sacrifice

When we are asked to think of the word "sacrifice," we generally either think "strange & bloody religious stuff," or "giving up something we want such as junkfood." And for those of us who have had a baby, we think of that new-parent way we’ve learned about sacrifice.

But for me to hear the word "sacrifice," it is one of the beautiful paradoxes of a life in Christ that this word speaks to me of joy through suffering.

God first forever touched my heart the day I learned of all Jesus sacrificed for me. The joy found in that gospel is the fact underlying it all that He counted it all joy to suffer because it was out of His great love for me and it was to fulfill every purpose. Sacrifice is not just to give something up. Sacrifice has to do with giving something up for another thing [or person] considered to be of greater value. And so when someone sacrifices something, they are willingly putting another before themselves. And when Jesus did this for us, it was without resentment and He was not wishing He didn’t have to do it.

Though we may pause for a moment to consider His sacrifice, it does not end there in the portrait of blood and sorrow—because He lives! The sacrifice was the beginning of, and the catalyst for, the life of abundance God calls us to have with Him. To say that is of course not to diminish the Passion of Christ, because it is only because of His death and resurrection that we can be made new and have that abundant life in unity with God through Jesus Christ.

Philippians 2:5-11 reads:

“Let this same attitude and purpose and [humble] mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus: Who, although being essentially one with God and in the form of God [possessing the fullness of the attributes which make God God], did not think this equality with God was a thing to be eagerly grasped or retained, But stripped Himself [of all privileges and rightful dignity], so as to assume the guise of a servant, in that He became like men and was born a human being. And after He had appeared in human form, He abased and humbled Himself [still further] and carried His obedience to the extreme of death, even the death of the cross! Therefore God has highly exalted Him and has freely bestowed on Him the name that is above every name, That in (at) the name of Jesus every knee should (must) bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, And every tongue [frankly and openly] confess and acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”