Abel

The Sacrifice of Faith

Xi. — 4. By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he had witness borne to him that he was righteous, God bearing witness In respect of his gifts: and through it he being dead yet speaketh.

ONE of the chief words of the Epistle is offering, sacrifice. Christ “offered Himself unto God.” “He put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.” “By one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.” The inner spirit and power of that life by which Christ pleased His Father, and put away sin, and gained His seat on the throne of the Majesty on high, was — the offering of His body. As the Leader of our salvation He guides His people in the same, the new and living way, that of self-sacrifice.

It is a most remarkable and deeply suggestive fact that among those who have preceded us in the way of faith, we should find that with the very first one, Abel, the first fruit of faith was to sacrifice. The disposition, of which sacrifice is the expression, lies at the very root of the life of faith. If I would in this chapter learn what faith is, and how I can grow strong in faith, I must mark well what the very first step is: By faith Abel offered a more excellent sacrifice.

We know what the double meaning was of Abel’s sacrifice. It was, on the one hand, his offering to God of a life to be given up to death, and so in his stead to bear the death which is in its

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very nature the punishment of sin. It was an acknowledgment of the righteous judgment of God against sin; the confession that without blood-shedding there could be no remission of sins. It was an act of faith; he counted that the sacrifice would be acceptable, and that with it he would be accepted too. On the other hand, the sacrifice was the offering and yielding up himself to God and His service. He knew it was something that lay in the very nature and spirit of a true sacrifice, that it could not be pleasing to God if he offered the lamb, and kept back himself. No, the sacrifice was the double confession — that he was unworthy to offer himself to God without atonement, but that, believing that in the sacrifice he was accepted, he gave himself to God’s worship and service, he gave himself to the very death, to die to self and live to God. And it was as if his own death had to confirm and seal the truth; the man who had offered the sacrifice of faith, had founded his worship in the death of a lamb, had to die himself to find the way to God. The atoning sacrifice has ever two sides; the lamb was at once a substitute and a symbol, its death an atonement and a consecration.

Faith draws nigh to God through sacrifice; in Christ this truth finds its full realisation. By one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified. Our access to God and our fellowship with Him can only be in Christ’s finished work. We have boldness through His blood His blood cleanses and perfects the conscience. The first great work of faith is to appropriate the sacrifice and obedience and righteousness of Christ as accepted for us, to hold it up before God, and by the Holy Spirit to have the witness given, and to experience how acceptable we are. But faith cannot fully do this without at the same time entering into the inner spiritual significance of

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the sacrifice, and becoming partaker of the spirit and disposition it breathes, and in which alone it has its value. Faith sees that the law of self-sacrifice, under which the Head went in to God, is the law for each of the members. There is no way out of sin and sinful flesh, but through death to life. And as faith sees the beauty and the power of the truth in Chr;st, it hungers for conformity to Him in this His highest moral glory, and becomes itself the root of an inward self-sacrifice, a continual offering of itself to God and His holiness; because it is nothing less than a real, living union with Christ the High Priest Himself. Christ became our Substitute because He was our Head; faith begins with the knowledge of him as Substitute, but grows up into Him, the Head of all things, and specially in the fellowship of His death. We find this truth throughout Scripture. All that is said in Rom. vi. and Col. iii. of our being dead to sin in Christ, and alive to God, in 2 Cor. iv. of bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus that His life may be manifested in us, in Gal. ii. and vi. of our being crucified with Christ, being crucified to the world, in Phil. iii. of our being made conformable to His death, points to this — the inward spirit and disposition of self-sacrifice is born within us by His Spirit, is breathed in us every day where there is true communion with Him. The blessing of Christ’s death as atonement is only surpassed because it is only fulfilled in that of His death as fellowship.

Beloved Christian, we know what the great lesson of the Epistle is: the way into the Holiest is opened up, we can live and abide continually in the presence of God. And now the chapter is to teach us how the power to come thus near and abide near to God, to enjoy the full salvation provided for us, is given to faith alone. And Abel, the first of the men of faith, teaches us just what the Epistle, what Christ our High Priest

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has taught — that the way to God, that the way of faith, is the way of sacrifice, of death. Christ entered in to God in the way of self-sacrifice; in faith I accept of Him, and His entrance into God’s presence is mine; in union with Him, once and for ever mine. His self-sacrifice becomes the spirit and the power of my life, and the life of faith in me becomes the union of the two — His and my self-sacrifice.

God said: No man shall see Me and live. Through death, the death of Christ, our death in and with Him, is the way to God. This is the new and living way, the way into the Holiest Let us walk in it, in the power of the Holy Ghost. Let us yield ourselves in great simplicity and humility to die to self, as we confess our helplessness, and look to God to quicken us in Christ. Let us tarry in childlike dependence and patience, with the one desire, to please the Father as Jesus pleased Him. And as we wait, and patiently do the will of God, He may show us how, in the once and for ever of His death and resurrection, there is for us a perfect entrance into the perfect life that has been offered to our faith.

7. Abel had witness borne him that he was righteous. As he bowed to God’s righteous judgment on sin, and trusted In God’s righteous deliverance from it through sacrifice, he was righteous In God’s sight. As he worshipped with his eye on the dying lamb, he had witness borne to him. How I know not. As with my eye on the dying Lamb I worship, the witness comes to me by the Holy Ghost that I am righteous.

2. Let me believe in the immeasurable power of the blood of the Lamb, until my whole being is filled with the witness of the Holy Ghost.

3. The more I gaze, in confession and trust, on the dying Lamb, the more may I claim the spirit of His sacrifice to enter into me, and make me conformed to His likeness.

4. A more excellent sacrifice. Cain brings his offering without death, without blood — the spirit and religion of the world. With Abel and the hosts of heaven it is all — the blood of the Lamb.

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