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A Body to Offer
- David Brown
- Apr 5, 2009
Passage: Hebrews 10:1-9
A Body to Offer
John 19:1-7, 12-18, 28-42
Hebrews 10:1-9 (NLT)
The sacrifice of bulls and goats couldn’t take away sin.
God gave the Second person of the Godhead, The Word, Jesus, a body to offer in sacrifice for the sins of the world.
John 1:14
And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.
Jesus was and is God in the flesh! God in a human a body!
He is God in a Man. He is God. And, He is man.
For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; who gave himself a ransom for all, 1Timothy 2:5-6
It is just as important to recognize Jesus’ humanity as it is his deity.
Heresies that denied Jesus’ humanity arose during first centuries of the Church age! Two of these were…
Monophysitism (taught that Jesus had a single divine nature with no human nature at all.
Docetism (taught that Jesus only appeared to have a body…and that he wasn’t really incarnate. They viewed all “matter” to be evil…believed that God would not have anything to do with matter, therefore He would not have become flesh.
These heresies denial of the incarnation would mean that…
Jesus didn’t really actually take upon himself flesh
So, He didn’t really actually suffer and die on the cross for our sins
And, He didn’t really or actually physically rise from the dead.
The Apostle John sternly warns the church against these heresies.
(1 John 4:3)
“…every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God”
Let’s remove some common confusion about the Incarnation.
Jesus is not part God and part man.
Jesus is fully God and fully man. When he became a man, he lost none of his divinity.
Jesus was not pretending to be human.
He wasn’t “disguised” as a human.
Jesus was not temporarily human.
God entered the human race. He didn’t leave it when he ascended. He sits at the Father’s right hand in the body of a man. He will always be a member of the human race.
Jesus came in a fleshly body and is a man, just as He is God!
He was physically conceived in the womb of Mary by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit and physically born.
He lived in a body of flesh, grewn physical stature, eating, slept, walked, talked, worked, served and ministered in his body.
He touched children and blessed them.
He touched the sick and healed them.
He walked the roads, climbed the hills, rode donkeys, sailed in ships, lived as a man in a body. The God Man! God in a physical body!
During O.T. days, a Man could pay the debt of his Kinsman or relative. A slave could be redeemed by his brother or cousin.
(Redemption could be achieved by a Relative!)
Jesus had to be our relative, a man, a man with a body to be our Kinsman Redeemer! (Our substitute for sin, our sacrifice, The One who paid the price and endured the punishment of our sin on the cross.)
1 Peter 2:24
Jesus lived in his body.
Jesus died for our sins in his body.
Jesus suffered stripes for our healing in his body.
Jesus rose again in his body.
Jesus ascended to heaven in his body.
Jesus is coming again in his body!
Christianity is a belief system that is not limited to the spiritual realm. It involves our minds and our bodies!
Romans 12:1-2
True Christianity engages and involves our bodies!
We live in our bodies.
We present our bodies to God in worship, service and obedience!
There is a Modern Day Heresy that is embraced by many today!
…the belief that we can invite Jesus to live in our heart, our spirit…but that it doesn’t really matter what we do with our bodies!!
But…We have been given a body to offer!
God lives in our bodies, can come upon our bodies, heals our bodies, uses our bodies and will one day resurrect our bodies!
1 Corinthians 6:9-20
We are to offer or present our bodies to God!
Jesus died for us in his body.
We are to live for him in our body!