in Gethsemane. In the world where man had been saying for four thousand years, “My will be done” — and that the will of a fallen and corrupt being — we see a Divine Person come in flesh, with a perfect and holy will, subordinating that will entirely, and saying in the supreme moment when all the cost of doing God’s will was present to His spirit, “Not my will but thine be done!” Do we not realize that there was something in that which it is beyond the creature to appropriate? We cannot measure what was given up for God’s glory, and therefore we cannot estimate what its giving up in sufferings and death was to God. But we can delight to offer it, and to know that the very mention of it is unspeakable delight to God. It is a very blessed feature of our fellowship.
There is infinitely much that we can enjoy together, and that we can appropriate as the food of our souls, in that holy Person who offered Himself, but our enjoyment of it is enhanced by the thought that there is that in His offering which only God can estimate at its full worth, and which is God’s peculiar portion and delight. We have communion with God, for we feed on the same blessed Person, but we love to own adoringly that there is that in Him, and in His offering, which is beyond us, and which is wholly for God. We cannot appropriate it, but we can offer it. Wondrous privilege! that we should be priests to offer that which only God can feed upon! “All the fat shall be Jehovah’s” (verse 16).
“And Aaron’s sons shall burn it on the altar upon the burnt-offering which lieth on the wood that is upon the fire”. What we have apprehended of Christ in burnt-offering and meat-offering character, as seen in chapters 1 and 2, is carried on in our souls, and underlies the peace-offering. What a wondrous basis the three offerings constitute for the communion of saints — the sweet odour of Christ on the altar! We shall find much instruction as to communion with the altar when we come to the seventh chapter.