THE MANNA

THE MANNA

I disapprove of analysing the Lord Jesus Christ, but I see every day clearer and clearer that the mystery of God is unknown to you if you do not know Him as He was here. In writing to ———— I finished with, ‘Until you have learned that you have changed your man, that now, not I, but Christ, liveth in me, you are not ready for manna, and you will not be able to comprehend Christ’s humanity until you are ready for manna.’ If you are in communion you are looking at the blessed One here as God was looking at Him. God was not looking at His Deity, but He was looking at Him as a Man in whom was all His delight. I am not afraid that His Deity will be compromised. My fear is, that the mystery, the reality of His body, is morally unknown. The church as His complement is the display of the magnificence of His grace here on the earth. If you have not the manna you do not express Him as He was here, you are not in the “life of Jesus”. Then conscience is not up to your faith.

... I said to ———— about the humanity of Christ, ‘You are not up to it; as soon as you are really set for manna, then you will understand the humanity of our blessed Lord.’ John 6 is the contrast to manna. You ^[p. 74] must know Christ as the bread of life; that is, you must appropriate His death to get out of the death which is on you before you can have life in Him; and when you have, then you receive grace from Him to be as He was here in unqualified dependence on God, and that when He had everything in Himself. We speak of dependence when we are in a strait, but manna is simple dependence on God when I am, as to things here, quite independent — a very rare experience you may be sure.