The Lord Jesus redeemed us from our sins by His blood and made us a kingdom, priests to our God and Father (Rev. 1:6); the New Testament clearly tells us that all of God’s chosen people, all believers in Christ, are His priests (1 Pet. 2:5, 9; Rev. 5:10).
As priests we need to have a certain kind of living and a particular kind of service. Our being and our living has to be in the mingling of God with man, and our service to God issues from our being in God’s presence to be infused with God, filled with God, and saturated with God.
In the Old Testament the priests had to offer sacrifices to God; they slaughtered sheep, pigeons, bulls, and other animals to offer to God. But in the New Testament Christ came and replaced all the offerings with Himself; now we need to enjoy, experience, and offer up Christ as the reality of all the offerings to God.
On the one hand Christ is the reality of all the offerings, and on the other hand He has been enlarged to become the Body of Christ composed of all the members of the Body, the genuine believers in Christ. Therefore, we need to offer to God not only Christ as the reality of the offerings but also the members of the Body of Christ, the saved sinners and perfected believers, as spiritual offerings acceptable to God.
The main offering of the New Testament priests should be the saved sinners, the perfected believers, and the full-grown saints as the members of the Body of Christ upon which we labor, struggle, and pray that they would enjoy Christ, experience Christ, grow in life, and arrive to maturity in the divine life.
We need to learn from the Apostle Paul how to offer to God the spiritual sacrifices that He requires, which are first the sinners saved through our gospel preaching, the believers we shepherd and care for until they offer themselves to God as a living sacrifice, and the saints we teach and admonish in all wisdom until they become full-grown in Christ.
As priests to God we need to be very diligent and even aggressive in offering sacrifices to God; God doesn’t want only some sweet-smelling savor to be ascending from time to time but ALL the time, from morning to evening!
As laboring priests of the gospel, we need to be one with Christ to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God for His satisfaction all the time. Let us see in more detail what are the offerings we can offer God in our service as priests.
Offering the Newly Saved Ones to God as Spiritual Sacrifices
The sacrifices that God desires from us as priests to God are nothing else but the enlargement of Christ, the increase of Christ, the corporate Christ. Only Christ is pleasing to God, and when Christ is increased in humanity, this is well-pleasing to the Father.
When we preach the gospel and announce Christ to man, those who receive our message and believe into the Lord become the members of the Body of Christ, part of the increase of Christ; these are our spiritual sacrifices offered to God (Rom. 15:16; 1 Pet. 2:5).
All the unbelieving people are in Adam, dead in sins and offenses; when we preach the gospel to a sinner and he repents, believes into the Lord, and receives Christ, he is transferred out of Adam and into Christ – he becomes a part of Christ, the corporate Christ, the Body of Christ. The newly saved sinners are our offering to God; they are sanctified in the Holy Spirit, and they are of a sweet-smelling savor to God.
Praise the Lord, we can preach the gospel to our friends, our neighbours, our workmates, our classmates, on the street, on the bus, in the shopping centre, and wherever we are; it is not our responsibility to “save everyone” but it is our duty as priests to God to preach the gospel and let Christ operate in man so that the saved sinners would be offered to God for His satisfaction!
Shepherding the Saints and Encouraging them to Offer Themselves to God as a Living Sacrifice
Saving someone is not the end; after being saved we don’t just “wait to go to heaven” (this is such a degraded concept!) but we need to grow in life. After someone is saved, we need to continue to shepherd him, cherish him, nourish him, and care for him in love so that he may enjoy Christ, experience Christ, and grow in life.
The newly saved believers are like “our spiritual children”; we need to take tender care of them so that they may be “raised up” in Christ and grow in the divine life. This means that we need to minister Christ to the believers and help them enjoy the Lord in His word day by day.
We need to tell out the virtues of Christ through our living, allowing the God-man Jesus to be expressed and testified through us, so that others may be shepherded and taken on with the Lord. We need to care for newly saved believers until they grow in life and we can encourage them to present themselves as a living sacrifice to God (Rom. 12:1-2).
After a period of time of caring for the new ones, we should encourage them to present themselves as a living sacrifice to God, which is their reasonable service to God; in this way, we offer them up as perfected believers to God as spiritual sacrifices in their offering to God.
Laboring on the Saints to Present them Full-Grown in Christ
First, we offer the newly saved sinners to God, then we shepherd them and nourish them until they offer themselves to God as a living sacrifice, and finally we need to labor on the saints until they are full-grown in Christ and we can offer them to Christ (Col. 1:28).
We need to announce Christ and admonish and teaching the saints in all wisdom so that Christ would be ministered to them and they might become perfect (full in quality) and complete (full in quantity) by maturing with Christ as the element of the divine life unto full growth.
For this we need to labor, contend, and struggle, so that Christ would grow in the believers and they would arrive at a full-grown man. This is not in an individualistic way but in the life of the Body of Christ; as the believers grow in life, they function as members of the organic Body of Christ according to their measure.
We need more perfecting and more admonishing among us so that we may present one another full-grown in Christ; such an offering is well-pleasing to God.
The Lord wants to bring us into this kind of experience in which we cooperate with Him to perfect, admonish, and teach others by feeding them with the solid food in the word of God, Christ as the word of righteousness, so that many saints would grow unto maturity and we would present them to God as full-grown in Christ.
Lord Jesus, thank You for making us a kingdom, priests to our God and Father. We want to cooperate with You to preach the gospel and announce the unsearchable riches of Christ to sinners so that they would be saved and we would offer them to God as spiritual sacrifices pleasing to Him. Lord, we want to nourish the young believers and help them grow in life until we can encourage them to offer themselves to God as a living sacrifice, which is their reasonable service to God. Oh Lord, how much we need perfecting and admonishing so that we would become full-grown in Christ to be a spiritual sacrifice pleasing to God!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my Christian experience, bro. Dick Taylor’s sharing in the message for this week, and portions from, The Advance of the Lord’s Recovery Today, chs. 1-2, by Witness Lee, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Recovery of the Priesthood or God’s Building, week 6 / msg 6, Being Laboring Priests of the Gospel of God by Serving God in our Spirit in the Gospel of His Son.
- All Bible verses are taken from, Holy Bible Recovery Version.
- Hymns on this topic to strengthen this burden:
# Rise! Preach the gospel now! / Rescue the fallen! / Lo, millions perishing daily in pain! / Quench not your heart of love, / Count not possessions: / Rise! Preach the gospel while moments remain. / Rise! Preach the gospel now! / Rescue the fallen! / Your heart of love for them, / Can you restrain? (Hymns #1358)
# Oh, save me from self-seeking, Lord, / Let me not be my own; / A living sacrifice I come, / Lord, keep me Thine alone. / From proud vain glory save me, Lord, / From pride of praise and fame; / To Christ be all the honor given, / The glory to His name. (Hymns #415)
# Grant us, Lord, a willing spirit. / To build Your Body we would strive. / By our measure we would function, / Until full-grown we’d all arrive. / Occupy us for Your Body. / Grace supplying, You afford. / Always bearing, always caring, / By Your grace we’d be outpoured. (Song on Growing and Functioning)
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The Lord told us in the New Testament that all of His chosen people, who are today’s believers, are His priests (1 Pet. 2:5, 9; Rev. 1:6; 5:10)….Every priest has to be very, very diligent, even aggressive, in offering sacrifices to God. God does not want the sweet smell of the offerings on the altar to stop. He likes this sweet savor to ascend to Him all the time for His acceptance….The main offering of the New Testament priests should be the saved sinners as parts of the enlarged and corporate Christ, offered to God as the New Testament sacrifices of the gospel. In the Old Testament, the main offerings were bulls and goats, which were types of Christ. Today we are offering Christ, but not the individual Christ. We are offering the corporate Christ. (Witness Lee, The Advance of the Lord’s Recovery Today, pp. 30, 36)