Spencer and Phyllis Dibble have served the Lord in Nigeria for many years.
We may pride ourselves in the holding of the truth of the priesthood of all believers, but does this truth have a hold on us? Why is there often a dearth of true worship, especially in the remembrance time, the meeting that we profess to love so much? Is it because we have relegated our worship to Sunday morning? Are we not among those whom the Father is seeking, those who “worship…in spirit and truth”?
Ours is the glorious privilege of offering unspiritual sacrifices to God who purchased us with the precious blood of His only begotten Son of God. It is also our glorious responsibility! We learn from God’s picture album of His Son, the Old Testament, that priestly service was daily service. As we look in the New Testament, we will find that the spiritual sacrifices we are to offer to God occupy a lifetime.
Hebrews 13:15 urges us to continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name. Scripture shows us how we may keep our praise from becoming mere repetition. As one African proverb puts it, “If you don’t rekindle the fire, it will soon go out.” Is this not why we are told to be looking off to Jesus? The Old Testament is full of pictures of the Lord Jesus and His work throughout time and eternity. Surely our regular contemplation of Him would cause our thanks and praise to know no bounds.
Our hearts would burn within us, as was the experience of the two on the Emmaus road. Is it possible that the Lord had drawn near, unrecognized, longing to hear for the first time the recounting, from human lips, the story of His death and resurrection? If so, He was disappointed.
He remedies their error by opening to them God’s picture book of His Son. It is in such contemplation that we are enabled not only to worship but also to show Him forth to a dying world and so delight the Father’s heart. For example, we may meditate on the One who dwells “in light unapproachable” yet who has qualified us to share in the inheritance “of the saints in light” (Col. 1:12).
Hebrews 13:6 mentions a sacrifice that we should not neglect, that is, doing good and sharing what we have with others. We are created anew unto good works that we should daily walk in them (Eph. 2:10). As we contemplate God’s generous giving of His Son to us, and freely giving us all things in Him (John 3:16; Rom. 8:32), surely we are constrained by love to show forth this virtue of His in practical priestly ministry. Thus we are “as poor, yet making many rich” and “as having nothing, and yet possessing all things” (2 Cor. 6:10).
This is referred to in Philippians 4:18 as a fragrant aroma, an acceptable sacrifice, well pleasing to God. The amazing outcome of this service is that instead of becoming poorer for the giving, He enriches us so we may give and help all the more. The more we give the richer we become in eternal realities.
Surely this will also be the outcome of our presenting our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God (Rom. 12:1). I take this to be a daily offering as well, from the words of our Lord in Luke 9:23. Amazing grace that has made it possible that the likes of us—once defiled, dead in our trespasses and sin, and alienated from God—are now enabled to daily render this as our reasonable service (or worship). As we enter more fully into the death, burial and resurrection of Christ, it becomes manifestly clear that this is the sensible thing to do. As we, through faith, have died and were buried with Christ, in like manner we have risen from the dead through the glory of the Father so that we might walk in “newness of life.”
The Lord wants, through His indwelling Spirit, to live through us to the glory of God (Rom. 6:5-11). Hence, the daily necessity of our bodies being presented to God as living sacrifices; this is an essential part of our functioning as priests of the Most High God.
The Apostle Paul also referred to himself being poured out as a drink offering “upon the sacrifice and service” of the faith of the Philippian believers (Phil. 2:17). They were one of his sacrifices, according to Romans 15:16. Now he sees that the laying down of his life will enhance the offering he has already brought. I wonder, was the martyrdom of Stephen now being seen by Paul in a different light as he was expecting to go to glory in a similar way? Some of God’s special servants have been given the privilege of pouring themselves out as a drink offering.
We see from Romans 15:16 that winning souls to Christ is part of our priestly ministry. As Paul says, “Grace was given me from God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles, ministering as a priest the gospel of God, that my offering of the Gentiles might become acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.
Note that in this instance he says, “ministering the gospel,” not preaching the gospel. Thus, we men who are not preachers, as well as our sister priests, can offer this sacrifice as well. The more we learn of the Lord Jesus, His love and the tremendous stoop He took to bring man back to God, the more we will want to make Him known to the ones for whom He died. Our longing will be that their voices will be raised with ours to render the adoration due Him. May we understand more the horror of the pit from which we have been dug (see Eph. 2:1-3) and the glory of the Person to which we have been eternally joined that this may urge us to make this “so great salvation” known.
Then we come to the sacrifice of a sweet smelling savor that the Lord Jesus gave Himself to be, out of His great love for us. This is an eternal and incomparable fragrance from that life poured out. We who have entered into the blessing of it should be constantly allowing that aroma to ascend to the Father. This will be true if the lives we live are lived through the faith of the One who died for us and rose again.
We are told in 2 Corinthians 3:18 that “we, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Lord the Spirit.” We simply do the looking and He does the transforming. Thus we become a sweet savor of Christ to God (2 Cor. 2:14) and to our fellow believers. We also are a savor “in every place” of Christ to those who are perishing. Paul could claim this truth in his life as a fact, as he followed the truths of his own teaching. For example, “reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin but alive unto God” through our Lord Jesus Christ (see Rom. 6:4-12). Again he wrote: “I live by faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). And “seek those things which are above, where Christ sits” (see Col. 3:1-3). He also believed and practiced the truth. We have as our ambition, “whether present or absent, to be acceptable to Him” (2 Cor. 5:9).
It is God’s desire that each believer be a sweet savor of Christ to Himself. In light of what we were, is it possible that we can be such a sweet savor of Christ to God? The God who cannot lie has declared it. As we are willing to be led by Him in His triumph in Christ, He will manifest through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him by us. Thus we will be “to the praise of the glory of His grace” in this lifetime and throughout God’s eternal day.
The great question is, am I willing? (Jn. 7:17). Perhaps we must cry, like the father of old, “Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief.”
There would be no limit to goodness working out through us in this life if we would only follow Him, letting His life be manifested through our mortal bodies. Thus we would be a sweet savor to God and to all around. We would demonstrate to a dying world that there is indeed a new creation in Christ. We would at first be a conundrum to them, but the Holy Spirit would work in their hearts to show them that we have just what they have been searching for all of their lives. Thus the choice would be theirs to accept or refuse the gift of God. Ours is the privilege of making Him known.
In these wonderful ways we will be functioning as the royal and holy priests that we are, bringing our manifold offerings to God as sweet smelling savors of Christ to God. What a transformation this will bring to our lives personally, to our fellowships, our homesand our communities!
God’s order for man and woman both in home and church life does not, by any means, exclude our sisters from their functioning in this priesthood. In fact their worship can often be more truly in Spirit and in truth, evidenced by the fragrance of Christ which they exude. We men have a great problem of pride, eager to catch any hint of praise for our preaching or public praying. May each of us allow the living Christ to manifest His life through us as we follow in His train, being content to remind others of Him by this sweet fragrance. This is what God is working out in that wonderful Body He has formed of all true believers, in order that the “manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the Church both in the world and to the unseen hosts in heavenly places.