The Perfect Sacrifice - Forever Christ

"Jesus became sin in the flesh but was always life in the Spirit."

THE DEVIL WOULD alter your image of Christ. He would take the cross and bury it beneath weights and measures, judgments and criticisms. Incorrect doctrine. Satan would take his defeat and parade it around as a moment of triumph. Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil, and He did destroy them entirely. There was no moment when Satan had the upper hand, no time where Jesus bowed His head to the devil’s torments.

He was not a sinner (1 Peter 2:22). This has to be understood or you will falter in the principles of salvation. Instead, He became the spotless Lamb, the perfect sacrifice as pictured in Revelation. The death of animals could not cleanse men from sin as they have no spirit man. It would take the death of a perfect human, with a spirit being, to do that, and no one on this planet would be sinless except Jesus Christ. Also, Jesus was the Christ; Christ means “Anointed One.” He can never be separated from the ANOINTING, which is the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit is forever in and upon Him without measure (John 3:34), and the Holy Spirit cannot die. Having taken on Himself the weight of the world’s sins, the sins of all who would be born upon this earth, Jesus released His spirit (Luke 23:46) INTO GOD’S HANDS, not the devil’s, and His body died. But His spirit lived.

“Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?” (John 11:25-26)

The body, dead, is not the end of life. Jesus tried to get His disciples to see this. He told them He would be resurrected. They didn’t understand it. He raised Lazarus and pleaded with them to see Himself as eternal life. They were afraid, instead, so, in John 14:1, He comforted them. When He was resurrected, they didn’t recognize Him. Mary thought He was the gardener. She and the other women had come to the tomb on day 3 to anoint His body and were surprised to find the tomb open and empty. They spoke with angels who told them He had risen, and it still didn’t click. The disciples on the road to Emmaus didn’t realize it was Jesus talking to them until He broke bread at supper and then He vanished. Thomas doubted the stories the others told about Jesus entering the room, and he refused to believe what He’d heard Jesus say over and over again until Jesus Himself confronted Him. What they didn’t understand, with such a great event happening, was what had transpired in the kingdom of God.

Jesus became sin in the flesh but was ALWAYS life in the Spirit. Again, He was not a sinner. He was not damned to hell. He was the sacrifice, who, like the Levitical animal sacrifices, took on the sins of another. Animal blood only covered sin. Jesus’ blood removed it. This cannot be skipped over. Jesus did take on sin, and sin was the reason He died, but they were our sins, not His sins, and as the sacrifice for sins, He lifted up and carried away our punishment. He did not take on our punishment. He bore it, nasa, Isaiah 53:4.

“Surely he hath borne (nasa) our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.” (Isaiah 53:4)
Borne, nasa, H5375, A primitive root; to lift, in a great variety of applications, literally and figuratively, absolutely and relatively

He lifted up our punishment by becoming the perfect sacrificial Lamb but was alive in the spirit. God did not bow down His head and allow Satan to rule for a time. God was not tricked into giving up His Son because the devil outsmarted Him (1 Corinthians 2:8). That Jesus was alive after death is the point. How great a triumph it was! Colossians 2:15 affirms this, “And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it.” Jesus entered hell as the Victor, as God the Christ, and captured the keys of hell and of death (Rev 1:18).

READ “The Devil’s Defeat.”

Jesus had promised the thief, beside Him on the cross, that they would be together in Paradise that same day. A man condemned with sin could not enter Paradise. These are the words of Abraham in the story which Jesus spoke, in Luke 16. The rich man had died and been taken into torment. He cried out to Abraham for the beggar to come and dip his finger into water and place it on his tongue. First, this was an insult. He didn’t ask for a glass of water. He still didn’t want the beggar’s hands on him. Then, Abraham tells him, “There is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot.” Jesus is the only one who would cross the gulf, and He did so to defeat the enemy and to take those righteous resting in Abraham’s bosom into heaven. He promised His disciples that He went to prepare a place for them. His shed blood prepared the way.

His physical Resurrection placed death forever under His feet and paved the way for our bodies to, one day, be made glorified, for this mortal to put on immortality forever (1 Corinthians 15:53-54). It also made Him King of Kings. There will never be a throne above His. No man can ever succeed Him. No power can ever overwhelm Him. He is forever human and forever God. Forever Christ. We are made like Him through our belief in Him as our salvation. All our mistakes are forgiven, our spirits are made new (born again), and we are filled with His presence, the Holy Spirit or the Spirit of Christ. There is no more death.

Oh, on a physical plane, we will die, but in the spirit, in the kingdom of God which Jesus brought to earth, from today into eternity, we are filled with God’s everlasting life, so much life that it overflows into everything we do. We are part of the “body of Christ.” Not a weak, famished, servile body, at the whim of nature, Satan, and the world system, but one which evinces God’s character. We are His wisdom, His love and goodness, His compassion, His victory on display. We are meant to turn men’s gazes, not because of our strife and dissension, because there is in us such great power, in us is Jesus, who draws all men until Him.

To learn why Jesus quoted Psalm 22, I recommend “My Heart Cries Abba: Discovering Your Heavenly Father in a more Personal Way” by Hank Kunneman.

Image by Meranda D from Pixabay


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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com