I.　God's economy is that we eat Christ and be constituted with Him—1 Tim. 1:4; John 6:35, 41, 57.

II.　The Lord is recovering our eating of Him—Rev. 2:7, 17; 3:20:

A.　In general, Christians have neglected the eating of the Lord and have lost sight of the fact that the believers have the right to eat the Lord—22:14.

B.　The Lord wants to recover the church back to the beginning—to the eating of the tree of life—2:7.

C.　The Lord intends to recover our eating of the food ordained by God and typified by the tree of life, the manna, and the produce of the good land, all of which are types of Christ as food to us.

D.　In Revelation 2 and 3 the Lord came in to recover the proper eating of Himself as our food supply, and now we must eat Him not only as the tree of life and the hidden manna but also as a feast full of His riches—2:7, 17; 3:20.

III.　To eat is to contact things outside of us and to receive them into us, with the result that they eventually become our constitution—Gen. 2:16-17:

A.　To eat is to take food into us that it may be assimilated organically into our body—John 6:48, 50.

B.　To eat the Lord Jesus is to receive Him into us that He may be assimilated by the regenerated new man in the way of life—vv. 56-57.

C.　Eating is the way to experience God's dispensing for His expression—Gen. 1:26; 2:9.

D.　The food eaten, digested, and assimilated by us actually becomes us; this is a matter of mingling—Matt. 4:4.

E.　The revelation of the divine things in the writings of John is given that we may receive God and digest Him—John 20:31; 1 John 1:1-2.

F.　"Daily I receive God and digest Him….Through the digesting of the infinite God, I am what I am, and you are what you are" (Life-study of 1 John, p. 4).

IV.　God desires that man eat, digest, and assimilate Him—John 6:57:

A.　God's eternal plan is to dispense Himself into us so that He becomes every fiber of our inward being.

B.　God's economy is not a matter of outward things but of Christ coming into us inwardly; for this, we need to take Christ by eating Him—Eph. 3:17a; John 6:57.

C.　The oneness that God desires with man is illustrated by what takes place when we eat, digest, and assimilate food—Matt. 4:4:

1.　God wants to be digested and assimilated by us so that He can become the constituent of our inward being.

2.　We are what we eat; therefore, if we eat God as our food, we will be one with God and even become God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead.

V.　The Bible is a book of eating—Gen. 2:16-17; Rev. 2:7; 22:14:

A.　The record regarding spiritual eating in the Bible is a strong indication that God intends to dispense Himself into us by the way of eating.

B.　God's placing man in front of the tree of life indicates that God wanted man to receive Him as life by eating Him organically and assimilating Him metabolically, that God might become the constituent of man's being—Gen. 2:9.

C.　The Passover reveals that God delivers us by feeding us, that He saves us by giving us something to eat—Exo. 12:1-11.

D.　Whereas the Lamb energizes us to leave Egypt, the manna nourishes us and constitutes us with the heavenly element—16:14-15.

E.　Deuteronomy 8:7-10 reveals that God wants us to eat the produce of the good land—the riches of the all-inclusive Christ.

VI.　God's intention in His salvation is to work Himself into us and to change our constitution by changing our diet and feeding us with Christ as heavenly food—Exo. 16:14-15; John 6:27, 32, 35:

A.　Food is anything we take into us for our satisfaction—Job 23:12b; Jer. 15:16.

B.　Whatever we desire, hunger, and thirst after is the diet according to which our being has been constituted.

C.　By giving His people manna to eat, God indicated that His intention was to change their constitution by changing their diet—Exo. 16:14-15; Deut. 8:3:

1.　By eating Christ we become Christ; that is, Christ becomes our constituent.

2.　By eating manna we become those who live, act, behave, and walk according to what God is.

VII.　The way for us to become the reality of the kingdom of the heavens is to eat Christ as the all-inclusive bread—Matt. 15:26-27, 32-37:

A.　As the heavenly King, the Lord Jesus rules over us by feeding us with Himself as bread—John 6:5, 27, 35.

B.　By eating Christ as the all-inclusive bread, we are subdued and brought under His kingly and heavenly rule and thus are constituted with the reality of the kingdom—Matt. 14:14-21; 15:32-38; 5:3, 6, 8.

C.　All the kingly elements are in this bread; thus, the more we eat Christ as the all-inclusive bread, the more the royal ingredients are constituted into us to become the ruling element within us and to make us the increase of Christ as the reality of the kingdom of the heavens—Dan. 2:34, 35b, 44-45.