Speaking Sacrificially

Of course we love to think of ourselves as a self-giving society..that is the Church. A kind of counter-culture compared with Western society. We somehow find pleasure in depriving ourselves from things that are so useful...or at least satisfying. We 'obediently' give up things that help but don't help (apparently) and discover some kind of secret blessing. So New Years comes around and it's time to be more disciplined, do less of this, more of this, be more open and honest, stop and think before saying some silly things, and that is supposed to improve our lives. When deep down we know that all the motivation in the world wouldn't be enough to hold back, or even start something. That is, without Jesus. All decisions are never put in the context of Jesus, it's always our personal gain, pleasure, improvement, salvation.

I remember reading in the Old Testament (the first half of the Bible, where Jesus is only hoped for and things in His place are killing sheep, goats, doves etc.) and Yahweh says "I don't want sacrifices..." I was more than a little taken aback. Didn't God put into place the sacrificial system? There is another bit to that verse, but that doesn't take away from the fact that Yahweh would much prefer sacrifices not happening. The other half is something like I desire mercy, or loyalty. Basically God wants people that follow Him, not people who kill animals to save themselves. God put into place things that meant He could look on His people, but His people looked at the sacrifices as saving them, not God as saviour. And why is God saviour? Well, is He not the one who own all of creation? Is He not Himself named as Provider? He is the one who provides not only the means to redeem His people but the resources to accomplish it too. This is something of stewardship, but where a sacrifice is made it should really be a sacrifice, not a necessity. A sacrifice is something that takes just a little more than is sensible away to be given to God.

And God much prefers mercy and loyalty. In all of the things God asks of His people, He never ever wanted them to turn the laws into their own gods. When Paul talked again and again about the law, about religious people, he tried to show that the reason the law is in place for the same reason as any comparison is put in place to show that one cannot be the other; i.e. anyone following the law, in fact, cannot. With that in mind Paul spends time in most of the letters he writes to various churches describing himself before he met Jesus. He was the exact kind of person that Jesus spent a lot of time making fun of, challenging, or being in general conflict with.

The conflict comes when one person (let's say, Jesus) comes along living a perfectly sinless life but living in a way that is empowered by both grace and truth. The grace would be fully accepting and the truth would be completely steadfast in how He perceived the world. And another person (let's say a pharisee, or lawyer) has been living a 'blameless' life keeping in step with all the laws set by Yahweh. The trouble with this conflict comes when someone who sees

themselves as righteous but then told they are full of hypocrisy; or even children of Satan.

Imagine that someone telling you your mum had slept with satan.

Anyway, Jesus has been telling everyone that He had come to earth, not to follow the law, which is as much, and no more, than any other man could do, but that He had come to fulfill the law. What a claim.

"You see all of these commandments written in  stone here, and listed in the courts here, and the temple over here, I'm not just going to be doing exactly what they say (with the right perspective, not any of your religious mumbo jumbo nonsense like not picking an apple from an apple tree on a day of rest if you're hungry), I'm going to accomplish it, fulfill it, complete it."

That is only possible if this guy isn't just a man, but also divine. i.e. some kind of God-Man.

What does this have to do with sacrifices? Well you probably know the basic link which is Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice, the most pure sacrificial lamb dying for the sins of His people. But there's more than that. Jesus had this crazy idea that people would follow Him. And this is where it gets tricky. Jesus, making the sacrifice necessary for us to do nothing to gain favour asks something of us. Jesus said, "Anyone who wants to save their own life will lose it, but anyone who wants to lose their life for my sake, will find it." It's a bit cryptic, but Jesus is getting at something deeper than our own life.

What He's getting at is a new worldview, a new perspective of life. He wants people to see their lives as something utterly different. Currently everyone would be living entirely to save their own life (the religious, for example, working up their good deeds for inspection), but Jesus came into the world knowing He would have to die. The only way someone could live a life that fulfilled it's potential would be for them to give up their own life for Jesus' sake. If people lived trying to live a good enough life, by their own means, they would lose it, because it would be motivated by their own selfishness (whether visible or not). If someone realised they couldn't save their life, but Jesus could, giving up a life for Jesus' sake, to change the world, as Jesus wants all His followers to do, that would be the fulfilling of a life, in the way it was supposed to be done.

So a sacrifice is quite simply giving life a new perspective, holding loosely to it in order that life may be lived to the full. When you hold loosely to all things perishable life is much easier to live.