WRITTEN BY MICHELE HANSEN
Therefore, when Christ came into the world, He said: “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body You prepared for Me…
Then I said, ‘Here I am—it is written about Me in the scroll—
I have come to do Your will, My God.’”
Hebrews 10:5, 7 (NIV)
I find the word of God absolutely fascinating. I find the Triune God absolutely fascinating. At my church, our pastor is leading us through the book of Hebrews. Coming to this section of verse- “a body You have prepared for Me…” stuck in my being.
I think one of the things I am fascinated by is the statement Jesus makes as He is quoting Psalm 40:6-8 about the kind of offering God did not desire, nor was it sufficient to defeat the power and effects of sin. King David wrote this Psalm under the influence of the Holy Spirit, prophesying about the coming Messiah.
In the book of Hebrews, the author quotes Christ as He quotes David about the kind of payment for sin God would require. A perfect body. Not a perfect lamb, goat, bull or dove, but a perfect human body…to save humans. Hebrews 10:4 says, It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. But it was what God had required as a reminder of what sin costs…until Christ.
For me, I need to really think about the devastating effects of unrepentant sin, the absolute separation from God that sin causes, and the price that was paid for salvation. We need to know we need a Savior before we will seek a Savior. For the Israelites, having to give up a perfect (costly) animal every year, or more often for other occasions, was the closest thing to repentance that they could get. They didn’t have the Holy Spirit living within them for guidance. They didn’t have perfect redemption.
Another fascinating thing to me was that the King of the Universe formed Himself in Mary’s womb. God prepared Himself to be born in the perfect form of the Messiah to fulfill the prophesies that were written by the prophets through the Holy Spirt, who is God. Fascinating!
Jesus as the Man God, deliberately limited Himself as He walked the earth so that in every way, He made Himself reliant on the Holy Spirit and His Father and yet never lost His deity as the 2nd part of the Triune God.
Reading further into the 10th chapter of Hebrews, Verse 14 says, For by one sacrifice He (Jesus) has made perfect forever those who are being made holy (Us). Christ, our perfect Messiah, as He was fully God and fully man, gave up His life willingly. I think about this. He was GOD! He could have said “Nope” and left us here to fend for ourselves. He did not have to endure what He did…but He did. He is God. He could have called down fire from heaven and turned everyone into charcoal briquets…but He didn’t. He stayed on that cross and that perfect body that had been prepared for Him was slaughtered as a righteous payment for our sin.
But we all know, He isn’t dead. That body that had been prepared for Him is alive. It is perfectly forever alive. All so we could be perfectly alive with Him in eternity if we have acknowledged our lostness and sin and received the sacrifice that was made for us.
The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First He says: “This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.”
Hebrews 10:16 makes the statement that now our bodies have been prepared to have the Holy Spirit dwell within us because we have been cleansed from within. We have had our spirit made alive as it is joined with the Holy Spirit. The scripture says we are a new creation. We are now a receptacle of the holy presence of the Lord. As a vessel made able to receive and dwell with God, we have also been prepared to be ambassadors for the seeking and saving Holy Spirit.
All because a body had been prepared and sacrificed as a propitiation for our broken, sin-filled lives.
This Easter season, let the wonder of the incredible sacrifice that was made for us reinvigorate your soul.
