Morning Moments

Hebrews 10:5 (KJV)
5 Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me:


In the process of sacrifices throughout the Old Covenant much care was given to the bodies of animals that were to be sacrificed. The animal had to be clean. In other words it could not be an animal that God had declared “unclean”. It had to be without blemish. It could not be one that had been diseased, maimed, lame, or deformed in any way.

The whole idea of an animal being sacrificed today is repugnant to many of us, because of our failure to see the big picture and to understand that the life of the flesh is in the blood. Often we are reminded of Bambie or some other animated or cartoon character.

God is and has always been serious about a sacrifice, blood, and death. But none of the animal sacrifices could ever take sin away; they merely covered it or atoned for it. When a thing is covered it is not removed. It is merely out of sight to human eye. The covering does not remove the object for if you are walking through your dark house at night with minimal light you may stumble over the object you covered because it is still there.

Untold sacrifices were made that were made in obedience to law and not an expression of love. BUT GOD, prepared a human body for an ultimate and final sacrifice - the body referred to in our text, the body of Christ who was without spot or blemish. No one could accuse Him of sin, for He had no sinful nature. He was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. So He alone could be offered as a perfect sacrifice for sin FOREVER. He was perfectly human, but without the nature of Adam and thus as a human could never have died had He not offered Himself TO GOD THE FATHER as the only perfect sacrifice for our sins.

Because of His ultimate sacrifice in His death and ultimate deliverance in His resurrection, God has prepared another body - the Church of which Christ is the Head and of which we as individual believers are members in particular. Since a head requires a body with members, we as individual believers become “in Christ” the body through which Christ expresses His life on earth today. The body MUST be without spot of blemish, so the problem of us being that way is impossible UNLESS we are “in Christ”. And because we who are true believers are “in Christ”, we are declared by God as without spot and blemish, and that is how Christ will ultimately present us to the Father.

Christ had no sin in His body that we who have sin in our body might offer it to Him as a living sacrifice as a result of His efficacy and been seen of the Father as complete “in Him”. It is a fact and it is a done deal, so because of our place “in Christ” we can offer ourselves to God as a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable an holy as an intelligent act of worship.

It is not what you are “in you” that God accepts, for He rejected that, but it is what you are “in Christ” as a member in particular of this NEW BODY - the Church, which consists of all those everywhere who have been genuinely born of the Spirit of God.

We were what we were - sinners, that “in Christ” we could be what are - saints, accepted in the Beloved. May God help us to live in the light of what we have become rather than what we have been.

BLESSINGS!