16. Sacrifice I: Where It Fits
After writing "The Form of God," I now envision God in Person as springs of living water upwelling continuously inside of me at every point of my being and in ever moment of time. He springs up first as Servant, that is, as Word, flowing all through my faith. This is how I "see" God. Thus, these letters on sacrifice come up out of that seeing of God.
Here is a listing of most of the verses in the New Testament that shed light in some way upon the sacrifice of Jesus: Sacrifice: The Verses.
For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins. – Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a body You have prepared for Me. – Behold, I have come—to do Your will, O God. – By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. – But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God, from that time waiting till His enemies are made His footstool. – For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified. Hebrews 10
One sacrifice for sins forever. – Once for all.
For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.
We cannot comprehend sacrifice unless we know what sin is and does. We cannot know what sin is and does unless we know what God is and man inside of God. We cannot know what either God or man is because of sin. The only thing that can penetrate this circle of hopelessness is Sacrifice, that is, God's heart made visible.
The entirety of Jesus' life, from His conception to the upper room, had no ability to penetrate this circle of hopelessness. The only thing that could was the walk of the Atonement, from Jesus' prayer in John 17 to Jesus' sitting down at the right hand of the Father; that is, a Man laying down His life for His friends, and arising into life, and we inside of Him.
The only thing that could penetrate your bubble of hopelessness was a good, good man, just like yourself, who loves you so much that He gave up everything, even life itself, so that He could win your heart for Himself.
God is omnipresent Spirit. All things live and move and have their being inside of Him. God gives us two powerful pictures of that reality, the birds in the air and the fishes in the sea. A fish lives and moves and has its being inside of, always moving around in, the water. More than that, the air is always flowing through the birds as they breathe and the water through the fishes. Oxygen, the life of the blood, comes into them every moment by the inflow of that great medium in which they live and move.
This is how we think of God as created beings.
But as sons of God, we think of God like this, yes, but also far far beyond this paradigm.
The air and the water are not personal to the birds and the fishes.
God is Personal in us, and we are personal in Him. – This distinction is a BIG deal.
The problem is that air and water are visible; God is not. Thus, even those angels that remained with God live in a vanity of ignorance. They don't know this invisible God in whom they live.
Consider every cell in the human body. Each cell has a wall that separates it from other cells and protects it from all that is outside of it. There are many good things outside the cell that pass through that barrier into the cell. But there are also destructive things out there. Some destructive things can be good in themselves, like the law, just not good for the cell; other destructive things are evil. Usually the destructive things are kept out by that wall, that sheathe of protection.
That barrier of protection is the nature of electro-magnetism. All objects in space have the same protective wall, including the earth by itself and the sun/solar system as a whole. The human body's wall is the skin; the human spirit is larger than the body, but it also has a similar barrier of its own.
No protective wall keeps God out, for God is infinite; He fills all things with all of Himself.
Neither sinless angels nor sinless humans know God. Adam did not know God. He was acquainted with God, yes, but he did not know Him. Eating of the tree of life was the only means by which Adam, first in all creation, would know God.
This knowing is marriage union, receiving into us God's seed and bringing forth God-life.
Even in the conception of life, we see a bubble, the seed of the woman, being penetrated by one good seed, the Word God speaks. Then, as the one good seed enters into the seed of the woman, faith, new life begins to grow.
But Adam took into himself, not the seed of life, but the seed of death. Adam sinned, and Adam died. That sin did not remove God out from Adam's bubble; God cannot be made finite by any created stupidity.
Paul tells us exactly what sin, the seed of death, did inside of Adam.
Because, although they knew God (that is, were acquainted with Him), they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. Romans 1:21-25
Unthankfulness became stupid thinking became darkened hearts became defiled bodies.
Sin means a sin-consciousness, a sin-spirit, a sin-story.
For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with these same sacrifices, which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? For the worshipers, once purified, would have had no more consciousness of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. Hebrews 10:1-3
Sin is a consciousness, a story-telling, a world of upside down and inside out – perverted – thinking, coming out of a heart darkened by it's own ignorance, it's own inability to see the obvious.
The critical moment for Adam was this exchange in Genesis 3.
Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, “Where are you?” – So he said, “I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.”
Adam turned the protective barrier God had created as part of Adam's construction into a barrier against God. “I hid myself.”
Present human consciousness, that is sin-consciousness, is all about the human hiding him or herself from a God who flows all through all that they are.
Sin-consciousness, as Paul said, is stupidity. It's root is unthankfulness – “God, I hate the way You made me; I hate human flesh, Your appearance in creation. I want to look like the serpent(creeping things – heavenly glory).”
Yet this sin-consciousness is the weaving of a vast and complicated story, a fantasy, a fiction.
Sin becomes the bubble inside of which the creature, angel or human, attempts to hide from a God who always flows all through all, causing them to continue in existence by His continual good-speaking (Christ) all through them.
This bubble of hiding has a name in the Bible and in human reality – Hades. Hades is not a “place.” It is not even any kind of unified whole. Hades is nothing more than billions of stupid little bubbles, utterly disconnected from each other, yet each one trying its best to hide from a God who flows all through their little bubbles.
There is only one unifying whole – God.
Satan and his demons do not provide any form of unity other than command and control; that is, controlling by fear created by the infliction of pain. Though they are the larger deluded little bubbles, yet they are allowed by God to project shame and fear and pain into the lives of those who so stupidly and futilely try so very hard to hide themselves from God. Of truth, demons do to humans and to each other nothing other than what humans do to one another – and to demons for that matter. Man is the master; demons are but servants.
Hades is the compendium of disconnected miseries, all pointing the finger of blame (accusation) at each other first, demons and humans, but all accusing God whether they know it or not, and all out of an attempt to hide without reason from a God who fills them and loves them.
As Leo Tolstoy said: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Those who live in Christ-consciousness, weaving the story of the good-speaking of God as the only fabric of their lives, are all alike, that is, like Jesus, and share a common bond of joy. But all these little bubbles of pointless shame are each unhappy in its own way, in its own deluded little fantasy.
The Sacrifice of Jesus resolves this whole bubble-stupidity, this false story-telling in three specific ways.
The first part of Sacrifice we call Redemption. The second part is to win our hearts, and the third part is to change our minds. – But first, let's establish sacrifice.
The writer of Hebrews show us how God uses the law to teach us. This is like that; this is the opposite of that. The sacrifice of Jesus is like the sacrifices of the Old Covenant; the sacrifice of Jesus is the opposite of the sacrifices of the Old Covenant.
The order of sacrifices was laid out by Moses as spoken to him out from God in the first days of the Tabernacle, God among men, April 1-7, 1461 BC. It is true that one could go through each sacrifice and show, point by point, how the particulars of that sacrifice reveal to us the particulars of the sacrifice of Jesus. We see Christ through everything because we seek Him in everything.
The problem is I don't connect with either medical procedures or mathematics. So if you want those patterns, you'll have to find a different teacher. I like story and language.
And the primary element of Old Testament sacrifice in story is that there were so, so, so MANY sacrifices, over and over, so many little details of each sacrifice, slight differences, that each had to be remembered. Which sacrifice are we doing now? And there were far more than the appointed sacrifices; there were also free-will sacrifices, likely far outnumbering the appointed ones. God's relationship with Israel was a continually bloody affair. And not just blood, but screams and dust and stench and guts.
Look again at what the writer of Hebrews says.
For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with these same sacrifices, which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? For the worshipers, once purified, would have had no more consciousness of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year.
The sacrifices of the Old Testament were part of the nature of the law. Their only real effect was to whisper into the sin-conscious little bubbles of lost and arrogant humanity, over and over without ceasing, “You're a sinner, you're a sinner, you're a sinner.”
The sacrifices of the Old Testament increased the false story inside these deluded little bubbles of thankless, arrogant humans into a fevered pitch. – Which is what Paul said the law is actually for – to increase the knowledge of sin until everyone is totally GUILTY, cursed with death, and FINALLY willing to leave their stupid self-accusation, led out by the Lamb in one hand and the Lamb in the other.
The Sacrifice of Jesus is the opposite of continual sacrifices. – One sacrifice for sins forever.
Sin-consciousness, sin-story, sin-thinking – ERASED.
That is NOT salvation. Salvation has not happened at all with a full erasure of all sin and sin-thinking. A different story must be told inside that little bubble of the walled-off human. That story must be Christ, every Word God speaks. We are saved by His life.
But let's bring this, now, out of figurative speaking, and talk plainly of God.
God is formlessness, no restrictions by space, no cessation by time. ALL of God is ALL, always every moment inside of every tiny point of space in both heaven and earth, in the entire cosmos. This formless God is both infinitely complex and radically simple. Infinitely complex means that the discovery of fantastically varied realities – pleasures, beauties, and adventures – coming out of this God, God calling Himself out into visibility, will never end; they cannot be counted, for the count never ceases.
Radically simple means that there is one human word that contains all that is this God in one word.
Love. – God is love.
Yet Love is a most extraordinary word, as limitless in its wonder as an unceasing God.
FIRST – love is both a noun and a verb. Love loves. However, no verb can stand alone, but it must always respond to the question – How? Love loves by love. Love, the noun, is Father. Love, the verb, is Father, entering into His creation as the Son, the action of God. And “how” is the Spirit of the Father; Love Loves by Love.
But, of course, that phrase makes no sense, for something essential is missing. Love CANNOT Love by Love except there be an object of that Love, a Beloved. And thus we, you and I, have always been there inside of God.
Love Loves the Beloved by Love.
Love is invisible. Love, filling us full with all of Himself, Father God, is invisible. He is unknown.
Thus this Love must, by nature, dwell in darkness. Love is invisible; Love is unknown.
Right now, ALL LOVE fills every particle of your being with all the Love that All Love is.
You can see the sadness of God alone. You cannot know this Love that fills you full, by which you live; you cannot know this Love at all.
An infinite and eternal God must dwell alone. Nothing can break the heart of Love more completely than being alone, then being unknown by the Passion of Love, His Beloved, who consumes His heart.
Yet this alone God fills you full at every point of your being every moment, though you CANNOT know it.
But this alone God has a second form. Love is not just a noun; love is also a verb. The verb part of love is the second form of God. Action, the action of a Servant, that is, Heart. Thus the second form of God, Love as Action, can best be called Servant-Heart. But when we say Action, we are also saying God, and God is a pretty scary Fellow. Thus “by Love” always attends the Action of Love, Word always comes by the gentle, gentle Spirit.
So here you are, minding your own business, tootling along in your own little world day by day, as a created being, without sin, sinless – no consciousness of sin. You are not telling yourself any sin-story inside your bubble. All God, LOVE, fills you full at every particle of your being and person – you just don't know it, you don't know it at all.
As a sinless created being, you do not know God. You have no sin-story, you have no Christ-story. You live in darkness. However, completely UNKNOWN to you, you just happen to BE the absolute PASSION that fills the Heart of this infinite, eternal, scary Dude! Who also happens to fill you full, though you don't know it. Since we are finite, picture yourself as filled with an unending array of tubes, sort of like blood vessels filling the body. God flows all through those tubes at every point of your being, but you don't know that at all, you live in darkness. Yet you are without sin.
How, then, does God make Himself known to you?
This is so easy – He starts talking! God enters His creation as Word even as He creates it (calls it forth from Himself) by that same Word. God becomes known to you first by Word. Yet Word cannot ever be alone, for Word comes always BY Spirit. And with the entrance of Word, God in Action, the lights turn on; you begin to get a clue that Something incredible is inside of you.
BUT!!! God has a problem. God has a big, big, problem, as BIG as God Himself. You see, God is Love.
God respects His Beloved with the highest possible regard. As the ultimate Suitor, He will never, never, ever force Himself upon her. It is not possible for God to regard you in a higher regard and with more respect than all of God. That regard, as all of God, runs all through you.
There is one way only that Love as Action, God as Word, SEED, Servant-Heart, will ever enter into you, piercing your bubble-wall to be known by you as light and life and love, that is, God upwelling as springs.
Faith. – That's why God said, “Let there be light.”
God, this God who fills you full, this God who IS Love all through your being, can be known by you ONLY as you receive His Word, Love as Action, into your bubble, into your story, into your psyche, into your SELF.
BUT!!! Inside this word, “Let,” we find all the sorrow of God. Love suffers long. Yet God is not just sorrow as a noun; He is also sorrow as a verb. God is travail.
God cries to bring forth, to unfold Himself. And this very travailing God FILLS you full with All of Himself!
The requirement of Love – respect, that requirement for faith in the Beloved, then binds God to present His Word, God in Action, in two different forms.
Why does sin exist? Because God will never rape anyone. God will never force His Word into you.
You see, the words spoken against me by a brother on Facebook. “God needs no human consent, Yordy,” were the very words of Satan, coming at the precise moment of the speaking of God. “Did God really say that?”
Why are those words there, at the very beginning, right at the entrance of Word, God as Action, into His creation, right there at the entrance of that same Word out from this Invisible One who fills us full, entering into our sinless darkness?
Because God is Love, because God highly regards you and me, because God cannot rape, because God will NEVER do anything apart from human consent. Thus the Word God speaks comes to us, outside of our bubble, outside of our protective wall, created by God as His full respect of our integrity.
The Word MUST begin for us outside of our bubble. It can come into us ONLY by our consent, that is, only by our faith.
Let me define the law. The law is the Word God speaks outside of your bubble.
Let me define Christ. Christ is the Word God speaks inside of your bubble.
We can read every line in the Bible, Old Testament and New, as the law.
We can read every line in the Bible, Old Testament and New, as Christ.
Here is the difference. The law says, “Here is what God says, now you do it.” Christ says, “Here I am, I will be all that God speaks inside of you, if you let Me come into you and you into Me.”
The word God speaks must begin outside of us. Adam could not approach the tree of life without passing by the tree of knowledge, in the foreground, bigger and more glamorous than the tree of life.
And here is what we simply do not and cannot understand. You see, I have been pondering this problem all the way through. God inspires what I write by first giving me a problem, a question. I cannot leave problems or questions alone. They sit under my shell and bother me. Thus, I must fiddle with them, rolling them around in my mind, coating them with God until they finally turn into a bright pearl of understanding. You see that process taking place as I write these letters.
But no matter how I may see it, this problem seems to have no satisfying answer.
Before sin entered our little bubble, our story, our consciousness. Before sin even existed in the universe, there was another voice. And that other voice said, “Did God indeed say.”
I read grace teachers say “The power of the devil is broken; we don't worry about him at all.” Yet you read or listen along and before you know it, they are looking at a verse that is too big for them, and what do they say? I have seen these words spoken by union with Christ teachers, by grace teachers, by river of life teachers. “This verse does not mean what it says. This line is not for here, it is not for now, it is only for heaven after we die.”
What is the purpose of saying, “The power of the devil is broken,” and then turn and speak those same words of accusation spoken by the glorious serpent before sin ever entered the universe?
This is a problem that has no answer. No answer, except one.
There is an answer, you know. There really is. The answer is found in the mind and heart of a little teenage girl in the hill country of Galilee and in her mouth. If you want to know God, you'd better be this little girl.
“Behold, I am your maidservant, let it be to me according to Your word.”
This letter is on Sacrifice, the sacrifice of Jesus.
We CANNOT know anything unless we know where it fits.
We cannot know Sacrifice unless we see the entire picture. Thus, I must build that entire picture, for I would see the Salvation of God.
The entrance of Thy Word giveth light.
I think that's from Ezra, a teacher like me, boring and repetitive, going on and on, but when you get done reading his psalm, Psalm 119, you may not remember everything he said, but you know that Word must be a big deal. And you very likely remember, at least, that this Word, all of this Word, must be alive inside of you.
Adam chose to keep that word on the outside of himself, and to “do it” himself by his own ability.
Adam chose against receiving that Word into himself as his very life, the Word Himself fulfilling all the speaking of God out from Adam's innermost being as rivers of God flowing out of him.
All created beings live in darkness; they do not and cannot know God, even though God, Love, fills every particle of their being with all of Himself.
Sin takes that darkness and turns it into its own story. Sin cannot tell its own story without the law/tree of knowledge, without the word God speaks kept on the outside of the bubble. Thus Christians read the Bible and they see sin and sin and sin. They go to church and they hear sin and sin and sin.
But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year (every moment).
The consciousness, the story-telling, of sin. This is what God says, you had better do it. You failed? You sinner!
Sin, the story of sin, turns each of our little bubbles into Hades; Hades is the creation of self, itself a delusion.
So many churches, so many Christians, wrap themselves in Hades. Christ is not inside their story. They see Christ outside themselves, up in “heaven” somewhere. They see sin current and present, here and now, in them. And they see the Word as the Bible, something entirely outside of themselves.
Because of sin, entering through the agreement struck between Adam and the serpent, all fallen angels live in Hades, and all humans live in Hades, including those who walk upon this earth.
There is no reason for a born-again, Spirit-filled Christian to live in Hades, yet many do.
I lived in Hades, even while I rejoiced in a third feast word, walked in the experience and power of the Holy Spirit, and held to a vision of all the fullness of Christ revealed (someday) through me. I lived in Hades because I kept sin and its unceasing story inside my little bubble. God speaks, you had better do what He says. You failed? You live in the flesh; you miserable sinner. You want to know why you're miserable? It's because you disobey God.
Sin is not and never has been the problem.
The problem has always and only been faith.
You see, it was God who created the wall of our person, our bubble, our being. He created that wall because He is Love, He is respect. God cannot enter us, that is, enter our knowing, except by our faith, by our consent. And part of that wall is a natural resistance to whatever is on the outside of it. It is right and Godly for you and I to resist any word trying to penetrate our wall.
Millions of sperm cells jostle against the outside of a female egg, each one trying to pierce its shell that it might enter in to birth it's life out of union with the female seed. Yet only one succeeds. But – if two sperm cells do succeed in piercing that God-created protective wall, then two lives grow inside that seed, double-hearted and double-minded.
Sin turns that protective, God-created wall into the skin of a beast. Sin turns the story told inside the walled-off bubble into shame and accusation, vain-glory and boasting, arrogance and cruelty.
The strength of sin is the law. The law gives sin its power, this word of God on the outside of us. You have failed God.
And thus the sacrifice of the law is the continual story-telling of sin.
But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year (every sacrifice, every moment). The writer of Hebrews said “every year” in direct reference to the biggest sacrifice in importance in the law, the sacrifice offered once a year on the Day of Atonement.
Our Sacrifice is the opposite.
And He took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” Likewise He also took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you. Luke 22:19-20
The sacrifices of the law, of word on the outside of us, caused the sinner to remember his wretched hopelessness every moment. The Sacrifice of Christ, of necessity on the inside of us, causes us to remember Christ our only life.
Thus we eat His body and drink His blood. Both of those pictures figure to us the reality of our faith allowing this Word, Love as Action, to enter into our knowledge, inside of us, inside our story.
In the law, the word was a piece of stone encased in a box made of wood and metal.
Inside of us, the Word is Blood as Covenant, our very life, flowing all through us every moment.
However, that Word, that Blood, that Life, can spring up from an invisible God to enter into us, that is, into our knowledge, as life and light and knowledge by one means alone. That one means alone has NOTHING to do with sin.
That one means, Love as Action, is Sacrifice, and Sacrifice is Heart.
Sacrifice was as necessary for a sinless Adam to know Love as it is for us who have known sin.
No created being can know God, can know Love, can know this Invisible POWER filling them full apart from Sacrifice. For you see, God, in His second form, God as Servant, Love in Action, is a Lamb as it had been slain. Love in Action is love poured out; it is life laid down.
Love cannot enter into us except it come out from Love.
Let me split the gospel accounts into two parts. Everyone else who saw Jesus, including all those who wrote the New Testament, even Paul, as one part. And John as the other part.
You see, everyone else wrote down what they saw. Even Paul, in his comments about Jesus as He had walked this earth, wrote down by observation. John didn't write a word. John didn't write anything while all the others were busy writing their stuff. He didn't write anything when they were all dead and gone and Jerusalem had been destroyed. John was an old, old man, in his nineties, when he finally picked up a pen and began to write, not out of his observation, even though he knew Jesus better than any other individual person had known Him.
John wrote out from the very Heart of the Lamb slain. And John gave a different version, a God-version of the things everyone else saw by appearance only.
You see, all the others thought that Jesus had been killed. That's what it looked like to them, and so that's what they said. But they weren't there, none of them. Only John was there. And John mulled over what He saw for 75 years before he felt able to share what it was he knew, deep inside, that he had seen.
Jesus was not killed.
“Therefore My Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This command I have received from My Father.” John 10:17-18
You see, all the others wondered how it was that Jesus died so quickly, after only six hours on the cross. No one dies on the cross before a couple of days. Only John knew the truth because only John was there. Yes, the two Mary's were also there, but they did not understand what they saw. Even John hardly dared to understand it and would not tell anyone until he fully KNEW seventy-five years later.
Jesus was not killed; Jesus laid down His life.
But I have come to the end of eight pages and I am not finished with Sacrifice. We will write forever and never be finished with Sacrifice. But for now, two more letters on Sacrifice are needed.
Let me bring in some words I wrote in the last letter.
– Just as Eve was taken out of Adam's side, so the church was taken out of Jesus' side upon the cross. Thus blood and water poured out was the church coming out from Jesus into all the earth, Christ planted as us. But look at what the figurative picture (looking at) means literally. The action of the sacrifice, piercing Jesus' side, was Jesus extending the beating of His heart out of which His life poured out flows, His blood, into you and me. It was an operation in which His pumping blood was forever attached to us, becoming the only heart we have. How could God transplant Jesus' heart into us except by what is pictured figuratively – by outward appearance – of His side being cut open? –
God is Love – means God, a Person, is Heart. This God, this Love, who fills all that we are with all that He is, can enter into our knowing only as a Lover. Love as Action is immensely personal and deeply intimate. And that immensely personal, deeply intimate Love can pierce our bubble, our shield-wall, to enter into us only by Heart, by Sacrifice, by life laid down, by love poured out – through our faith.
– There is no other God.