Systematic Theology – Eschatology

A Body Thou Hast Prepared for Me

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 20 of 32

Track: #20

Year:

Dictation Name: 20 A Body Thou Hast Prepared for Me.

[Rushdoony] Let us begin with prayer.

Oh Lord our God we give thanks unto Thee for this blessed season, we thank Thee that Jesus Christ is come, that He is King of kings and Lord of lords, and that of the increase of His government and His peace, there shall be no end. And so our Father we gather together in joy and in thanksgiving to praise Thee as we ought, to hear Thy word and to rejoice in Thy government, in Jesus name, amen.

Our scripture this morning if from Hebrews, the tenth chapter verses 1-7. Hebrews 10:1-7, our subject, a Body Thou Hast Prepared for Me

“For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect.

2 For then would they not have ceased to be offered? Because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins.

3 But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year.

4 For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.

5 Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me:

6 In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure.

7 Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God.”

When Paul tells us that Christ shall change the body of our humiliation, or refashion it, he says that our Lord shall make it like unto His own glorious body. We are told moreover that this the part of His eschatological working whereby, according to Philippians 3:21, he subdues all things unto Himself. Thus basic to God’s purpose is the restoration of the material world in time and at the end of history, and Christ’s birth and resurrection is the key to our re-birth and our resurrection. Thus when Christ came and was born in Bethlehem, it’s meaning was not only that he had come to affect our salvation, but that also His coming in the flesh was a revelation of God’s purpose concerning the body, concerning humanity.

Hebrews 10:1-7 refers to Chris as our great high priest and the law of sacrifice. It tells us that the Old Testament sacrifices could not cleanse the sinner from his sin, they were a type of Christ’s sacrifice, and the use of those sacrifices was a evidence of faith in His coming, and in His efficacious work. Christ came in terms of Old Testament prophesy, and we are told that one of the prophesies concerning His coming, concerning His birth, is the word, the sentence “a body Thou hast prepared for me. Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldest not, but a body hast Thou prepared for me.” This is a quotation from the Old Testament about the coming of our Lord, about His birth. It’s a prophesy that is not often referred to, but a very important one. It is from Psalm 40 verse 6-8.

But there is this difference in our Bible, instead of “A body Thou hast prepared for me”, it reads “my ear Thou hast opened.” In the Septuagint it reads “a Body Thou hast prepared for me” and thus we have a difference in the two versions, in the masoretic text and the Septuagint, that is in the Hebrew and the Greek texts of the Old Testament. However as scholars have pointed out, the imagery of “mine ear hast Thou opened” means that a human nature was prepared for Christ, that Christ was to be made flesh. Indeed as Bishop Westcott {?} pointed out in the last century, and I quote: “The king, the representative of men recognizes in the manifold organs of His personal power His body, the one fitting means for rendering services to God. Through this in its fullness He can do God’s will. Not by anything outside Himself, not by animals in sacrifices, not by the fruits of the earth in offerings, but by the use of His own endowments, as He is enabled to use them, He will accomplish that which God designed for Him to do.”

Thus the birth of our Lord is significant because it says to us that God has come, He is our Emmanuel, God with us, come to affect our salvation. It says further that He is come in the flesh, and so that He has a meaning for the body to declare to us; and that meaning fully manifested in the resurrection of the body. Moreover it tells us that what Christ came to do in His incarnation as our representative man, as the head of the new humanity, as the second and last Adam, we are to do. Our bodies are no more personal properties for personal use only, then was Christ’s body. We cannot see ourselves as doing things for the Lord outside of ourselves, and saying “but my life, my body, is my private possession.” This is sin, it is a part of man playing God, beginning with his body and seeing the service of God as something external to himself. “A body hast Thou prepared for me.”

The incarnation begins the work of restoration, of which we are all apart. In meant the restoration of Christ’s body, perfect, without sin. Man was created to serve and to glorify God, to be free of sin and death, and Christ in His coming became flesh, he gave perfect obedience to the every word of God. He overcame the power of sin, and by His resurrection destroyed the power of death and by His atonement freed His people from the power of sin. And so He restored the body to its purposes under God, and by making us a new creation He installs us in that purpose. In the resurrection at the end of the world we have the fullness of the meaning of His birth, and that we all put on a perfect body. Thus when Christ says “low I come in the volume of the book it is written of me to do Thy will, oh God” He is speaking as our federal head, as our representative; and what He says we are all to do. Christ in these words says “I have come to give immediate, complete, and full obedience. He says not “I will come” or “I will render obedience” but “I am come to do this.” Thus what He says He says as our federal head.

Westcott, to quote Him again, says “perhaps the simplest rendering is ‘in the book role’ the role of the law, a law is written for me, which laws down perfectly my duty. The king acknowledges a definite standard of the will of God, before He undertakes to aim at fulfilling it. The law which foreshadowed the duties of a king of Israel was the rule of the king’s life.” What Westcott here said was that Christ in His coming said “lo I come in the volume of the book, it is written for me to do Thy will oh God.” So Christ was saying “here, in Thy word oh God, in the scriptures, in Thy law word is written what is required of me.” Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. And so we too are to say, having been redeemed by Him, “here, in this volume, it is written for me, it is spelled out for me what I must do, to do Thy will oh God; and this is to be done in the body which Thou hast prepared for me.”

Thus to depreciate the body is to depreciate the law, because the law governs the material world. When faith is spiritualized by the antinomians, lawless antinomian love is exalted. Christ is dematerialized to become a spiritual savior who redeems us from a material world and its law, and we have then a Gnosticism which passes for Christianity. The will of God means the fulfillment of man’s calling, his life. And so Christ as the Son of God and the Son of men, made this will His own and accomplished it, and we are to do the same. This is the significance of this text, this is what we are to do also. We are to manifest in our flesh, in our human nature, in our physical being, the law word of God.

Now some will say “but Hebrews 10:1-7 is talking about sacrifice.” Indeed it is, but Christ’s sacrifice has, as its goal, not to free us from law into lawlessness, but in doing the will of God, and this is what the text tells us. Paul makes clear that our salvation is by faith, by the sovereign grace of God through Christ; and we are told this not only in Romans 1:16&17 but in this very chapter of Hebrews, in verse 38 of Hebrews 10 where we are very plainly told “Now the just shall live by faith, but if any man drawback, my soul shall have no pleasure in him.” This faith manifests itself in works. As Paul tells us in Romans 3:31, and James in the second chapter verses 12-26, but Paul here in Hebrews, having said that a body has been prepared for us, even as for Christ, and we are to do the will of God in the flesh; goes on then to say in verses 23 following.

“23 Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised;)

24 And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works:

25 Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.

26 For if we sin willfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins,

27 But a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries.

28 He that despised Moses' law died without mercy under two or three witnesses:

29 Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden underfoot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace?

30 For we know him that hath said, Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense, saith the Lord. And again, The Lord shall judge his people.

31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

Now in these verse we have an interesting fact. Elsewhere Paul again and again speaks of faith, hope, and love. But here we have something else stressed in addition, we have definitely the emphasis in these words, and the rest of the chapter, on faith, hope, and love, but also on good works; very emphatically so. And we are told that good works manifest our faith that we are in the flesh, in the human nature now that we are redeemed, to do that which Christ did. Moreover we are told to sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth means to despise the sacrifice of Christ. Those who despised the law as it was given through Moses, died without mercy, we are told, under two or three witnesses. But now if we despise the word of God, if we despise His law, it’s not two or three witnesses, it is God who is the witness, and we may sin in this world with regard to the application of law in human courts, and get by, because there may not be the witnesses nor the evidence to condemn us; but not so with God. “Of how much sorer (more grievous) punishment suppose ye shall he be thought worthy who has trodden underfoot the Son of God, and counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith He was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done to spite unto the Spirit of grace. This is a tremendous verse. What we are here told is that faith without works is dead. If we do not manifest good works, we then do to spite unto Thee, spirit of grace. We then tread underfoot the Son of God, (one of the strongest images in the whole of scripture) and we have counted the blood of the covenant an unholy thing.

The image here, and elsewhere in this chapter that we are given, is of someone taking the communion elements, throwing them down on the ground and trampling them underfoot to show his contempt for Christ. It is a desecration that is comparable to what goes on in the black mass and what Satanist’s do routinely. And this, we are told, is what anyone does who, having professed the faith, despises God’s law, manifests no good works. So we have a very strong emphasis here on despising, that is breaking, God’s law. Which now has the seal we are told, of Christ blood upon it. To sin now is to tread underfoot the Son of God, to despise His body and blood, to reject His sacrifice, to despise the elements of the most holy rite of the Christian church. Now we face, unlike those who were under Moses, an infallible justice.

Thus we are told that a body was prepared for Christ. That our humiliated bodies, under the influences of sin and death, are to be transformed and ultimately refashioned, remade, like unto His glorious body. This is our calling; this is what Christ made possible by His birth. Therefore we are to glorify God in our body, Saint Paul says. We are told moreover that the great act of apostasy is set forth in bodily terms, trampling underfoot the blood of Christ. The physical is stressed in scripture, thus we are emphatically and clearly told, that our bodies are to manifest holiness, knowledge, righteousness or justice, and dominion. The word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glories of the only begotten of God. When God created us He made us very good, rejoiced in His handiwork. Sin and death did damage to the work of God, but Christ by His coming took upon Himself our human nature, a body, to indicate the purposes in God’s providence of our bodies. That we are saved and the goal of our salvation is a new creation. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we thank Thee that Jesus Christ is born, that He is our Lord, that He has made us a new creation and given us promise that we shall in due time be remade, and our bodies shall be like unto His own glorious body. We thank Thee for the gift of this blessed season, the gift of salvation, the gift of regeneration, and the promise of resurrection. Great and marvelous are Thy ways oh Lord, and we praise Thee. In Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson?

Yes?

[Audience member] How do you see the relationship with between … to you having a body, know what to do God’s will {?} the next section, to the offering of the body of Christ in a sacrificial {?} Do you know what the connection in that case {?}

[Rushdoony] The connection between having a body and offering his body?

[Audience member] {?} body for obedience and {?} for sacrifice

[Rushdoony] Well there had to be a physical offering, no longer the blood of bulls and of goats. But since man is under sentence of death for sin, Christ as a representative man comes, and in His body offers Himself as our substitute, to pay the penalty for sin and death, and we die in Him and are raised again in Him spiritually, and in due time physically; so that His perfection, physical and spiritual, becomes our perfection. Is that what you had reference to?

[Audience member] I was thinking…you know how it said, first of all it says “in God’s {?} will be contrast, sacrifice with the body through obedience. And then it seems to bring the two together.

[Rushdoony] Oh yes, well. That of course is a quotation from the Psalm. In other words, what the Psalmist is saying, and Christ speaking through the Psalmist is, that the old sacrifices and offerings are not a permanent validity, they’re only stop-gap things. The blood of bulls and of goats cannot take away sins, it is man who must die for his sins and Christ as the representative man comes to die for our sins, so a body has to be prepared for Him; because without the body He could not make atonement for sin.

[Audience member] So isn’t that unique to Christ? We have our obedience as he did, yes, but His death is totally unique and our death is {?} to never follow

[Rushdoony] His death is unique, we follow Him in His obedience, yes. Now because the church has not seen the significance of His coming in the flesh in all its ramification, the church has tended to despise material things, very wrongly so.

I recall a good many years ago, about twenty years ago almost to the year, Dr. Van Til saying with regard to a particular church how it distressed him to go into it because it was so ugly. It was built to be very plain, as though there was some virtue in ugliness. And I’m afraid that many protestants have been infected with that kind of neo-Platonism, a despising of things material so that they seem to feel there is some virtue in ugliness, in something being unsightly. Whereas in the Old Testament we are very clearly told that God wants things concerning His worship to be for beauty and for glory. It’s a kind of asceticism; many Protestants feel that they have renounced asceticism because they’re not Catholics, but they have their own asceticism and sometimes very ugly forms of it.

Yes?

[Audience member] In Mark’s accounting of Christ’s commandment to go into all the world, the great commission, it’s given in the first verse where it’s mentioned, in15, “and He said unto them go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.” What is the connection they’re using the word creature as opposed to simply saying to all men, since creature seems to be a more encompassing term.

[Rushdoony] Yes, creature is a more encompassing term. I’d have to check the original to see what particular word is used. But our Lord is a cosmic Savior, we can say that. The whole of creation is to be made new so that all of creation is to be redeemed. That when our redemption is accomplished it brings about the redemption of all men. So this is a very important aspect. We must not forget that Christ is declared by the scriptures to be the cosmic Redeemer; that all things are to be redeemed and made new, that they suffered in our fall and they are going to be delivered in our deliverance. That’s what Paul says in Roman’s eight when He says “the whole creation groans and travails, moving towards the glorious liberty of the sons of God” waiting for it, governed by it, longing for it. So it is like a force of gravity in all of creation to move towards that glorious consummation. Now that would tell us something about the victory that is ours. If, like gravity, the whole creation is moving to God’s eschatological end, to His glorious purpose, how can men frustrate it? And yet, to listen to many you would think Satan is omnipotent, and that is a fearful sin to believe that.

Yes?

[Audience member] I think I heard you say that when we are saved, all men are saved, did you mean all creatures are saved?

[Rushdoony] All creatures are saved, yes. All creatures are saved, the whole creation is saved.

Any other questions or comments?

Yes?

[Audience member] Well I was wondering, in your question there, I was wondering if the creature element there may not be more descriptive of people who may be acquainted with the devil, or insanity, he may not be a whole human being or a whole people, and so therefore He’s giving guidance to that and “take all these creatures, not just the ones that are perfect in mind and soul, or body”.

[Rushdoony] Yes, I’m sure it’s inclusive of that also, very definitely. The salvation is worldwide and universe wide. It includes every kind of condition and affliction. Our bodies today have many imperfections, and some have very fearful imperfections, defects that they are born with. All of this is a part of the fall, a product of sin and death, and the deliverance will overthrow the power of sin and death in every sphere, in every way.

Well if there are no further questions or comments let us bow our heads in prayer.

Our Lord and our God give us ever the joy of this blessed season, that we might know day by day that we are more than conquerors, that Jesus Christ King of kings and Lord of lords has entered this world. That He has entered as its redeemer and sovereign, and that in due time all things shall be made new, that all things shall submit to Him, every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Keep us ever in this most holy faith, in Jesus name, amen.