Sacrifice?

What does it mean… to us today?
Sacrifice comes from the word sacred.
Sacred is belonging to God. Well, everything belongs to God. So what is a sacrifice?
In the old covenant it was a blood offering, some animal was killed and symbolically given to God.
It was to be the very best of your flock or herd.
As a replacement or an appeasement, is was basically a sign of blood spilled. It was a reminder of death that was imposed by the sin that separated man from God.

Sacrifice was first offered to God, by Cain and Able and continued until God made a covenant with Abraham where animals were used. Whether a sign to remind man that God killed animals to cover the naked bodies of Adam and Eve, hiding their shame both physical and spiritual. Or as in the sealing of a covenant, Sin required death and the letting of blood to be a sign of offering as submitting to God.
It was the outward sign that we are aware of our separation and desire to obey…

Sacrifice defined means; to offer to God; an offering to God.

Is it giving back to God what is already His?
What can we offer to God?
Can we offer ourselves to God?
Can we give ourselves as His creation created for His purpose, back to Him?
Is that possible? Is that what God wants?
Man disobeyed, this is sin and separation; is the way back sacrifice?

Sacrifice is realizing it’s not about us, that the center of our world and the world at large is all about the creator and why He created us to serve Him.
Disobedience to God began as all sin does with a desire opposed to God.
That desire is selfishness.
Remembering we were separated from Him through disobedience. To serve we must serve as commanded.
We are commanded to love one another… do we? And why are we not loving, as commanded?
It is still about man obeying.
And our obstacle, our selfish desire…

Sacrifice is realizing by revelation of the Holy Spirit that Jesus came into an imperfect world to enter into imperfect men. So that men may love as Jesus…
Leaving themselves for Him… desiring Him above their selflove.
Sacrifice is realizing by revelation of His Spirit that Jesus is in us.
Perfect sacrifice is perfect love and it changes the disposition of the sin and separation of man from God to perfect relationship in Christ Jesus.
Jesus is God.
God is love.
This then causes open confession by our selfless actions; which meet the needs of our fellow man through loving service and supported by our words that we first belong to God who has revealed Himself to us.

“Follow Me!” as Jesus calls us, is in living like Jesus led by His Spirit.

The root of our dilemma is to receive the love of Jesus and obey the command to love… as He!
You cannot give what you don’t have. But in most cases what ever we have we’re still not giving!
This is following the example He lived and how the early Church lived, as written in scripture for us to adhere to. We have a selfless example before us... and in us! 
They lived in loving sacrifice.

Our selfless, sacrificial actions are the result of God in us in the image of Jesus being realized by us from faith to life. From death to life, from eternal death to eternal life.
Sacrifice is in our response to His eternal call and dying to self with the enablement of the Holy Spirit, knowing His purpose is first to love selflessly… as He.
The sacrificial love within us is observed and responded to thus creating fruit from this fountain of selflessness in us. “Living water” quenching the thirst of all selfish desire. For our need is such.

Do we know God? Man inflames himself with desire to know God…
We know that He knows us!
Do we belong to God? The question of knowing or belonging to God end with the more important question; Do we need God?
Need finds us servants and the only seeking is to find Jesus in our brother. Seeking and finding Jesus in each other is the cause of God… to love one another! This is the base of unity where we know and are known of God… where we belong… and are observed as His.
Only in daily unity can Jesus be in our midst, and belonging can only be demonstrated in the maintaining of His unity. We must love sacrificially, selflessly to gain and maintain unity.

Unity is a given and a result of His loving sacrifice. Perfect love is unity. God is one… He is three, speaks to perfect love, to perfect unity.

Those who attack the trinity or try to disavow it or even try to demean it as having little need or meaning in our life in Christ; are those who are loveless. They will discredit sacrifice, and unity and try to disqualify perfect love as unattainable, for want of their selfish egos. God is an external for the carnal. They are without faith to receive the fullness of Jesus within… He who is perfect love.

The only perfection in this imperfect world is the love of God in the person of Jesus by His Spirit in our hearts!

The sacrifice of Jesus gives us unity… it is one and the same Spirit in us.
It is His Spirit in us; it is the same Jesus in us all.
It is the same eternal love in us all, now at this very moment and forever!
It is acknowledging His presence and serving by His love, led by the Spirit that establishes maturity.
Beginning with picking up our cross.

Belonging to God and Knowing God, is God’s relationship to man… happening only in the event, by that totally sacrificial man Jesus.
Jesus, who is forever, is in His present stage, in us, as a sacrifice.
The life of God by His Spirit in man is a sacrifice… it is living sacrifice!
As we are called in His stead to be like Him…
Rom 12:1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. KJV

Mercy is God loving us in our sin… holy is pure… acceptable to God… all come in our faith in Jesus within us! We are separate from God and imperfect, but now we are made not only acceptable but we are Holy and pure in God’s eyes and this is accomplished by Jesus and by Him alone.

Jesus’ Death does not in-itself complete the cycle of eternal change by this sacrificial act of love, it is in receiving that act of love within us that we now belong to Him. Thus continuing His work within His plan, for it is His purpose for us. He came to demonstrate love through acts of service, obeying, that we are now to continue… as His body.

Relationship begins in what Jesus has accomplished in perfect love, by a perfect sacrifice, and is completed by our sacrifice daily unto the Kingdom.
We are given opportunity by being invited into His divinity.
This is Christianity, this is Christ, and this is the body… Jesus the Messiah alive in us!
Us together in unity, Jesus alive in our midst!
The material world is overcome by the Spiritual, the imperfect maintained by the perfect… within… man.

Death is the sacrifice by which we gain eternity. But eternity is a living sacrifice that is constant within us…  “If you lose your life (our selfish desires) we live (sacrificially)”… gaining eternal life.
The Spirit allows for us to be in His presence now and forever; is an act of sacrificial love, the conclusion of faith. And in having His presence in us now and forever requires our willing participation.
And so we are required to be living sacrifices…
No one can know God personally or belong to God without having personal relationship in and through Jesus!

Paul does not address the unbeliever. Paul’s letters such as to the Romans, chapter 12 verse 1, are addressed to those who have received the Spirit and acknowledge His eternal love.
Note: Paul in not writing to one just man, he writes to those who are in the unity of the Love of Jesus. He is not writing to you… he is writing to us.

No one can have a personal relationship with Jesus without the fruits of selfless, sacrificial love!
There is only one love.
God is love… God is perfect, as is His love.
This love is demonstrated in and through the life of Jesus.
We continue demonstrating this love, which is in us by our sacrificial life… exposing “The sacrificial life of Jesus”
Perfect selfless love is sacrificial.
No sacrifice… no love!
Love is sacred.
Love is sacrifice.
Love is realized.
Love is observed.
Love is lived… now and forever…

“Thus seeing your good works men give glory to God”
Who do they see? They see Jesus… in us.

The greatest work of God on earth that we can realize by revelation is the love of God for man that takes place in Jesus giving His life for us.
Sacrifice is this sacred offering… we cannot approach this deed or even emulate it.
It is Christ’s alone… but alive in us…
We can only accept that which God has appointed to us, in His eternal purpose for us. This is the sum of our creation that we are following in the pursuit of Jesus whose sacrifice is perfect and who allows us to realize our place in Him to die each day for the brothers.

1 John 3:14  We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death. KJV

Proving that us, being in Him as participating in His perfect eternal sacrifice, is observed by others as Jesus being in us, bearing the fruits of His glorious love to them.
You cannot separate love from sacrifice any more than you can separate love from Glory. The Glory of God is seen in the perfect sacrifice of Jesus on the cross unto the resurrection.
It is not one act as observed by man in the material world but it is the transcending from the material world into the Spiritual realm of eternity. This is the Kingdom, which is forever alive in us now… it is Jesus!
This perfect act of love moves from the natural to the supernatural… and by the Spirit we follow into the eternal. We enter the resurrection as Jesus enters us… we realize it in continual sacrificial selfless love alive in us, and now working through us. This is life in the Kingdom.
He dies in love He ascends in love He returns in love… for us!
His Glory is with Him… as in it’s complete… perfect… eternal…
God as man as sacrificial love… is perfect… and complete in death, for He is the resurrection!
The light of His Glory is the visualization of that perfect love!

Glory is that revelation beyond the mind of man to see His love!

We too often in our foolishness to make it more in our minds and in our feeble explanations, make it less!
We deter His Glory by the fears of our flesh… the carnal try to separate Glory and love as they try to remove sacrifice from love.
We want a love without cost or at the least let it be on Jesus. He paid for our sins why should we have to sacrifice? We want to observe His perfect sacrifice but not participate in it. We want the benefits without the price. We want an external Jesus. We want rituals. We want external symbols of sacrifice. We want to be yokeless rather then yoked by eternal selfless love. We want, what we want. We want and are found wanting…

What we want… ends what God wants…

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.

Jesus Christ’s Community at Hebron

 www.jesuschrists.com