Divine sacrifice and Dedication of the saints - Chambers, Oswald
I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd layeth down his life for the sheep. . . . I lay it down of myself. John 10:11, 18 (RV)
There is an unfamiliar element in the sacrifice of Jesus compared with the sacrifices made amongst men. A man may perform a mighty act in a moment of heroism but there is the possibility that he may escape. Our lord pictures here the issue he is facing, the good shepherd layeth down his life for the sheep: he deliberately laid down his life without any possibility of deliverance. There was no compulsion, it was a sacrifice made with a free mind; nor was there anything of the impulsive about it, he laid down his life with a clear knowledge of what he was doing. Jesus understood what was coming, it was not a foreboding, but a certainty; not a catastrophe which might happen, but an ordained certainty in the decrees of god, and he knew it. Have we begun to let the spirit of god interpret the sacrifice of Jesus to us?
We have too pathetic an idea of it because we take our ideas from martyrdom, but Jesus christ was not a martyr. There is no room for the pathetic in our lords attitude; it is we who take the pathetic view and look at his sacrifice from a point of view the spirit of god never once uses. The spirit of god never bewitches men with the strange pathos of the sacrifice of jesus: the spirit of god keeps us at the passion of the sacrifice of Jesus. The great passion at the back of his heart and mind in all Jesus did was devotion to his father.
I lay it down of myself ; it was the sacrifice of a free personality. Jesus had the power in his own person to prevent every evil thing that came against him, but he never used that power. He could have performed miracles at will, but he did not. He could have asked his father to send him more than twelve legions of angels, but he refused to (see Matthew 26:53). The angels must have stood around him at the end, unseen, amazed that they could not come through and minister to him as they had done after the temptation in the wilderness, and in the garden of Gethsemane. Finally, our lord gave himself up into the hands of those who tried to seize him, yet could not (see john 18:6): he was crucified through weakness.
How does our dedication as saints compare with the dedication of our lord and master? When we are identified with Jesus christ the spirit of god would have us sacrifice ourselves for him, point for point, as he did for his father. We pray and wait, and need urging, and want the thrilling vision; but Jesus wants us to narrow and limit ourselves to one thingclearly and intelligently knowing what we are doing, we deliberately lay down our lives for him as he laid down his life for us in the purpose of god. This is the underlying meaning of pauls passionate pleading in Romans 12:1i beseech you, . . . Present your bodies a living sacrifice. We want to do it in an ecstasy; Jesus christ wants us to do it without the ecstasy. Brood on what Jesus christ came to do, and then in the full possession of your mind, not in the excitement of a revival moment, nor in the enthusiasm of a great spiritual ecstasy, but in the calm quiet knowledge of what you are doing, say my life to thee, my king, i humbly dedicate.
Jesus Christ never blinds us into devotion to him- self, never startles and staggers us. Satan as an angel of light uses the things that captivate men against their will, he uses ecstasies, visions, excitement, the things that make for unholiness, for the aggrandisement of self, for insanity; but jesus never does. He comes to us along the line of his own dedication i have power to lay it down. Are we hindering the purpose of god in our life by seeking spiritual ecstasies in our devotions, seeking great manifestations of gods spirit? God wants us to dedicate ourselves to
Him with quiet calm intelligence, with the deep fer- vent passion behind of knowing what we are doing. Have we the self-dedication of that moral passion? There are a great many passions that are not moral, enthusiasms that never sprang from god. We have to hold our emotions in check and let the spirit of god bring us into one master-worship. The one love in the bible is that of the father and the son; the one passion in the bible is the passion of Jesus to bring men into the relationship of sons to the father, and the one great passion of the saint is that the life of the lord Jesus might be manifested in his mortal flesh.
This commandment received i [RV ] of my father. The great centre around which the life of Jesus moved was the will of his father and devotion to him. It is easy to work ourselves up into a passion of sacrifice, but that is not the true element in dedication. As a saint i have power to refuse to give my sanctification to god; i can use that sanctification for my own selfish ends, with unutterable ruin to my own soul and to others. Our only guide is our lord himself: for their sakes i sanctify myself. In full possession of his powers Jesus dedicated himself to god, and his call to those of us who are his disciples is to dedicate ourselves to him with a clear knowl- edge of what we are doing, free from the plaintive, the sad, and the emotional. Can we only serve god when he thrills us? Can we only speak for him when we feel his conscious touch? Cannot we have all the deep passion of our heart and spirit ablaze for god, our whole personality under control for one purpose only to dedicate ourselves to the lord Jesus Christ as he dedicated himself to his father?
Let him make our lives narrow; let him make them intense; let him make them absolutely his!