Hey John,
I had an experience with God last night when I got into bed. Our Father spoke to me and said, “Jesus didn’t sacrifice Himself.” Immediately, my spiritual ears perked up! And all of these thoughts started coming to me.
Jesus was God’s Lamb! When John the Baptist saw Jesus walking along the Jordan River, he said “Behold the Lamb of God”! He didn’t say “Behold the Lamb of Jesus” or “Behold the Lamb of Christ”! He was God’s Lamb! Abraham prophesied of that on Mt Moriah when he said that “God will provide Himself a Lamb.”
The Father was the One that nailed Jesus to that cross just as surely as He blotted out the handwriting of ordinances when He nailed them to the cross! God nailed Jesus to that cross using a Roman soldier with a hammer and nails, just as surely as David slew Uriah the Hittite with the sword of the Ammonites!
Jesus was the sacrifice, but He didn’t sacrifice Himself. God made the sacrifice. Jesus was as a Lamb, led to the slaughter, yet He opened not His mouth! But because He was faithful unto death, even the death of the cross, God has given Him a name above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord!
Oh, so many wonderful thoughts were coming to me lying there in my bed! And I know that you know all these things. But it was so good to me that I was going to tell it at the fireside this morning, but the Spirit wasn’t in it, so I kept it to myself until I felt an unction from the Spirit to tell it.
I felt that unction when I listened and read the Conclusion (IK4 Conclusion PDF) of the Iron Kingdom book 4 that y’all read around the fire yesterday.
At the top of page 1, at the beginning of the second sentence, you wrote “Paul’s gospel proclaimed that Christ’s sacrifice was intended…” When I read that, it felt like you were saying that Christ was the One making the sacrifice, even though I am confident that it wasn’t your intention to do so. And, except for my experience last night, I probably would not have noticed it. But I did have that experience last night, and I did notice it. So I felt that I should write to you and ask if perhaps you could change that sentence to “Paul’s gospel proclaimed that the sacrifice of Christ was intended….?
Thank you for all of the labor that you do for us!
Billy H.
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Hi Billy,
Thank you for writing. That is an interesting point. I believe that to God belongs the eventual credit for everything the Son accomplished. After all, Jesus did say once that “of myself, I can do nothing.”
But there is another side of the issue that we cannot ignore. That is, even though it is the grace of God in anyone that enables that person to accomplish God’s will in his life, God gives that person the credit for doing it and rewards him accordingly. The Bible says that “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself,” which goes along with your testimony from last night. But it also says these things concerning what Jesus did after he ascended back to the Father in heaven:
Ephesians 5
- Live in love, as Christ also loved us and gave himself for us as an offering and a sacrifice to God for a fragrant aroma.
Hebrews 7
- It was fitting that we should have such a High Priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens,
- who does not need, as those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for their own sins and then for those of the people, for this he did once for all when he offered up himself.
Hebrews 9
- Christ did not enter into holy places made by hands, the figures of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us,
- not to offer himself over and over again, as the high priest entered into the sanctuary year after year with the blood of others,
- for then, he would have had to suffer many times from the foundation of the world. But now, once for all, at the close of the ages, he has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.
Hebrews 10
- We are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all.
- Moreover, every priest stands daily, ministering and offering the same sacrifices, time after time, which can never take away sins,
- but he, having offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, sat down at the right hand of God
Jesus was himself the sacrifice because he was, as you pointed out, God’s Lamb. And as you know, according to the law that God gave to Israel, the owner of the sacrificial animal was the one who had to kill it. That means that God was the one who had to kill His Lamb.
At the same time, it would be wrong to ignore the fact that Jesus performed the sacrifice for sin which God demanded. The very reason that God made Jesus our high priest was to offer an eternal sacrifice for our sin—himself. And he did.
It was all God’s plan, and it was only by God’s power and wisdom that Jesus was able to accomplish his mission. The Father gets the glory for it all, of course. Jesus would certainly say so. Even so, if by God’s grace we would “rightly divide” the information provided for us in Scripture, we must conclude that Jesus offered himself to God as a sacrifice for sin. God certainly gave him credit for doing so, and we cannot be wrong to agree with God.
Thank you for the thought-provoking testimony.
Pastor John
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Wow! Thank you John! That was some response! I agree with everything that you said! I got blessed last night while I was receiving all of those thoughts. And I was blessed again today when I wrote them out. And now I have been blessed again after reading your response. Feeling so blessed for being able to know and understand these things that are higher than I am.
Thank you for your help!
Billy H.
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