17. The Glory of Sacrifice
17
The Glory of Sacrifice
As the widow of Zarephath busied herself to bake that little cake for Elijah, I wonder if she muttered something like, “What is he talking about? A handful of flour and a nearly empty cruse of oil—I’m supposed to make two cakes out of that? But—‘Thus saith the Lord God of Israel.’ Well, here’s one stick. ‘Thus saith the Lord God of Israel.’ Over there’s another one. Light the fire. Mix up the cake. We’ll see.”
When all we have to offer seems pitifully small and woefully poor, we must offer it nevertheless, in obedience like the widow’s, and in the simplicity of a little child who brings a crushed dandelion to his mother. The child is not bitter and resentful at the poverty of his offering. He is happy to have something. Quantity and quality are not always under our control, and what the Lord can possibly make of it is no concern of ours. That part is under His control. He Himself knows what He will do. Let our offering be free, humble, unconditional, given in the full confidence that His transforming energy can fit it into the working of His purposes.
A few days after Addison Leitch proposed to me he wrote what I called his “geriatric letter.” He was sixty, I was forty-two, and he did not want me entering into marriage to an old man with my eyes closed. He outlined some previews of coming attractions. The day would come, he predicted, when I would have to clean his glasses, take over the driving, and various other more onerous duties. Was I ready for that? His closing line was unforgettable:
“Yet here I am, all of me, for you, forever. But what kind of an offer is that?”
I accepted the offer. I loved him. Nothing else mattered. His predictions came true in exactly the order given, but love is a transformer.
When we give ourselves to God—“all of me, for You, forever”—or when we present to Him so apparently useless a thing as loneliness, what kind of an offer is that?
Never mind. Our offerings become a part of Christ’s offering of Himself. He did it for love of the Father (“Lo, I come . . . to do thy will, O God”; “Into thy hands I commend my spirit” [Heb. 10:7; Luke 23:46 KJV]). He did it also for love of us who so sorely needed it. Can we follow him here, loving the Father enough to give ourselves wholly to Him, and putting ourselves out for love of those who do not seem (God forgive us for our pride!) to “deserve” it? “Live your lives in love—the same sort of love which Christ gives us and which he perfectly expressed when he gave himself up for us in sacrifice to God” (Eph. 5:2 Phillips, italics added).
The same note is struck by the apostle Peter when he tells us that as we are built into a spiritual House of God, we become holy priests (we? holy priests? just imagine!) who may offer spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God.1 If the primary function of the priest is to offer sacrifice, then that is to be our primary function as His priests. The whole of life becomes a continual offering up for His praise.
Can we give up all for the love of God? When the surrender of ourselves seems too much to ask, it is first of all because our thoughts about God Himself are paltry. We have not really seen Him, we have hardly tested Him at all and learned how good He is. In our blindness we approach Him with suspicious reserve. We ask how much of our fun He intends to spoil, how much He will demand from us, how high is the price we must pay before He is placated. If we had the least notion of His loving-kindness and tender mercy, His fatherly care for His poor children, His generosity, His beautiful plans for us; if we knew how patiently He waits for our turning to Him, how gently He means to lead us to green pastures and still waters, how carefully He is preparing a place for us, how ceaselessly He is ordering and ordaining and engineering His Master Plan for our good—if we had any inkling of all this, could we be reluctant to let go of our smashed dandelions or whatever we clutch so fiercely in our sweaty little hands?
“We have not loved thee with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.”2
If with courage and joy we pour ourselves out for Him and for others for His sake, it is not possible to lose, in any final sense, anything worth keeping. We will lose ourselves and our selfishness. We will gain everything worth having.
What if we hold back?
There is an old story of a king who went into the village streets to greet his subjects. A beggar sitting by the roadside eagerly held up his almsbowl, sure that the king would give handsomely. Instead the king asked the beggar to give him something. Taken aback, the beggar fished three grains of rice from his bowl and dropped them into the king’s outstretched hand. When at the end of the day the beggar poured out what he had received, he found to his astonishment three grains of pure gold in the bottom of his bowl. O that I had given him all!
One aspect of sacrifice as seen in Scripture is glory. That element, though not always apparent, is always there. In the Old Testament we find the magnificent story of Abraham’s obedience when asked to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac. What depths of suffering he endured for the love of God, what a revelation he was given of God’s love for him, what a demonstration to every succeeding generation of the meaning of faith and obedience. There was none of this in his tortured mind as he climbed the mountain, no inkling of glory but only of a bloody holocaust. His father-heart endured agony because he loved his son and he loved his God.
But the glory followed—
Inasmuch as you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will bless you abundantly and greatly multiply your descendants until they are as numerous as the stars in the sky and the grains of sand on the seashore. . . . All nations on earth shall pray to be blessed as your descendants are blessed, and this because you have obeyed me.
Genesis 22:16–18 NEB
When, long afterward under King Hezekiah, the house of the Lord was repaired and purified, there was a great celebration with sacrifices and music. At the moment when Hezekiah gave the order for the whole-offering to be laid on the altar and burnt, the singers began to sing, the trumpets sounded, the whole assembly prostrated themselves. Great joy accompanied great sacrifice. Why should it not be so for us also?
After the Crucifixion came the Resurrection. After the Resurrection the Ascension. Because Jesus wore a crown of thorns, He now wears a crown of glory. Because He became poor, He now sits enthroned. Because He made Himself of no reputation, He now has a name which is above every name. Because He was willing to become a slave, He is now Master of everything. Because he was obedient to death, He is Lord of Life and holds the keys of hell and of death. Because He made Himself of no reputation, every knee will someday bow before Him. Every renunciation led to glory.
God could not more fully and plainly show us the glorious truth of life out of death than in these paradoxes of Jesus’ own life and death. Is it not clear to us that the sacrifice of Calvary was not a tragedy but the release of life and power? Do we believe this? How hard it is to believe that our own self-offering to Him will work in the same way. How easy it is for most of us to live as though we do not believe it.
He asks us to share with Him not only His Cross but also His glory. “If we died with him we shall also live with him: if we endure we shall also reign with him” (2 Tim. 2:12 Phillips). And as Lilias Trotter’s seed paintings show us, a deeper dying has endless powers of multiplying life in other souls.
Is He a hard Master to ask us to suffer with Him? Do we think it mean and unfair and unloving? But these are His promises:
“God . . . fulfills his purpose for me.”
“Thy wonderful purposes are all for our good.”
“All things serve thee.”
“Everything that happens fits into a pattern for good.”
“In Christ . . . we have been given our share in the heritage, as was decreed in his design whose purpose is everywhere at work. For it was his will that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, should cause his glory to be praised.”
“Our mortal part may be absorbed into life immortal. God himself has shaped us for this very end.”3
Six verses out of many which are divine guarantees. To take them into my heart as well as into my head alters my understanding of the meaning of life. If I am in Christ I really can’t lose.
It is an old, old story. And it’s mine, too. This is my story and this is my song. Jesus Christ has given me Living Water. Jesus Christ is my Bread. Jesus Christ is my Life. He is Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring. I am the same body, the same temperament, with the same passions and the same history, but I know that all of those “givens” are capable of transformation. This is why
That old rugged Cross, so despised by the world,
holds a wondrous attraction for me.