Sacrifice Your Isaac

Sacrifice Your Isaac

The death of Christ initiated by an eternal Spirit is active as long as the flesh exists. The Spirit baptizes into one body and later brings forth death in that same body. In Christ’s body, the promptings of the Spirit were so hidden from the disciples that they were not able to understand when Jesus spoke to them about these things. The work of the Spirit in Christ had not yet been completed so that it could work in others. It was profitable for Him to go away, so that the Comforter could be liberated from the flesh of Christ and be sent to testify to the sacrifice that was made for the reconciliation and salvation of the world.

Jesus suffered, being tempted, and He suffered when the disciples did not understand Him. He Himself was the sacrifice and could not be comforted by natural men. God had to send angels to comfort Him. He didn’t have a forerunner; He was the forerunner. That is why no one was able to show Him the way; He became the way.

The way has now been opened and prepared; the sacrifices, the blood, the fire, the comfort and the glory are now in the body, ready for all those who are willing to follow.

In the midst of his sacrificial service, Paul was able to rejoice over being understood, which is a huge privilege. He says, “Yes, and if I am being poured out as a drink offering on the sacrifice and service of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all.” Phil. 2:17.

Paul lived his life in the body of Christ. He says, “For to me, to live is Christ.” He found everything that pertained to life and godliness within Christ’s body. The tribulations of Christ were abundant; yet the comfort was also abundant. He was a minister of the Spirit. The Spirit that he served always drew from those things that belonged to Christ. When Paul was being poured out as a drink offering in his sacrifice and service to others, he was able to rejoice over every single person who became a partaker of the glory together with him, within the same body, where he did all of his service for the Spirit.

That was not granted to Jesus. He suffered patiently because of the joy set before Him, and He looked forward to His departure, when the Comforter would be able to speak about all those things that people could not understand while He was still alive.

We can rejoice together in the fellowship of the Spirit. Jesus was not able to rejoice in the fellowship of the Spirit with any other person because the Father had not yet sent the Holy Spirit. This intensified His sufferings and increased His desire to depart.

In the days of His flesh, Jesus maintained fellowship with the Father without us, and He demands in return that we relinquish all carnal fellowship to attain that fellowship which He shares with His Father. That is why John says, “That which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.” 1 John 1:3-4.

Therefore, if anyone desires to have perfect joy, he must abandon all carnal fellowship in order to gain fellowship with the Father and His Son Jesus Christ. He can gain this fellowship through the obedience of the faith, and it binds us with eternal power to the Father, who has promised to bestow upon us His wealth of goodness in Christ Jesus in the time to come.

The reason we offer our self in our sacrifice and service, and the reason we present others’ faith as an offering, is for the purpose of becoming a member of His body to His honor, a member of whom He can say on that day, “Here am I, and the children whom God has given Me.” Since Christ brought forth all this glory without us, and yet has made us partakers of it, then all of our honor belongs to Him, as it is written, that our boasting “is excluded. By what law? . . . by the law of faith.” Rom. 3:27. Yet the righteous shall live by faith.

Paul presented the faith of others as an offering. He sought, in all his work, to present a pure virgin to Christ. He did not bind anyone to himself, but said: Who is Paul, who is Cephas? This is what it means to present the faith of others as an offering. You must allow those whom you win for Christ to go to Christ, instead of using all kinds of bonds to bind them to yourself for the sake of gain.

You will feel what Paul means by being a sacrifice when you give to Christ those whom you have won for Him. In the resurrection, you will regain everything you have sacrificed. That is why the apostle says: Who is our honor and crown of rejoicing, is it not you on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ?

We give ourselves within the body and sacrifice what we gain. This is done so that the life of Christ might be manifested in our mortal flesh. Abraham received Isaac as a result of his faith; yet by faith he sacrificed his Isaac so that all carnal bonds, which are temporal, could be broken and eternal bonds could be formed. Isaac was returned to him as one risen from the dead—no longer as a temporal son, but as an eternal one, of whom it was said, “In Isaac your seed shall be called.” Heb. 11:18.

If a person is willing to offer the Isaac he has received, he will be safely preserved in the body, which is the church, through the mutual help that God supplies. If he is not sacrificed, then people must exert great energy to create churches and fences in order to keep him bound. Isaac was born to be free and cannot thrive as a prisoner under the eyes of guards inside carnal, self-made churches. That is why we see that many of these Isaacs escape when they are convinced there is something better. Their captors stand back, dumb with fear, and wonder how it will go when such people are freed from their empty forms and carnal protection; nevertheless, everything goes just fine. Just let Isaac go. We have been baptized with one Spirit to be one body (the church). God has not created any other church. Man has created all these other churches where every “Isaac” gets snatched up by one carnal group after another and receives a name.

This must increase: Sacrifice yourself and sacrifice those you win.

Someone might ask: “But are we not to take care of those we win in Christ? Should we just let them go their own way?” No, but we are to serve our Lord and Master in such a way that on that Day, He will be able to say, “I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.” It is the others’ life in Christ we are to serve. However, since this life is spiritual, it cannot be served by well-meant, carnal intentions. You have to sacrifice the Isaac that you have won if you are to serve him with things of eternal worth. As a person who has been offered, you can free yourself from everyone and make yourself a servant of all. If you are not a sacrifice, then you only serve those whom you have won and whom you consider to be your own, with all the well-intended disservice the flesh can achieve.

If you recognize yourself in this mirror, do not go away and forget what you looked like; rather, let go of your Isaac and free yourself from everyone. Perhaps God will have mercy on you and, in His time, make you effective in His service. Now, however, with your religious striving and religious care, you are binding and shackling souls to yourself instead of binding them to Christ.