A Body Didst Thou Prepare for Me

X. — 5. Wherefore when he cometh Into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, But a body didst thou prepare for me;

6. In whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hadst no pleasure:

7. Then said I, Lo, I am come

(In the roll of the book it Is written of me)
To do thy will, O God.

THE writer has reminded us of the utter insufficiency of the sacrifices of the law to do what was needed to take sin away, or to perfect the worshipper. In contrast to these he will now unfold to us the inner meaning, the real nature and worth of the sacrifice of Christ. In speaking of the blood in chap. ix. he has taught us what its infinite power and efficacy is. But what we need still to know is this: what gave it that infinite efficacy; what is its spiritual character, and what its essential nature, that it has availed so mightily to open for us the way to God. Even when we believe in Christ’s death, we are in danger of resting content with what is not much better than its shadow, the mere doctrinal conception of what it has effected, without entering so into its divine significance, that the very image, the real likeness of what it means, enters into us in power.

Our writer here again finds what he wants to expound, in the Old Testament. He quotes from Psalm xl, where the

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Psalmist uses words which, though true of himself, could only have their full meaning revealed when the Messiah came. Our author makes special use of two significant expressions, A body thou didst prepare for Me, and, Lo, I am come to do Thy will, 0 God. Speaking of the sacrifices of the Old Testament, the Psalmist had shown that he understood that they never were what God really willed: they were but the shadows pointing to something better, to a spiritual reality, a life in the body given up to the will of God, as a divine prophecy of what has now been revealed in Christ.

A body didst thou prepare for Me. Instead of the sacrifices, God prepared a body for Christ, which He so offered up or sacrificed that we have now been sanctified by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Christ’s body was to Him just what any man’s is to him — the dwelling and organ of the soul; the channel for intercourse with the outer world, susceptible of impressions of pleasure and of pain, and therefore one of the first occasions of temptation. His body was a part of His human personality and life. He was in danger, just as we are, of using the body for His own service or pleasure, a means of gratifying self. But He never did this. He was filled with one thought — God prepared Me this body; I have it for His disposal, for His service and glory; I hold it ready every moment to be a sacrifice to Him. The body comes from God; it belongs to Him; it has no object of existence but to please Him. The one value My body has is, that I can give it a sacrifice to God.

It was the purpose of the Old Testament sacrifices to waken this disposition in the worshipper. There was to be not only the thought — as specially in the sin offering — This sacrifice dies in my stead, so that I need not die. But the farther thought —

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this the burnt offering specially symbolised — The giving up of this lamb and its life in sacrifice to God, is the image and the pledge of my giving up my life to Him. I offer the sacrifice to God, in token of my offering myself to Him. Substitution and Consecration were equally symbolised in the altar.

This was the feeling of David in writing the Psalm. What he could only partly understand and fulfil has been realised in Christ. And what Christ accomplished for us, of that we become full partakers as it is wrought into us, in a life of fellowship with Him. The word comes to us, Present your bodies a living sacrifice unto God. The real essential nature of the sacrifice of Christ, what gives it worth and efficacy, is this: the body that God prepared for Him, He offered up to God. And just as David, before Christ, through the Spirit of Christ, said these words of himself, so every believer after Christ, in the Spirit and power of Christ, says them too: A body hast thou prepared for me. This is the new and living way that Christ has opened up. David walked in it by anticipation; Christ the Leader and Forerunner walked in it and fully opened it up; it is only as we, too, by participation with Him, walk in it, that we can find access into the Holiest

Every believer who would be fully delivered from the Old Testament religion, the trust in something done outside of us, that leaves us unchanged, and would fully know what it means that we are sanctified and perfected by the one offering of the body of Christ, must study to appropriate fully this word as true of Christ and himself as a member of His body — A body didst thou prepare for Me. In paradise it was through the body sin entered; in the body it took up its abode and showed its power. In the lust for forbidden food, in the sense of nakedness and shame, in the turning to dust again, sin proved its Cbe Dolicst of

triumph. In the body grace will reign and triumph. The body has been redeemed; it becomes a temple of the Spirit and a member of Christ’s body; it will be made like His glorious body. A body didst thou prepare for Me: through the body lies, for Christ and all who are sanctified in Him, the path to perfection.

And yet how many believers there are to whom the body is the greatest hindrance in their Christian life. Simply because they have not learnt from Christ what the highest use of the body is — to offer it up to God. Instead of presenting their members unto God, of mortifying the deeds of the body tJirough the Spirit, of keeping under the body, they allow it to have its way, and are brought into bondage. Oh for an insight into the real nature of our actual redemption, through a body received from God, prepared by Him, and offered up to Him.

1. The soul dwells In the body. The body has been well compared to the walls of a city. In time of war, not only the city and its ind welters must be under the rule of the king, but specially the walls. Jesus, for whom God prepared a body, who offered His body, knows to keep the body too.

2. The mystery of the Incarnation Is that Godhead dwelt in a body. The mystery of atonement, the one offering of the body of Christ. The mystery of full redemption, that the Holy Spirit dwells in and sanctifies wholly the body too.

3. “Know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you? Glorify God, therefore, In your body.” Did you ever know that the Holy Spirit Is specially gluen for the body, to regulate its functions and sanctify it wholly?