Hallelujah, Christ offered His body once for all so that we now can enjoy Him as our everything!
God’s great will is, on one hand, for Him to have a Body for Christ as His enlargement and expression, and on the other, to have Christ as the replacement for all the sacrifices and offerings in the Old Testament so that we may enjoy Him as our all in all (Heb. 5:10; Psa. 40:6-8).
We can say that there are two aspects of the great will of God according to the Bible: first it is that Christ would have a Body for His corporate expression and enlargement, and second it is for us to enjoy Christ as our everything, for He replaces all the sacrifices and offerings with Himself.
May we be the Davids of today, those who are according to God’s heart and who do the will of God in our generation; may we have the same heart as God, and may we carry out God’s will in our lifetime.
A key for us to be in the will of God, which is the Body of Christ, is the matter of being blended together; blending doesn’t merely involve the outward aspect of visiting and being with others in different localities and countries – it also involves a spiritual, intrinsic aspect.
The intrinsic meaning of blending is that we do all things through the cross and by the Spirit, and we seek to minister Christ to others for the building up of the Body of Christ.
It is the Lord’s mercy that He has brought us into the church life; we need to go on with Him day by day and be according to His hear to carry out His will by being blended in the Body.
It is God who blends the Body together, and we cooperate with His blending work by allowing the cross to terminate our preferences, our natural man, and anything of the self and the flesh; then, whatever we do is by the Spirit so that Christ may be ministered for the sake of the Body.
May we pray that the Lord would give us wisdom how to go in and come out among His people; may we abandon our routine living and natural makeup and live by the Spirit to minister Christ to others for the Body.
When our heart is inclined toward the Lord and set on Him as our love, as we love Him, we care for the Body of Christ.
The Body of Christ is the mystery of God’s will, and this Body is built up through the blending.
With this as the basis, we can realize that God’s great will is to have us live in the Body of Christ by enjoying Christ as our everything.
God’s Great Will is to have Christ as the Replacement for All the Offerings so that we may Enjoy Him as our All in All
According to Heb. 10:5-10 (which quotes Psa. 40:6-8), God’s great will is to have Christ as the replacement for all the sacrifices and offerings in the Old Testament so that we as God’s people may enjoy Christ as our all in all.
In these portions of the word we see that God was embodied in Christ as the first step of embodiment, seeking that this embodiment would be embodied further in the Body of Christ.
When Christ came, He came so that He can cause Himself and the enjoyment of Himself to be the centrality of the life of the New Testament people of God, just as the offerings and sacrifices were the center of the life of God’s Old Testament people.
God doesn’t delight in sacrifices and offerings; rather, He prepared a body for Christ so that Christ would become the replacement of all the offerings, and He Himself is the One who delights God.
The Lord went to die on the cross as the one, universal, eternal-for-all sacrifice; He redeemed us, and when He did this, Christ offered His body on the cross and carried out God’s will.
Christ did not die on the cross only to redeem us, to deal with all barriers between us and terminate all negative things, and to release His divine life and impart it into us to be enjoyed by us; besides all these, Christ died as a replacement of all the offerings.
Because He died as such a One, after He became a life-giving Spirit He is now available for us to enjoy Him; as we turn to Him at any junction, turn, corner, He meets our every need.
Just as for the Old Testament people there was an offering and a sacrifice there, Christ intends to be our need and be involved with us so that He may be enjoyed by us as our all.
The kind of living that we as God’s New Testament people need to have today is in the Body by enjoying Christ as everything to us.
As the unique sacrifice of the new covenant (who replaced all the sacrifices of the old covenant), Christ is the factor that enacts God’s New Testament economy (Matt. 26:28).
This is so that He may be the centrality and universality of God’s New Testament economy for the producing and building up of the church as the organic Body of Christ, which will consummate in the New Jerusalem. Amen!
Christ shed His blood, which became the blood of the covenant; He redeemed us, and He Himself became the cup of blessing at the Lord’s table, for He as the Spirit is our portion of blessing to meet our every need in every circumstance.
Christ came to do the will of God (Heb. 10:7, 9), that is, to replace all the sacrifices and offerings (which were types) with Himself in His humanity as the unique sacrifice and offering for the sanctification of God’s chosen people.
He came to put away the animal sacrifices of the old covenant and establish Himself, in His body, as the sacrifice of the new covenant. Wow!
When Christ did this, He changed the age from the age of the law to the age of grace, the age of the church, for the consummating of God’s new creation out of God’s old creation (2 Cor. 5:17; Gal. 6:15).
Such a changing of the age could even be considered as greater than the creation of the universe mentioned in Genesis 1, for now all nations can be part of God’s people through believing in Christ the the unique sacrifice replacing all the animal sacrifices. Hallelujah!
Thank You Lord Jesus for coming to do the will of God – You replaced all the animal sacrifices and offerings with Yourself, and You enacted the new covenant through Your blood! Hallelujah, Christ is the unique sacrifice of the new covenant, and we now can believe into Him, apply His precious blood, enjoy God’s New Testament economy, and take Christ as our blessing and as our everything! Lord Jesus, we believe into You; we take You as the unique replacement for all the sacrifices and offerings, we apply You in our experience, and we enjoy You as our everything in God’s New Testament economy!
Christ Offered His body once for all so that we may Enjoy and Partake of Him as our Everything!
Christ’s replacing of all the Old Testament offerings is God’s great will; the great will of God is for Christ to take away all the Old Testament types and establish Himself as everything to us.
Hence, Christ has changed the age for the consummating of God’s new creation out of God’s old creation (2 Cor. 5:17; Gal. 6:15).
Christ offered His body once for all so that we may enjoy and partake of Him as our everything; He has established Himself as everything to us.
May we always remember that God’s great will for us is that we enjoy Him as our everything.
We all have to acknowledge, however, that we are short in this; we are short in the realization, the burden, the exercise, the longing, the cleaving to Him – we are short in our loving Him in a way that brings us into a living contact with Him, such that we are and know His Body in reality.
The cross where Christ as the unique offering was offered was the dividing line of the ages, bringing forth the new creation and bring us into being in that new creation; it then caused Him as the Spirit to be the basis for us to live in the new creation.
As we live in the new creation, the Body in its reality becomes enlarged in the new creation, eventually heading up the entire universe!
The Old Testament predicted in Isa. 53 that Christ would come to be the sacrifice for sin in order to replace and terminate the Levitical sacrifices (Isa. 53:6, 11-12); God prepared a body for Christ so that He could offer Himself to God to replace all the offerings (Heb. 10:5).
The burnt offering, the meal offering, the peace offering, the sin offering, the trespass offering, the drink offering, and the wave offering – all the offerings were fulfilled and replaced by Christ, the unique offering.
He took away the “first” – the sacrifices of the old covenant, so that He might establish Himself as “the second” – the sacrifice of the new covenant (v. 9).
As the unique sacrifice of the new covenant, Christ is everything.
By this will of God we have been sanctified through the offering of Christ’s body once for all so that we may enjoy and partake of Him as our everything (v. 10).
The One who have Himself to be everything to us as the unique sacrifice is everything to us. Hebrews shows us that Christ is God to us, He is man, He is the God-man,
He is our Apostle, our Moses, our real Joshua, our High Priest, our Heavenly Minister, He’s interceding for us, He is caring for us in every way as our Aaron, and He is our Forerunner!
When He became “the second”, the unique replacement of all the offerings and sacrifices, Christ became everything to us.
Today we need to live in the Body by enjoying Christ as our everything.
We have been sanctified through the offering of Christ’s body once for all, so that we may enjoy and partake of Christ as our everything.
The will of God today is simply that we enjoy Christ, take Christ as our everything, and live by Christ. God’s great will for us today is to be a part of the Body of Christ and enjoy Christ as our everything.
Thank You Lord Jesus for offering Yourself once for all to be the unique sacrifice and offering to God! Hallelujah, God’s great will is for us to enjoy Christ as our everything, for He is the reality of all positive things! We want to live a life according to God’s heart by having Christ as our everything and living by Christ! Amen, Lord Jesus, may we live in the Body by taking Christ as our everything day by day so that we may live in and carry out the great will of God! Amen!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by Rick Scatterday for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1989, vol. 1, “The Practical and Organic Building Up of the Church,” pp. 275-277, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Will of God (2020 spring ITERO), week 4, Living a Life according to God’s Heart and Will.
- Hymns on this topic:
– A better covenant was made / With Thy dear blood in heaven; / By Thee this sure new testament / To Thy redeemed was given. (Hymns #188)
– It is by this blood of worth / The new testament was made; / For this better covenant, / ’Tis a sure foundation laid. / We have been redeemed by God, / Not with silver or with gold, / But, Lord, with Thy precious blood, / Which Thy love doth e’er unfold. (Hymns #224)
– Lord, Thou art all the offerings / Prepared by God for us; / They are so rich in meaning, / So sweet and glorious. / They have fulfilled God’s purpose / And met His heart’s desire; / They too have satisfied us, / And faced what we require. (Hymns #195)
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