ABEL THE SACRIFICE OF FAITH.
Hebrews 11: 4 By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he had witness borne to him that he was righteous, God bearing witness In respect of his gifts: and through it he being dead yet speaks.
Continuing within the SECOND HALF-PRACTICAL.
Hebrews Chapters 10: 19 - 13: 25.
Of a Life in the Power of the Great Salvation.
Now in the TENTH SECTION
Hebrews 11: 1-40.
The Fulness of Faith.
BY THE REV. ANDREW MURRAY
One of the chief words of this Epistle is offering, Sacrifice. Christ " offered Himself to God." " He put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself." " By one offering He has perfected forever them that are Sanctified." The inner spirit and power of that life by which Christ pleased His Father, and put away sin, and gained His seat on the Throne of the Majesty on High, was--- the offering of His body. As the Leader of our Salvation He guides His people in the same path, the New and Living Way, that of Self-sacrifice.
It is a most remarkable and deeply suggestive fact that among those who have preceded us in the way of developing a living faith, we should find that with the very first one, Abel, the first fruit of faith was to sacrifice. The disposition, of which sacrifice is the expression, lies at the very root of the Life of faith. If I would in this chapter learn what faith is, and how I can grow strong in a Living faith, I must mark well what the very first step is: By faith Abel offered a more excellent sacrifice.
We know what the double meaning was of Abel's sacrifice. It was, on the one hand, his offering to God of a life to be given up to death, and so in his stead to bear the death which is in its very nature the punishment of sin. It was an acknowledgment of the Righteous Judgment of God against sin; the confession that without blood-shedding there could be no remission of sins. It was an act of Living faith; he counted that the sacrifice would be acceptable, and that with it he would be accepted too. On the other hand, the sacrifice was the offering and yielding up himself to God and His service. He knew it was something that lay in the very nature and spirit of a True Sacrifice, that it could not be pleasing to God if he offered the lamb, and kept back a portion of himself. No, the sacrifice was the double confession--- that he was unworthy to offer himself totally to God without atonement, but that, believing that in the sacrifice he was accepted, he gave himself wholly to God's worship and service, he gave himself to the very death, to die to self and live to God.(Genesis 4:4) And it was as if his own death had to confirm and Seal the Truth; the man who had offered the Sacrifice of faith, had founded his worship in the death of a lamb, had to die himself to find the Way to God. The Atoning Sacrifice has ever two sides; the lamb was at once a substitute and a symbol, its death an atonement and a consecration.
Faith draws near to God through Sacrifice; in Christ this Truth finds its full realization. By one offering He has perfected forever them that are Sanctified. Our access to God and our intimacy with Him can only be in Christ's finished work. We have Boldness through His Blood His Blood Cleanses and Perfects the conscience. The first great work of faith is to appropriate the Sacrifice, Obedience and Righteousness of Christ as accepted for us, to hold it up before God, and by the Holy Spirit to have the witness given, and to experience how acceptable we are. But faith cannot fully do this without at the same time entering into the inner spiritual significance of the Sacrifice, and becoming partaker of the Spirit and disposition it breathes, and in which alone it has its intrinsic value. Faith sees that the Law of Self-sacrifice, under which the Head went in to God, is the Law for each of the members. There is no way out of sin and sinful flesh, but through death to life. And as faith sees the beauty and the power of the Truth in Christ, it hungers for conformity to Him in this His highest moral glory, and becomes itself the root of an inward Self-sacrifice, a continual offering of itself to God and His Holiness; because it is nothing less than a real, Living union with Christ the High Priest Himself. Christ became our Substitute because He was our Head; faith begins with the Knowledge of Him as Substitute, but grows up into Him, the Head of all things, and especially in the intimacy of His death (the being in Him). We find this Truth throughout Scripture. All that is said in Romans 6 and Colossians 3 of our being dead to sin in Christ, and alive to God, in 2 Corinthians 4 of bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus that His Life may be manifested in us, in Galatians 2, 3 and 6 of our being crucified with Christ, being crucified to the world, in Galatians 2 and Philippians 3 of our being made conformable to His death, points to this--- the inward spirit and disposition of Self-sacrifice is born within us by His Spirit, is breathed into us every day where there is True Communion with Him. The Blessing of Christ's death as atonement is only surpassed because it is only being fulfilled in that of His death as our fellowship with Him through it.
Beloved Christian, we know what the great lesson of this Epistle is: the one and only Way into the Holiest is Opened up, we can live and abide continually in the presence of God. And now the chapter is to teach us how the power to come thus near and abide near to God, to enjoy the full Salvation provided for us, is given to a living faith alone. And Abel, the first of the men of faith, teaches us just what this Epistle reveals, what Christ our High Priest has taught--- that the Way to God, that the Way of faith, is the Way of Self-Sacrifice, of death (a death of all that is known of or called self, except it be of Self-sacrificing Love ). Christ entered in to God in the Way of Self- Sacrifice; in faith is "the "I" accept of Him, and His entrance into God's presence as mine; in union with Him, once and forever mine." His Self- Sacrifice becomes the Spirit and the Authority and power of my life, and the Life of Living faith in me becomes the union of the two--- His and my self-sacrifice.
God said: No man shall see Me and live. Through death, the death of Christ, our death in and with Him, is the only Way to God. This is the New and Living Way, the Way into the Holiest. Let us walk in it, in the power of the Holy Ghost. Let us yield ourselves in great simplicity and humility to die to all that is known and called self, as we confess our helplessness, our total bankruptcy and look to God to quicken us in Christ. Let us tarry in childlike dependency and patience, with the one desire, to please the Father as Jesus pleased Him. And as we wait, and patiently do the perfect and required Will of God, He may show us how, in the once and forever of His death and resurrection, there is for us a perfect entrance into the perfect life that has been offered to our trust as we grow into His Living faith and faithfulness.
1. Abel had witness borne him that he was righteous. As he bowed to God's righteous judgment on sin, and trusted In God's righteous deliverance from it through sacrifice, he was righteous In God's sight. As he worshipped with his eye on the dying lamb, he had witness borne to him. How I know not. As with my eye on the dying Lamb I worship, the witness
comes to me by the Holy Ghost that I am righteous.
2. Let me believe in the immeasurable power of the Blood of the Lamb, until my whole being is filled with the witness of the Holy Ghost.
3. The more I gaze, in confession and trust, on the dying Lamb, the more may I claim the spirit of His sacrifice to enter into me, and make me conformed to His likeness.
4. A more excellent sacrifice. Cain brings his offering without death, without blood--- the spirit and religion of the world. With Abel and the hosts of Heaven it is--- all the Blood of the Lamb.
Now a note in special interest on the word fellowship and the meaning taken from Webster's 1828 Dictionary:
Fellowship: Frequency of intercourse, Communion; intimate familiarity. 1 John 1.
No comments:
Post a Comment