By That Will

Therefore, when He came into the world, He said: “Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, But a body You have prepared for Me. In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You had no pleasure. Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come-- In the volume of the book it is written of Me-- To do Your will, O God.’” Previously saying, “Sacrifice and offering, burnt offerings, and offerings for sin You did not desire, nor had pleasure in them” (which are offered according to the law), then He said, “Behold, I have come to do Your will, O God.” He takes away the first that He may establish the second. By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. (Hebrews 10:05-10, NKJV).

A 1000 years before Christ, King David penned Psalm 40 in prophetic anticipation of the coming incarnation of Messiah.

That alone is an astounding thought, with even Christ's foreordained humanity (My ears You have opened, being a Hebraism for a body You have prepared for Me) detailed in exquisite succinctness.

But beyond that, there is the repeated declaration that sacrifice and offering were not the real desires of God, but were the prerequisite pictures of His ultimate desire: redemption for fallen humanity.

All of history, everything of significance, funneled toward that magnificent goal, so that the pertinent details of the actions and lives of the major redemptive players were laid out beforehand and recorded in divinely inspired Scripture for our learning and edification; all this to confirm the existence, sovereignty and care of God.

The Psalm cited in the above passages from Hebrews draws the reader's attention back to the foundation of the Old Testament before launching us forward into its glorious fulfillment in the New. Christ, and everything about Him, were contained in the volume of the book - which can variously be interpreted to be the Old Testament itself, as well as the Book of God's Redemptive Plan, the Book of God's Holy Prophets, the Book of Life, and the Book of God's Will.

And it is this last Book of God's Will that is perhaps the most comprehensive and powerful, for it is by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. 

Of all the truths of the Bible, this is one of the most astonishing. Our sanctification, that day-by-day process by which He conforms us into the image of His Son, is God's ultimate desire for His Creation. It is brought about at the unimaginable price of the offering of the body of Jesus Christ, God's Beloved Son.

And the effectiveness of that fulfillment is once for all - one offering for all who believe for all time and eternity.

Christ, our incomparable Savior, set aside everything to do Your will, O God - out of His perfect love for and obedience to the Father.

Their unfathomable relationship within the Godhead formed the foundation for our salvation.

That which foreshadowed the death of Christ, the centuries of bloody animal sacrifice under the Law, was merely the precursor, the setup, for what was to come. Christ's advent took away the first hopeless system of works-based redemption, as it was always intended to do, so that the second way of life could be inaugurated through faith in His death and resurrection.

Never think that any part of Jesus' life was accidental or tragic, in the sense of it taking an unexpected turn. All of it, every second of it, fulfilled the plan written before the foundation of the world.

Why do we think, then, that any aspect of our lives is tragic or accidental under God's care? If we are His children by faith, we are coheirs with Christ, and are of far more value than we can conceive. This is true not because of what we are, but because of who He is.

That being the case, do not waste one moment of doubt in response to life's inevitable losses and pains. Yes, we will walk through the Valley of the Shadow of death. Yes, our days in this world will likely have periods of agony and grief. Yes, enemies will be arrayed against us, and may sometimes even appear to be victorious, but what of it?

The same occurred in Christ's life.

If we take the short-sighted view, the self-centered view, this will only add to the misery.

But if we can keep steadfast in our hearts and minds the fact, reiterated again and again in Scripture, that it is by that will that we move and live and have our being, and by which, through faith, we will receive an eternal inheritance, then we will be able to say, as our brother Paul did so long ago:

...I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. (Romans 8:18, NKJV).

Know and remember that whatever the circumstances, our God is for us.

Consciousness of Sins

For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with these same sacrifices, which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? For the worshipers, once purified, would have had no more consciousness of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins. (Hebrews 10:01-04, NKJV).

No matter what we call it, no matter how we try to sweep it under our mental rug, no matter how we strive for self-justification or excuses, you and I both suffer from the knowledge that we fail at living up to even our own standards, let alone a holy and righteous God's. 

Whether we believe in a Supreme Being or not, we know, we just know deep down inside, that we are guilty. That is why we become so defensive at the slightest hint of baseless accusations, because underneath that indignation is the sure and certain knowledge that there are plenty of accusations we are rightly guilty of, and we daren't give an inch lest we lose the whole battlefield of reputation and self-esteem in one onslaught.

That consciousness of sins is His mercy. It is indisputable evidence of His grace, for unless a sick man has symptoms he will not seek a cure.

Ancient Israel was given the rites of animal sacrifices for precisely this purpose - a reminder of sins.

The substitutionary death of innocent animals could never take away sins, but all that red, flowing blood was an indisputable and graphic picture of the penalty of sin.

The greatest, and often most overlooked gift of Christ is a clean conscience - a lifting of that burden and ghastly weight of guilt that plagues every man, woman and child capable of even minimal self-examination. Ritual cannot do it. Hypocritical self-righteousness cannot do it. Concluding that you are certainly not as bad as that guy around the block, and considerably better than that woman over there, cannot lift the stain of our own iniquity.

That is why most are so eager to find egregious examples of wrong-doing so that our own evil looks relatively benign in comparison. Yet, such pitiable attempts at assuaging our battered consciences will always ultimately fail. That too is God's mercy.

I have been with more people than I care to recall as they breathed their last on this earth. Of those individuals, the passing of each indelibly etched in my memory, there was an undeniable difference between the man or woman who believed they were cleansed from all unrighteousness, and those who, even as the rattle of collapsing lungs echoed uncannily from their death bed, struggled with the paramount, but typically unspoken issue of human existence: forgiveness.

It is that consciousness of sins that drives some to suicide, some to bitterness and resentment, some to an inexplicable sense of victimhood… and some to Christ.

It is the last group, and only the last group, that finds relief from this ancient and necessary human compulsion to be forgiven.

If ever we become so anesthetized to that ubiquitous sense of failure that we think we are "ok", we are then, in fact, the most hopeless.

Better a miserable perfectionist than an apathetic decent citizen.

The one can never be content, and will search exhaustively for that ultimate goal of acceptance. The other won't even try.

And it is in the striving for forgiveness, for acceptance by Someone greater than ourselves, whether we know His name or not, that can lead us to life everlasting.

Self-satisfaction, complacency, a sense of decency, or worse, superiority, is deadly; eternally fatal.

The writer of Hebrews does not want his intended audience to stop at those reminders of sin, but to go forward to Christ, crossing the threshold of unbelief on our hands and knees, looking for that which we know we need.

Forgiveness.

Waiting Is

And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment, so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. To those who eagerly wait for Him He will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation. (Hebrews 09:27-28, NKJV).

According to ancient and venerable Christian doctrine, Christ, the Suffering Servant, is coming again, physically, magnificently, undeniably - as Savior and Lord of Lords.

This next appearing will unfold in two phases: apart from sin, for salvation; and “to execute judgment on all, to convict all who are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have committed in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.” (Jude 1:15, NKJV).

This is necessary in the same way that it was necessary that Enoch was snatched away before the flood, "…so that he did not see death, 'and was not found, because God had taken him'…" (Hebrews 11:5, NKJV). After which, the Flood of Judgment came, destroying all that walked the earth except for those creatures preserved in the Ark. 

So too, when Christ comes again, first He will snatch away His Bride, the church, then pour out God's wrath in judgment against a sinful world, preserving a remnant only of mankind.

And that interval between His Resurrection and Ascension, until He returns, is happening now. For the faithful, it is a time of eagerly waiting and occupying until He comes. 

For the willfully unbelieving, it is a time of unacknowledged approaching doom. For when they say, “Peace and safety!” then sudden destruction comes upon them, as labor pains upon a pregnant woman. And they shall not escape. (1 Thessalonians 5:3, NKJV). 

That dreaded inkling of coming judgment is anathema to those who dwell on the planet in conscious rejection of God and the things of God. To be reminded of it in anyway evokes the desperate reaction of a spoiled child confronted with obvious wrong-doing. Shrill and vile accusations, foot-stomping, breath-holding, and even violence often ensues against the messengers of approaching judgment.

But to those of us who believe, we look toward His coming with comfort and joy, eagerly waiting for the Return of the King to put right all that is amiss in this crooked and perverse world. We hold fast the Word of Life so that whatever befalls us here and now is but light affliction, and cannot be compared to the glory which shall be revealed in us.

It is essential to believers to have this anticipatory mindset, to set our minds on things above, lest we, like Lot, become enveloped in the things of the world, and lose sight of where are true citizenship lies. Knowing He might come at any moment for His church purifies our hearts and minds, while we wait and occupy.

Yet, the waiting can be long and hard, fraught with pain and isolation, as we wrestle against our flesh, the world and the Enemy.

Like the fallen beings we are, we either lose sight of our destiny when things are proceeding according to our satisfaction, or we whine and grumble about how long He is tarrying when life is difficult, or our pride is injured, or when we simply become tired of keeping on.

Our Lord knows this about us, and encourages us in our weakness.

But as for you, brethren, do not grow weary in doing good. (2 Thessalonians 3:13, NKJV).

Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. (2 Corinthians 4:16, NKJV).

And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart. (Galatians 6:9, NKJV).

This world is not our home. Not yet. One day it will be, when He gifts us with a new heaven and a new earth, and with that quality of eternal life which He died to make possible for us.

The primary danger then is twofold while we wait: distraction or weariness.

Both are debilitating.

Both take our eyes off Him and refocus them on ourselves - a sure guarantee of miserable self-absorption.

Yes, it's hard to wait, but the waiting is also part of His absolutely unique and perfect plan for each one of His children.

Remember this, especially in the night seasons. 

For He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust. (Psalms 103:14, NKJV).