Friday Morning Manna July 12, 2019
Nathaniel Fajardo
email: [email protected]
The Human Body of Christ’s Incarnated Nature
“Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a body You prepared for Me.” Heb. 10: 5. “Not one of His bones shall be broken.” John 19: 26. “Nor did His flesh see corruption.”
Acts 2: 36
Few accord the attention it fully deserves of certain very specific prophecies, and their corresponding fulfillments, regarding the human body that was specifically made for Christ wherein His incarnated flesh and blood nature would reside—forever!
First, in the Bible a “Soul” is fundamentally made up of the Dust of the ground plus the Breath of life–that alone comes from the Life giver, Himself the Creator of that dust of the ground. This may be expressed in a simple equation, D + B = S. Such were the living body of Adam when he was created.
He became the first living soul on earth. Never will you read about dead souls in the Bible. So, when either D or B are absent, there is no S. This immediately exposes the mother of all lies of Satan pronounced in Eden to Eve, ‘You shall not surely die.” This lie is the foundation of both ancient, modern, and the final deception of spiritualism that holds that the soul— the “disembodiedspirit, not flesh, for it decomposes at death — is immortal; it is what instantly “wings” itself to paradise upon “leaving” the corpse of the body at death. Friends, s soul is a living complete person, one of flesh and blood and all its organs and its amazing uber-complex systems held together by the living skeletal system and all its bones, with the mysterious spark of energy of life animating the whole miracle that is a living person!
This is what the human nature of the first Adam was. But can this be also said of the second Adam, Christ? Think about it as we consider the human nature of Christ compared to ours.
Before it gets away from us, again, have we ever considered living person, not a dead one, as a living miracle of God that we see every day? How about when we look at ourselves in the mirror starting every morning of our life? If we do, good. But do we thank God enough by not demanding for more miracles, as the hypocritical Pharisees did, when the greatest life-living Miracle of miracles, as in Lord of lords, the Lord of the Sabbath in fact, was performing miracle after miracle before their very eyes? Ever heard of the spiritual blindness of the typical Laodicean Christian of the last days who the “Amen, the Faithful and True Witness” describes in Revelation 3: 14-17 as “wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked”?
ALL PROPHESIED IN THEIR TYPES
1. Not one bone of Christ’s Body Shall Be Broken.”- John’s account in John 19: 31-36, N.K.J.V.
v 31 Therefore, because it was Preparation Day (Friday), that the bodies (of Jesus and the two thieves) should not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away.
v 32 Then the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and the other who was crucified with Him. v 33 But when they came to Jesus and saw that He was already dead [meaning the thieves were still alive then the soldiers broke their legs!], they did not break His legs.
v 34 But one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out. v 35 And he who has seen [John himself] has testified, and his testimony is true; and he knows that he is telling the truth, so that you may believe. v 36 For these things were done that the Scriptures should be fulfilled, ‘Not one of His bones shall be broken.’ [See prophecy through the types in Exo. 12: 46; Num. 9: 12; Ps. 34: 20].
2. Christ’s Flesh Shall See No Corruption (decomposition; decay) in His Death – David’s prophecy in Psalms 16: 9, 10:
v 9 Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoices; my flesh will also rest in hope. v 10 For You will not leave my soul in Sheol [Hebrew, hell; the grave]. Nor will You allow your Holy One to see corruption.”
In Peter’s powerful, long-winded sermon on the Day of Pentecost (the former rain), he reminded his hearers of David (whom they adored), and his prophecy regarding Christ, comparing and contrasting the death of the two, differentiated by the fact that David’s decomposed body remained in the grave to this day with that of Christ’s body that remained uncorrupted (did not decompose) to His resurrection in the same glorified human body that was previously “bruised for our iniquities.” See Acts 2: 25, 27, 31; 13: 34, 35, 36, 37.
v 25 For David says concerning Him . . . v 27 Because You will not leave my soul in Hades [Greek hell; the grave], nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption. . . . v 29 Men and brethren, let me speak freely to you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried [not in heaven!], and his tomb is with us to this day. v 30 Therefore, being a prophet [David], and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that of the fruit of his body, according to the flesh, he would raise up the Christ to sit on his throne [Christ came from the line of David, the kingly line of Judah. Thus He is also called the Son of David], v 31 he [David,] forseeing this [as a prophecy], spoke concerning the resurrection of Christ, that His soul was not left in Hades, nor did His flesh see corruption.”
“A Body Hast Thou Prepared for Me.” See Hebrews 10: 5-10 first.
M.L. Adreasen in his The Book of Hebrews, pp. 421-3, referring to Hebrews 10: 5-10, wrote:
“Did Christ in reality do what the law could not do? It is necessary to show this; for if Christ did not make perfection attainable, then He failed in the very point where the sacrificial law failed, and then we would be no better off than before. The apostle [Paul] therefore shows that worked out God’s will in every particular, and showed how perfection might be attained. Having given a demonstration that the attainment of perfection is possible, He offers to sanctify those who will come to Him.
“Verse 5. ‘Sacrifice and offering.’ The blood of bulls and of goats cannot take away sin. Because of this, when Christ came into the world [in His incarnation], He said, ‘Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a body You have prepared for Me.” (N.K.J.V.)
“This quotation is taken from the Septuagint Version of the 40th psalm, which is assigned to David. The psalm is entitled ‘To the Chief Musician, A Psalm of David.’ The first 5 verses refer to David’s experience when persecuted by Saul, but verses 6 to 8 are so evidently Messianic that no proof of this is necessary. Christ is both the subject and speaker.
“’A body hast Thou prepared Me.’ A reference to the Authorized Version of the 40th psalm will show that the reading there is, ‘Mine ears has Thou opened.’ As is known, a translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, called the Septuagint Version, was made some time before Christ for the use of the Jews who did not know the Hebrew language. This version was in general use in the time of Christ, and both He and the disciples quoted from it. The quotations of the Old Testament in the book of Hebrews are mostly from this translation. The Hebrew reads, ‘Mine ears hast Thou opened.’ The Septuagint translation reads, ‘A body hast Thou prepared Me.’ Various attempts have been made to reconcile these statements but we have not enough facts to guide us. Under these conditions let us study both statements. We will first consider the Septuagint translation as in Hebrews 10: 5” ‘A body hast Thou prepared Me.’. . .
“When Christ came, a body was prepared for Him. He who was God became a man, and mysteriously combined the two natures in one, becoming the God-man. The body prepared for Him was subject to death. It was a human body of flesh and blood, so prepared as to be capable of suffering to the utmost; otherwise He could have never survived either the temptation in the wilderness or the agony of Gethsemane, the sufferings of which would ordinarily cause death [in any other human nature]. When He had endured as much as human nature could stand, and fell dying on the ground, and angel was sent, not to remove the cup, but to strengthen Him to drink it. In Gethsemane Christ was strengthened for the purpose of suffering. There He tasted death; on the cross He died.
“Christ’s body was a human body, prepared of God for the specific purpose of atonement and redemption. In that body Jesus worked out the plan of salvation and redeemed Adam’s disgraceful fall. To that body came every temptation to which man is subject, and in that body every temptation was met and conquered.
NOTE: The same can never ever be said of any mortal in any other flesh-and-blood human nature whether yesterday, today and forever. No other human body, starting from Adam’s unfallen, sinless state to his fallen, sinful state to the holy translated ones, Enoch (and Elijah) to faithful Abraham’s or Moses’ to the very forerunner of Christ Himself, John the Baptist, etc., were ever similarly tailor-made for them in heaven, before their birth, and much less for the purpose of atonement and redemption of the whole fallen human race!
Furthermore, we often fail to grasp the deeper meaning of the phrase, “He was tempted in all points like as we are tempted.” Individually, we are beset and struggle with temptations that others apparently don’t; and vice-versa. But not with the flesh-and-blood human nature of Christ, in the human body that was made for Him. He was, in fact, tempted with all and every species of temptation that every single individual of every generation was and is tempted with–starting from Adam to the last person living at the close to probation, and even on through the period of the seven last plagues in the person of His livings saints at that time, the 144,000. The suffering of temptation: Jesus experienced and experiences it all, and for all, no one excluded or forgotten. It is thus that He is an intimatelypersonal, not only a general or corporate Savior. All may and should flee to Him when tempted and tried, shaken and sifted by Satan for He truly feels and understands each case, ours, more than our human nature will ever realize!
“Men react differently to specific temptations. To some, certain temptations constitute no problem, and are easily resisted. To others the same temptations are most severe, and a terrible struggle ensues, and often men are overcome.
“To Christ every temptation must come at least in equal strength to that of the most tempted on earth. If in any sin one is tempted harder than Christ was tempted, then God would have to excuse that man for yielding; for he could justly say that Christ was never tempted so severely as he, and that the reason Christ was not so tempted was because He could not endure it and come of victorious.
“But that has never been, nor can be. No one will be ever to say that Christ was not tempted so severely as he was. A man might withstand temptation to the utmost, and die resisting unto blood. Who can do more? Yet even to such a one Christ can say, ‘Dear one, I was tempted on the same point, and resisted unto blood as you did. But I went a little further. [Made possible only by the special human nature of Christ!]. You died, and that was the end of your suffering. I was not permitted to die as you were. In Gethsemane I drained the cup.’
“Let no one believe that a Christian would ever say or think such, or that Christ would answer as above. No one will have any desire to compare sufferings or to boast of his temptations. We have presented it merely to make more vivid what Christ’s sufferings and temptations meant [in the body made for Him in His human nature].
“Every temptation that has come to any man came to Christ, and each temptation came to Him in greater force then it ever came to any other man. However hard pressed we are, we may know that Jesus understands. He has gone the way before us.
“It can be readily seen that if the temptations of the world are to be gathered up into one body and felt to the full, such a body must be possessed of physical and spiritual qualities that will make suffering and temptations possible without a break of the life line, which would end suffering.
“We have no disposition to enlarge upon this, but would impress upon all that Christ’s temptations were real, and that the statement, ‘A body hast Thou prepared Me’ has a deeper significance that that of merely conveying the information that Christ had a body. This we already know. What God tells us here it that God had a prepared body, not a brute body [of animal nature] like those used in burnt and sin offerings, but a human body; that He was made in the image of God, a worthy representative of the human race; and that His offering upon the cross as the God-man fulfilled the demands of the law and actually accomplished that which the Levitical sacrifices dimly foreshadowed by promise. ‘Those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually’ could never ‘make the comers thereunto perfect,’ ‘but a body hast Thou prepared Me,’ and in that body was fulfilled God’s complete intent, and to the possessor of that body came the heavenly approbation, ‘This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’ Matt. 3: 17.
“If we therefore accept the Septuagint translation as it is found in Hebrews 10: 5, ‘A body hast Thou prepared Me,’ we see in these words a significant reference to the work that Christ did in that body. God did not want sacrifice and offerings. They were indicative of sin. Every offering brought to the temple testified to the fact that someone had sinned. God wanted men to stop sinning. Could men stop sinning? To demonstrate this, God prepared a body for Christ; and in that body showed that men need not sin, however much they are tempted. He resisted unto blood; He resisted unto death; and even beyond the point of death, as it were. In all things He was victorious. The demonstration was complete. Man need not sin. This Christ showed in the body given Him.” – End of extract. (To be continued next week)