A Body You Have Prepared for Me

"For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Therefore, when He comes into the world, He says, 'Sacrifice and offering you have not desired, but a body You have prepared for Me; in whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, "Behold, I have come (in the scroll of the book it is written of Me) to do Your will, O God."'" (Hebrews 10:4-7, emphasis added)

"Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death of a cross." (Philippians 2:5-8, emphasis added)

How did the Lord Jesus live His life? Was it the "obedience of faith" or did He have some innate ability to be good and to work miracles? Or was He a container of the divine life even as we are?

I contend that the last statement is true. There was, is, and will never be another Lord Jesus. However, He is unique in His humanity only because no other human has ever been born from a woman who was impregnated by the Holy Spirit. In that respect He was the "only begotten" Son of God (John 1:14, 18; John 3:16, 18; 1 John 4:9). No one else can bear that designation and the Scriptures consistently give that title only to Him. Abraham may have had his "only begotten son,", Isaac (Hebrews 11:17), but in this case the writer to the Hebrews is drawing an obvious parallel between Abraham's offering of Isaac and God's offering of the Lord Jesus, with their consequent "death" and "resurrection," all symbolic in Isaac's case but total reality in Jesus'.

But the Lord Jesus' unique human distinction is that He had a human mother and God as His Father. But it had to be that way for only God could die for the human race to redeem it. So, in that unique way Jesus had to be born that way and be different from us. But in His humanity was He fully human? He obviously thought so for He loved to call Himself the "Son of Man."

So quickly we distinguish ourselves from this Son of Man and excuse our behavior on the basis of the fact that, "After all, we are different. No one could do what Jesus did." But, couched in that last statement, is really the hidden answer to our lives.

If Jesus in fact lived His human life the same way we do and had no "leg up" on us because of His unique birth (which was done in order to enable Him to have a unique death--becoming sin for us), then we must find the answer for our living in Him. What did He say? What was He often repeating about His inner resources? Did He constantly say, "Oh, I'm God" or did He say something else more frequently?

The apostle John, more than any other chronicler of Jesus' life, gives us intimate glimpses into His inner life. Listen to Him as He repeats over and over the source of His life:

"Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner." (John 5:19)

"I can do nothing on My own initiative. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is just, because I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me." (John 5:30)

"For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me." (John 6:38)

"When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and I do nothing on My own initiative, but I speak these things as the Father taught Me." (John 8:28)

"For I did not speak on My own initiative, but the Father Himself who sent Me has given Me a commandment as to what to say and what to speak." (John 12:49)

"He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, 'Show us the Father'? Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works." (John 14:9-10)

Do you see the great secret? The human Lord Jesus lived by the life of Another. It was really His Father living in Him, expressed by Him. And He wanted us to see it which is why He expressed it so often.

When the Lord Jesus entered humanity as a person the Scriptures tell us that He "emptied Himself." That meant that there was nothing left of what He was full of before. That is why He could say things like, "Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone" (Mark 10:18 and Luke 18:19) and "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone" (Matthew 24:36 and Mark 13:32). As a man the Lord Jesus had no righteousness of His own (Hebrews 2:10; 5:8) and no knowledge of His own.

God prepared a human body for Jesus so that He could express Himself as a person by Him. But it didn't stop there. The Lord Jesus is the firstborn among many brethren. What does Romans 8:29-30 say (not as familiar to us as the preceding verse): "For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified" (emphasis added). Tremendous!

Colossians 1:18 reveals, "He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything." (emphasis added)

God's intention is to "bring many sons to glory" (Hebrews 2:10, emphasis added), which is why Jesus had to suffer so much. His suffering was for others.

As the "last Adam" (not the second Adam as is so often erroneously stated) the Lord Jesus could end one race and as the "second man" He could start another (1 Corinthians 15:45). As the "second man," rather than the "last man" there could be others (1 Corinthians 15:47). And that was the whole point.

"A body You have prepared for Me." Yes, a body in His incarnation and a body known as His church of whom He is the one and only Head, a body made up of our bodies expressing Him in His myriad forms that He may be all in all.

As Norman Grubb sums it up so well: "So that is what a 'normal' man is: not himself, but God dwelling and working in him. Ours is not a God afar off, but God within. In light of this Jesus said, 'I and My Father are one'; yet within that union They were two--'I and My Father.' And the whole point is that this is not a description of Himself as Jesus the Son of God, unique and different from us, but of Jesus as the Son of man, of whom it says in the Epistle to the Hebrews that 'He that sanctifieth and they that are sanctified are all of one, for which cause He is not ashamed to call them brethren.'"