As Holy Priests we Offer to God the Christ we Experienced and a Sacrifice of Praise

In the eyes of God, all believers in Christ are holy priests and royal priests; we are holy and a kingly priesthood, those who are sanctified unto God, saturated with God, filled with God, and who minister God to others. As holy priests, we offer spiritual sacrifices to God; we don’t have to offer physical sacrifices anymore, since Christ Himself became the reality and replacement of all the sacrifices through His death on the cross.

We need to offer spiritual sacrifices according to God’s economy; these sacrifices are:

1. Christ as the reality of all the sacrifices of the Old Testament types, such as the burnt offering, the meal offering, the peace-offering, the sin offering, and the trespass offering (see Lev. 1-5); we offer Christ as the reality of all the sacrifices by experiencing Him as such a One day by day.
2. The sinners saved by our gospel preaching, offered as members of the Body of Christ (Rom. 15:16); we offer the saved sinners to God as acceptable offerings and we labor over them that they would grow in life and be perfected to become priests to God.
3. Our body, our praises, and the things we do for God (Rom. 12:1; Heb. 13:15-16; Phil. 4:18). We offer our body as a living sacrifice to God by being in the meetings of the church. We offer a sacrifice of praise to God when we’re being persecuted because of His name, and especially when we “don’t feel like it”. We offer to God the things that we have and can do for Him so that they may be sanctified for His use.

A sacrifice implies that something is given up, lost, in order to achieve a purpose. First, we offer Christ as the reality of the offerings: He is our food, and we eat Him every morning as the sin offering, the trespass offering, and the peace-offering. Also, we offer sinners to God, we offer our body as a living sacrifice, we offer our things and our praises to God.

Offering Christ to God as our Burnt Offering by Experiencing Christ as this Offering

As holy priests we need to daily offer Christ to God as the reality of all the offerings; when we come to God, we need to take Christ as our sin offering for the forgiveness of our sins and as our peace-offering for making peace between us and God.

Furthermore, the spiritual sacrifices we offer God include Christ as the reality of the burnt offering; Christ is the Only One qualified to be the burnt offering – He is absolute for God, always one with Him, fully satisfying God (Lev. 1:6, 9; 6:8-13).

We can offer Christ as our burnt offering only to the extent to which we have experienced Christ in His experiences as the burnt offering. We need to be those absolutely set apart for God – as Christ was to God. He was absolute and without blemish, and we need to lay our hands on Him, enjoy Him, and experience Him as such a One. Every priest need to be absolute in his offering.

If we would offer Christ to God as the burnt offering, we need to experience CHrist in His experiences, and then, according to our experiences of Christ, we offer to God the Christ whom we have experienced. It is easy to offer Christ as the sin offering and the trespass offering – simply by confessing our sins and repenting to God, we are forgiven by God; but it is not so easy to experience Christ as the burnt offering.

God accepts no work that is not a sacrifice, that is not wholly an offering; He doesn’t want “part-time priests” but priests that full-time serve Him by unceasingly offering the burnt offering, that is, the Christ they experienced as the burnt offering. Watchman Nee sums this up so well in this paragraph,

God accepts no work that is not a sacrifice, that is not wholly offered up to Him. The question is not: “What have I done?” Rather, the question is: “Has what I have done been done as an offering to God? Has it passed out of my hands into His?” If what we have done has not passed over to the other side, it is not priestly ministry, and it is outside the realm of the church’s vocation. If what we have done has not passed over to the other side, then we have not passed over to the other side either, because the offerer goes with the offering. If our offering ascends to God, we will ascend with it. (Collected Works of Watchman Nee, vol. 46, p. 1205)

Many times we consider that the little things we do here and there for God are “a sacrifice” for Him; but what God wants is not part-time priests who offer a sacrifice to God from time to time but those who offer all they have and have experienced to God.

We cannot offer what we don’t have; we can’t offer something “theoretical” or “doctrinal” to God – we can offer only what we have experienced of Christ to Him. What we offer to God has to pass through on the other side, and we go to God with our offering for His satisfaction. The burnt offering is completely for God; we need to offer the Christ we have experienced as the burnt offering to God for His satisfaction.

Lord Jesus, we want to experience You in Your experiences as the burnt offering so that we may offer You to God for His satisfaction. We set ourselves aside for You and for Your interest; we want to be the holy priests offering spiritual sacrifices to God. Lord, we take You as our sin offering, our trespass offering, and our peace-offering. We lay our hands on You as the only One absolute for God and without blemish before God, and we offer You to God as our burnt offering. Lord, may we experience You in Your experiences and offer up to God the Christ we have experienced for His satisfaction!

As Holy Priests we should Offer up a Sacrifice of Praise Continually to God

In Hebrews 13:15 we see a very profound thought; even though we bear the reproach of Christ and suffer on His behalf, we should still offer a sacrifice of praise to Him, the fruit of lips calling on His name. In the church life we enjoy the unchanging Christ as grace, we follow Him outside religion, and we experience Him as our enjoyment; at the same time, we should offer through Christ spiritual sacrifices to God.

As priests in the holy priesthood, through the unchanging Christ as grace we should offer up a sacrifice of praise continually to God. As priests we need to pray and praise the Lord! Priests are praisers; priests praise the Lord!

The highest point of our prayer is to praise the Lord. If we don’t pray, it is hard for us to praise; our prayer should lead us to praise the Lord. If we practice living a life of prayer we are led to a life of praising the Lord. In the church life today we should offer up through Christ the sacrifice of praise to God; we may not “feel like it” or we may not be in an excellent situation, but we need to offer a sacrifice of praise to God!

As Heb. 2:12 says, in the church Christ sings in us hymns of praise to the Father, and we too should praise God the Father through Him. All our meetings need to be filled with praises to the Lord. This doesn’t mean we merely need to declare the hymns or the word of God but we need to praise the Lord for our heart!

We need to consider how to upgrade the level of praises in all the meetings. The Lord is worthy to be praised – Praise the Lord! We praise the Lord not because we feel like it; we praise the Lord without checking the way we feel! When we praise the Lord, Christ praises the Father in our praising, and we and He, He and we, praise the Father in the mingled spirit (1 Cor. 6:17)!

Christ as the life-giving Spirit praises the Father in our spirit, and we by our spirit praise the Father in His spirit! This is the best and highest sacrifice that we can offer to God through Christ – praising the Lord by letting Him praise the Father in our praises. Christ is waiting to praise the Father in the church – He is waiting for us to cooperate with Him; as we praise God, Christ praises Him in our praises.

Through the Christ that we have enjoyed and experienced we need to offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually! In all our meetings we need to overflow with praises to God for the wonderful Christ we have enjoyed and experienced.

Praise the Lord for the wonderful Christ we have enjoyed and experienced today! Father, through the unchanging Christ as grace we offer up a sacrifice of praise continually to You! We praise You, Father, for Christ who is our life, our food, our drink, our enjoyment, our reality, our truth, and our everything. Oh Father, we join Your Beloved Firstborn Son to praise You by offering You the Christ that we have enjoyed and experienced in our daily life. Praise the Lord! Hallelujah! We give ourselves to praise You, Lord, no matter how we feel and where we are! You are worthy to be praised!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration: the Word of God, my Christian experience, bro. James Lee’s sharing in the message for this week, and portions from, The Conclusion of the New Testament, pp. 3843-3844, by Witness Lee, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Recovery of the Priesthood or God’s Building, week 5 / msg 5, The Two Orders of the Priesthood.
• All Bible verses are taken from, Holy Bible Recovery Version.
• Hymns on this topic to strengthen this burden:
  # My heart longs for absolute surrender / That I’d wholly consecrated be, / Not in word alone but all my being / Would be fully given unto Thee. / Lord, You are the only One who offered / Yourself without reluctance unto God; / Full obedience to the Father given, / Absolute, You sacrificed Your all. (Song on Consecration)
  # Lord, I take You as my sin offering for what I am, / But Lord, I take You as my burnt offering for what I’m not. / I’m not loving, submissive, patient, kind, or meek, / I’m not single in view, Lord, nor is it God I seek. / But dearest Lord, You’re all these things, all virtue’s in You, / So Lord I lay my hands on You in all I do. (Song on the Burnt Offering)
  # Father, Thy Son beloved leads our praise / After the banquet feast is had and done; / How dear, how sweet to Thee the praise He leads, / And in His praises joining we are one. (Hymns #50)
  # O brothers, be not silent! / O sisters, cry aloud! / The sound shall tell God’s triumph / And blessings far abroad. / Now is the time to praise Him, / Yes now, at any cost! / O joy in your salvation, / And in His mercy boast. (Hymns #1095)