A BODY DIDST THOU PREPARE FOR ME.
Hebrews 10: 5-7 Wherefore when He came Into the world, He said, Sacrifice and offering You would not, but a body did You prepare for Me; In whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You had no pleasure: Then said I, Lo, I am come (In the roll of the book it Is written of Me) To do Your Will, O God.
Continuing within the EIGHTH SECTION
Hebrews 10: 1-18
The New Way into the Holiest
BY THE REV. ANDREW MURRAY
The writer has reminded us of the utter insufficiency of the sacrifices required of the Levitical Law to do what was needed to take sin away, or to perfect the worshiper. In contrast to these he will now unfold to us the inner meaning, the real nature and worth of the sacrifice of Christ. In speaking of the Blood in chapter 9 he has taught us what its infinite power and efficacy is. But what we need still to know is this: what gave it that infinite efficacy; what is its spiritual character, and what its essential nature is, that it has availed so mightily to Open for us the Way to God. Even when we believe in Christ's death, we are in danger of resting content with what is not much better than its shadow, the mere doctrinal conception of what it has effected, without entering so into its Divine significance, that the very image, the real likeness of what it means, enters into us in power.
Our writer here again finds what he wants to expound, in the Old Testament. He quotes from Psalm 110, where the Psalmist uses words which, though true of himself, could only have their full meaning revealed when the Messiah came. Our author makes special use of two significant expressions, A body You did prepare for Me, and, Lo, I am come to do Your Will (Genesis 3: 15; Psalm 40: 8), God. Speaking of the sacrifices of the Old Testament, the Psalmist had shown that he understood that they never were what God really willed: they were but the shadows pointing to something Better, to a Spiritual Reality of Truth, a life in the body given up to the Will of God, as a Divine prophecy of what has now been revealed in Christ.
A body did You prepare for Me. Instead of the sacrifices, God prepared a body for Christ (Genesis 3: 15; Luke 1: 38; 1Peter 1: 23; According to revelation Mary was a surrogate mother, as God had created a body to house Christ in and then placed that incorruptible seed within her when she said, "be it unto me according to Your Word." Because the incorruptible seed is the Living Word of God, the same seed that we are to be willing to receive by trusting His spoken Word in the same fashion as Mary when we hear it and then accept Him.), which He so offered up or sacrificed that we have now been Sanctified by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Christ's body was to Him just what any man's is to him--- the dwelling and organ of the soul; the channel for intercourse with the outer world, susceptible of impressions of pleasure and of pain, and therefore one of the first occasions of temptation. His body was a part of His human personality and life. He was in danger, just as we are, of using the body for His own service or pleasure, a means of gratifying self. But He never did this. He was filled with one thought--- God prepared Me this body; I have it for His disposal, for His service and glory; I hold it ready every moment to be a sacrifice to Him. The body comes from God; it belongs to Him; it has no object of existence but to please Him. The one value My body has is, that I can give it a sacrifice to God. (This then is the Key to understanding what is required of us as well. But not as a physical thing but rather sense Jesus Christ died our physical death we're counted as having died within Him on the tree of cursing according to commandment, the Law and the Levitical Laws to fulfill all righteousness, ie. right-wise-ness)
It was the purpose of the Old Testament sacrifices to awaken this disposition in the worshiper. There was to be not only the thought--- as especially in the sin offering.--- This sacrifice dies in my stead, so that I need not die. But the farther thought--- this the burnt offering especially symbolized.--- The giving up of this Lamb and its life in Sacrifice to God, is the Image and the pledge of my giving up my life to Him. I offer the sacrifice to God, in token of my offering myself to Him. Substitution and Consecration were equally symbolized in the altar.
This was the feeling of David in writing the Psalm. What he could only partly understand and fulfill has been realized in Christ. And what Christ accomplished for us, of that we become full partakers of as it is wrought into us, in a life of intimacy and fellowship with Him. The word comes to us, Present your bodies a living sacrifice to God. The real essential nature of the Sacrifice of Christ, what gives it worth and efficacy, is this: the Body that God prepared for Him, He offered up to God. And just as David, before Christ, through the Spirit of Christ, said these words of himself, so every believer after Christ, in the Spirit and power of Christ, says them too: A body have You prepared for me. This is the New and Living Way that Christ has Opened up. David walked in it by anticipation (Divine inspiration emphasis added); Christ the Leader and Forerunner walked in it and fully Opened it up; it is only as we, too, by (Divine inspiration emphasis added) participation with Him, walk in it, that we can find access into the Holiest.(This is what was said to be a doer of the word and not a hearer only, this is our obedience to the word revealed in us. emphasis added)
Every believer who would be fully delivered from the Old Testament religion (an external religion without power to impart eternal life emphasis added), the trust in something done outside of us, that leaves us unchanged, and would fully know what it means that we are Sanctified and Perfected by the one offering of the body of Christ, must study to appropriate fully this word as True of Christ and himself as a member of His Body--- A body did You prepare for Me. In paradise it was through the body sin entered (Genesis 3: 9-12, 17-19); in the body it took up its abode and showed its power. In the lust for forbidden food, in the sense of nakedness and shame, in the turning to dust again, sin proved its triumph. In the body Grace will reign and triumph. The soul/spirit of man has been Redeemed; it becomes a Temple of the Spirit and a member of Christ's Body; it will be made like His glorious Body. A body did You prepare for Me: through the body lies, for Christ and all who are Sanctified in Him, the path to perfection.
And yet how many believers there are to whom the body is the greatest hindrance in their Christian life. Simply because they have not learned from Christ what the highest use of the body is--- to offer it up to God. Instead of presenting their members unto God, of mortifying the deeds of the body through the Spirit, of keeping under the body, they allow it to have its way, and are kept in bondage to the will/desire of self. Oh! for an insight into the real nature of our actual Redemption, through a body received from God, prepared by Him, and offered up to Him.
1. The soul dwells In the body. The body has been well compared to the walls of a city. In time of war, not only the city and its in-dwellers must be under the rule of the king, but specially the walls. Jesus, for whom God prepared a body, who offered His body, knows to keep the Body too.
2. The mystery of the Incarnation Is that Godhead dwelt in a body. The mystery of atonement, the one offering of the body of Christ. The mystery of full redemption, that the Holy Spirit dwells in and sanctifies wholly the body too.
3. "Know you not that your body is a Temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you? Glorify God, therefore, In your body." Did you ever know that the Holy Spirit Is specially given for the body , to regulate its functions and sanctify it wholly?
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