What Jesus Sacrificed

by Doy Moyer

Jesus Sacrificed His Body

The sacrifice of Jesus is vital to salvation (Ephesians  1:7). Yet it was not just the death of Jesus that saves us; the resurrection was necessary to defeat death and thereby offer us the hope of eternal life (I Peter 1:3-5). To be sure, Jesus sacrificed His body. He came in the flesh with a body prepared for the task to offer Himself up as an atoning sacrifice. Peter wrote, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed” (I Peter 2:25). The Hebrews writer shows this to be the case: “Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, ‘Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book’” (Hebrews 10:5-7).

The importance of the body of Jesus is highlighted by the instructions concerning the Lord’s Supper, wherein Jesus says of the bread, “Take, eat; this is my body” (Matthew 26:28). Paul also wrote of the Lord’s Supper, “The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (I Corinthians 10:16-17). The body of Jesus was sacrificed, His blood shed, to open up the new and living way to God (Hebrews 9-10). That same body was raised up to give us hope of life. In other words, the body of Jesus is crucial to our own death and resurrection.

However, the sacrifice was not just about Jesus’ body. He took on flesh and blood (Hebrews 2:14), but He was God manifested in the flesh, and He emptied Himself to go to the cross and draw us back to God (John 12:32). Jesus was not guilty of sin, but He became the sin offering so that we can be forgiven. Understanding the full extent of Christ's suffering is beyond our grasp, but there is something more to consider.

Jesus Sacrificed His will

We can see this in the quote from Hebrews 10: “Behold, I have come to do your will, O God.” Every other aspect of the sacrifice of Jesus boils down to this. Would He give up His will not to suffer horrifically so that the lost world may be saved? Would He accept the will of the Father to carry out the plan to be the sacrifice? Bear in mind that what Jesus faced in the cross is not something He wanted or enjoyed. The Hebrews writer tells us that He despised the shame of the cross (Hebrews 12:2). The result of what it accomplished brings joy, but that did not mean He enjoyed the process of being shamed and humiliated as a criminal on a cross. Jesus sacrificed His will to avoid the shame and agony for the greater result of salvation.

This is reflected in His prayer in the garden before His arrest: “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:42). He had already told His disciples, “I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me” (John 5:39). He did not come to do His own will independently of the Father. He came to die, and that meant giving up His desire to avoid the shame.

Paul writes about Jesus’ self-emptying attitude as he encourages Christians to “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:3-4). Jesus is the greatest example of this humble spirit. Paul continues, “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:5-8).

Jesus’ attitude is an example of self-denial. While it is the will of Jesus that all be saved, He did not desire to suffer such an excruciating death. He wanted there to be another way, but He knew, according to Scripture, “that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead” (Luke 22:46). His will to avoid the agony of bearing sin was overcome by His greater desire to save the world from that sin.

This attitude of Jesus is our example, and we face that same battle. Do we do our own will apart from God, or do we sacrifice our will for His will?

Jesus shows us the way.