The Bible seems confident to say the following – the height of love, in this world, is portrayed and experienced in sacrifice. Jesus Himself said, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13) John the apostle would later write: “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” (1 John 3:16)

In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. (1 John 4:10)

Or the famous John 3:16 – For God so loved the world – that He gave His only begotten Son. Love reaches its pinnacle, its consummation, as far as the Bible is concerned in sacrifice.

Sacrifice – defined by Webster as “To destroy, surrender or suffer for the sake of obtaining something;”

Sacrifice entered the picture the moment sin entered the picture. When Adam and Eve sinned, God clothed them with the skins of an animal. That was the first physical death in this world. Adam and Eve sinned – they had insulted the glory of God. God, then, took the life of an animal to symbolize what He would ultimately do Himself. The death of an innocent must occur for the debt of sin to be written off. The most precious thing in the world is life. God took a life to state – the most precious thing you know – the most valuable thing you know – life itself was now killed to atone for you. This was a small symbol of what was to come.

Sacrifice becomes a recurring theme – as we see Abel, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob giving up burnt offerings. This goes on until the Mosaic Law is instituted and an elaborate form of sacrifice is brought about.

And in an agricultural economy – where your livestock and your crops were your forms of support, the continual giving of sacrifices to be right with God would have said the same thing over and over again – value. The value of God. God is worth an infinite amount. Our sin is like robbery, like fraud. Our sin values lesser things over God. That is what God said through Jeremiah: “Be appalled, O heavens, at this; be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the LORD, for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.” (Jeremiah 2:12-13)

That’s sin – choosing the thing of lesser value over the thing of greatest value. Sin is falling short of the glory of God. And to an Israelite – all this would become very clear. Sin costs. It costs the life of an innocent animal. It costs me what I could otherwise live on. It costs me money to buy a lamb or a goat or a bull or a turtledove. The price of atonement represents God is of high value. Sin is a debt – which God must forgive, God must write it off. Moreover, the theme of redemption would have driven this home even more. Redemption meant a buying back of what had been lost or taken over. Woven into the ceremonial Mosaic laws were the themes of price, cost, profit, loss, gain, expensive, cheap, free, give, buy back. In other words – value!

And a thoughtful Israelite would have meditated on these things and said – sin is such an offense if it costs these things. Logically then, God must be of infinite worth.

God made sacrifice the means of atonement with Himself. He was trying to teach the Israelites not that they could bargain with Him or bribe Him, but that He is worth so much, that reconciliation to Him costs.

Of course, Hebrews 10:4 tells us: “For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.” They were only pictures, types, substitutes, as it were, of the final offering – the Son of God Himself. And in Jesus Christ, offering Himself up on Calvary, the Triune God sacrificed.

Did you ever think how virtually impossible it is for the Creator to sacrifice? There is nothing created which, if He gave up, would be a sacrifice for Him. Being God, He could replace it Himself. The most costly thing on earth to us is a sacrifice because we cannot replace it. But God can replace anything – even the life of a human. So for God to sacrifice – He had to give Himself. When God the Father gave God the Son for the sins of the world (John 3:16), God was sacrificing. God was, mystery of mysteries, feeling the pain of sacrifice. And at the heart of this sacrifice was God’s statement of His value. God was saying – my glory is so valuable, that nothing except the blood of my Son – the life and death of my Son, will cover and atone for falling short of my glory. Sin does violence to the value of God, as it were. In effect, God was saying – my glory will be the only price I will accept to make up for the debt of offending my glory. On the cross Jesus displayed God’s value for His glory. God valued His own glory enough to sacrifice Himself for it.

That is why there is salvation in no other name – but in the precious name of Jesus Christ. He is the radiance of God’s glory – His perfect life was given – precious blood of Christ, a Lamb without blemish and without spot was the substitute for sinners.

God ordained that the way of coming to know His glory in salvation was through sacrifice. The Ultimate Sacrifice – Calvary – was where God made the two most important statements possible – His value, and His love for sinners.

Sacrifice not only shows the love of God – it shows love for God.

But what is abundantly clear is that treasuring God in Jesus Christ finds its ultimate consummation in sacrificial suffering. The consummation of Christ’s life of service was His sacrifice. All of His service led up to His sacrifice. No one sees and treasures Jesus Christ more than the one who is on the Calvary Road with Him. No one sees Him in the blinding glory of His resurrection, like the one who as Paul did – dies daily, with Him. That is why the highest point in the Christian life, the pinnacle, the clearest vision of Jesus is when the Holy Spirit reveals Christ to us in sacrificial suffering.

And like we have seen – it is a chain. When we in humble faith seek Him in the Scriptures, He reveals Christ to us by illumination. As we see Him, we love Him, and we become like what we love. He reveals Christ in us. This leads us to seeing Him in Sanctification, as the Holy Spirit imparts the divine nature to us. And this in turn leads us to be servants, serving our family, our church and the world as Christ did. Here we see God the Spirit revealing God the Son through us. This is the Spirit revealing Christ by imitation. And in turn, if we are sanctified and serving, it will lead to sacrificial suffering. This is where the Spirit reveals Christ to us by identification.

We are wired to avoid any form of suffering. We flinch from pain. We come in from the rain. We try to avoid loss. We try to avoid car wrecks. We try to stay healthy. All of this is fine. God made us to want comfort and not desire pain. But in a world scarred with sin, God has to inject a controlled amount of suffering to cause us to see Him as we should. Without suffering, we will be all too prone to forget the heavenly, eternal realities and integrate our sanctification with a comfortable, and eventually selfish, life. So suffering comes as a result of God’s work in us and through us. You cannot avoid it. We are told in 2 Timothy 3:12 – all that live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. We are told in Philippians 1:29 that we were appointed to suffering – it has been granted to us. 1 Thessalonians 3:3 tells us we were destined for suffering.

Jesus told us the servant is not greater than his master, if they have persecuted Me – they shall persecute you, my followers. Suffering is inevitable once we are believers.

God is going to take away some things you would rather have, and He is going to give you some things you would rather not have. This is suffering. And He does this in the midst of blessing you – giving you some things you do want, and withholding some things you don’t want. Suffering in this way is going to have a number of effects to enable us to see Christ in us and through us.

Suffering is going to come in two ways: as a result of seeking to see Christ, and as a means of seeing Christ.

As a result of seeing Christ:

God uses suffering for a number of reasons in His sanctification process.

• Hebrews 12 tells us God trains us, disciplines us to avoid sin. Suffering often purges us of the desire to return to sin.
• James 1 tells us that God uses it to give us endurance.
• 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 is where Paul learned that God uses suffering to humble us so we might receive more grace.
• 1 Peter insists that suffering ought to fix our eyes on heaven and eternity.

God also uses suffering to grow our faith in His goodness. John Piper put it this way: “All experiences of suffering in the path of Christian obedience, whether from persecution or sickness or accident, have this in common: they all threaten our faith in the goodness of God and tempt us to leave the path of obedience. Therefore, every triumph of faith and all perseverance in obedience are testimonies to the goodness of God and the preciousness of Christ — whether the enemy is sickness, Satan, sin or sabotage.”

But then there is a form of suffering that is not merely a result of the sanctification and serving process. There is a form of suffering which we as Christians choose, in hopes of seeing Christ like never before.

As a Means of Seeing Christ

When Christians choose to walk this kind of life, they enter into the place where Christ is shown clearest and most gloriously – the cross. Christians that live a cross-centred life are Christians who not only live in the shadow of the cross – i.e. living in the glorious results achieved by the cross, but they also live in light of the cross – they embrace the meaning of the cross as a way of living. It is a means of willingly walking the center path of Christlikeness, embracing the glory of Christ at its blazing center – the cross.

It is very significant, that the words of Jesus that are recorded most often in the Gospels have to do with this kind of life.

“For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 16:25) This same verse is repeated in basically the same form in Matthew 10:39, Mark 8:35, Luke 9:24 and Luke 17:33.

We find it stated in a very similar way in John 12:25: “He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.”

Now we have to ask ourselves: why, of all the words of Jesus, did the Holy Spirit choose to record these more than any others? Perhaps it is because these words contain the ultimate truth of how a disciple of Christ is to live so as to see the glory of God in the face of Jesus and love Him. Their meaning is simple, yet profound. The one who seeks to shelter and self-protectively hoard his own life and all that is given to him, will ultimately lose; the one who willingly gives up his life for Christ’s sake ultimately gains. Sacrifice is when we give up things that are worth something to us, because we wish to gain something of higher value. No one sacrifices to lose. Sacrifice gives up to gain something more worthy. Parents sacrifice because of how they value their children. People sacrifice for their country because they value freedom. So what is a Christian’s sacrifice?

Christian sacrifice is a statement of Christ’s worth, that is always verified by the Holy Spirit.

When we live this way, we are repeating the example and meaning of the cross.

A number of texts tell us that we are to experience the cross again.

• “And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23)
• “I protest, brothers, by my pride in you, which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die every day!” (1 Corinthians 15:31)
• “For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” (2 Corinthians 5:14-15)
• “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20)

These texts speak of a life lived like the cross – a life of sacrificial suffering.

This does not mean that we must die for our sins. In the case of our sin, the Bible is clear, we have died with Christ. Romans 6 makes it very clear that we have been linked to the cross of Christ, our old self died with Christ. We do not have to kill ourselves in that sense, we must simply reckon it to be true and not yield ourselves to sin – to the things of death.

So what does it mean? I think we find the answer in Colossians 1:24: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church,” (Colossians 1:24)

God wants the sacrificial suffering of Christ to be presented to the world through the sacrificial suffering of Christians. Christ lived and died to show the glory of God and His love for sinners, and the cross was His willing reconciliation of those two themes – the value of God and the redemption of man. When Christians embrace sacrificial suffering, we complete Christ’s afflictions by providing what people do not have, a personal, physical presentation of the love Christ offers the world. We embrace the meaning and the example of the cross before a watching world.

A believer is here identifying with the very heart of God. He comes to a place of realizing that the glory of God is something to be shared, defended and spread no matter what the cost. The cost of spreading the glory of God is a high one, since the glory of God is of such infinite value.

Spreading the value of God at huge cost to ourselves is treasuring Him in Sacrificial Suffering. We are displaying to ourselves that we love God more than His gifts. That we love Him more than life itself. We are displaying that to others. When we embrace this kind of sacrifice we identify with Him, and say to ourselves and others He is the highest Treasure, worth more than anything else – including life itself.

This was the point of Abraham’s test. God was allowing Abraham to demonstrate to God, to the onlooking world, and to his own heart – that he treasured God even above his own beloved son, Isaac. The test was harsh, but effective. It cut right down to the core – it delivered Abraham from idolizing his son, and kept God as His highest, greatest treasure. Being willing to sacrifice what he valued most was his statement of God’s worth.

Sacrifice is a statement of value. When David bought the threshing floor from Araunah where the angel of God, who had plagued Israel stopped, he was offered it for free. But he said, “No, but I will buy it from you for a price. I will not offer burnt offerings to the LORD my God that cost me nothing.” So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver.” (2 Samuel 24:24)

Sacrifice says – this much, Oh God, do I think you are worth. This much. More than my comfort. More than my security. More than my reputation. More than my possessions. More than my status and career. More than the praise of man. More than the love of other humans. More than anything in this world – I say – God you are worth it.”

This is what Paul discovered and taught the Philippians. “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith– that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” (Philippians 3:7-11) Sacrifice is a statement of value about the thing we desire.

Earlier on in the book, he has these remarkable words: “as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honoured in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” (Philippians 1:20-21)

What did he mean? He meant that His greatest treasure was Christ. In life, he could know and treasure Christ. Life was about Christ. Death would not separate him from Christ, it would actually unite him with Christ. So, he treasured Christ above all of life’s gifts, and above life itself. The way we honour Christ in death is to treasure Him above the gift of life. The way to treasure Him in life is to treasure Him above life’s gifts.

Sacrifice says – God – I give this up to show You to others, and thereby be identified with your Son. And in that moment – we see Christ at the blinding center of His glory – the cross. In embracing this attitude, we are most like Christ, and see Him more clearly than at any other time. Jesus gave up His own life in love, that we might know the glory of God. Jesus so loved His Father’s glory, and His own glory, that He gave up His life that sinners might know and see His glory and treasure it. When we have this heart for other people, then Holy Spirit reveals Christ to us by identification. We are identified with Jesus when we walk the Calvary road, and we see Him and know Him and treasure Him like never before.

Why did the martyrs have songs on their lips? Why do the Scriptures tell us to rejoice when even life itself is taken away? Because in this way we truly treasure Christ above all things. Christ treasured His Father’s glory above His own life. A life of sacrifice says the same thing- we treasure Christ above all other things. When we give up all to gladly display Christ, we show that Christ is our highest treasure. And in that moment of sacrifice, He truly is.

The pinnacle of Christ’s ministry was the cross, and the pinnacle of ours is when we embrace the cross-centre life on a daily basis.

“For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps.” (1 Peter 2:21)

Jim Elliot was a brilliant young man who surrendered his life to go into the mission field of Ecuador in South America. With four other young men, he undertook this massive task to reach the unreached. One of the men was a pilot with Mission Aviation Fellowship. With some clever flying, they were able to make contact with the Auca Indians without actually landing. After some time, and what seemed to be clear indications of a positive welcome by the tribe, they decided to land on a beach by the jungle river. Within 24 hours, the Auca Indians had killed all five of them. Jim Elliot died a martyr for the Gospel. It was Jim Elliot who said these words: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose.”

To paraphrase Him – the best way to live life is when you give up what is less valuable to gain what is most valuable. And that is the heart of sacrifice and suffering. If through my loss – I show and know Christ – then it is gain. My sacrifice cost me, but I did not come out at a loss. Christ is worth more than all I could ever lose, including my life. Therefore, if He calls me to surrender any of those things – it must be because He is planning, by the Holy Spirit, on showing Himself to me in an even greater way. If giving up even my life will cause me to see Christ – then it is gain, because He is worth more than life (Psalm 63:3). If giving up anything in this life will cause me to see Christ – then it is gain because He is worth more than anything in life.

Oh, for Christians who live in light of Romans 8 and Ephesians 1! That our past is taken care of, our present sure and our future secure. Nothing can separate us from Christ. The whole universe now moves in favour of the one engaged to be Christ’s bride. All life’s negatives are used by God for our ultimate good. All that is left is – that I may know Him! It is with these magnificently enormous promises, that we can, with abandon, sacrifice all to display the treasure, the value of Christ.

What does this cross-centred life of deliberate, sacrificial suffering look like?

Again, we come back to humility-faith. Humble faith is the heart of a cross-centred Christian. Sacrifice is not to be based on pride. It is not seeking to be heroic, and then to be praised for being heroic. It is not to gain a reputation for great tolerance for pain. It is not to be some form of penance, where we pay God back for suffering in the cross for us. It comes from the humility that wants to see Christ as closely as possible – to come as close as possible to His very heart – the heart of Calvary – purposely suffering loss to know and show the glory of God.

It is this humble faith that will see Christ revealed to us by the Holy Spirit in identification.

1. Humble faith presents itself as a living sacrifice for God’s use. A continual offering of all of ourselves up to God: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” (Romans 12:1)
   A living sacrifice – that is one who has put themselves to death for God, but still lives. A cross-centred life identifies with Jesus by making ourselves entirely available to be slain for God daily. This means every part of us is made available for God’s purposes, whatever the cost. There is no haggling or bargaining or trading, It means a total, absolute surrender. “For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come.” (2 Timothy 4:6)
2. Humble faith presents its money for God’s glory as a sweet-smelling sacrifice. A deliberately sacrificial financial ethic identifies with Jesus on the cross by visibly foregoing my rights for others. “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:21) Money is the test of your desire. Why you want it, what you spend it on, how you spend it is the most revealing thing about what you truly value. And only a sacrificial financial ethic can resist the gravity of materialism, consumerism and selfishness. “Comfort makes cowards of us all.” A deliberately sacrificial financial ethic is the way of expressing humble faith – it pours out its substance, to its own ‘apparent’ loss, for the sake of others.
3. Humble faith embraces evangelism and missions and God’s greater purposes for the world as the overriding concerns. The cross was about redemption. Evangelism and missions is powerless if the ambassadors of the cross do not embrace its message – hardship, pain, scoffing, persecution, even death. Whether it be as a goer or as a sender, the humble faith that identifies with Jesus says – whatever the cost to share the glory of God in the face of Jesus to those who do not know Him, I will take it. He is worth ten thousand times more than my comforts, and my name, and my plans for myself. If He was God, and chose not to use many divine prerogatives and endured the cross for my sin, who am I to value anything more than His name? Everything I am, all that He shall ever give me becomes fully available for the war-effort.

And the believer who pours himself out before God continually as a drink offering, the one who joyously sacrifices of his own substance for the name of Christ, and the one who joins in the redemptive work of the cross in evangelism and missions will enter into the closest possible relationship with Christ. He of all believers comes to know what it means to love Christ, because he is stripped of lesser loves.

The words of the hymn ‘My Jesus I Love Thee’ are tinged with this kind of love – I love thee in life, I will love thee in death, and love thee as long as thou lendest me breath. And say, when the death dew lies cold on my brow, If ever I loved thee, My Jesus ‘tis now.

Love is not God making life easier for us. Love is giving us whatever we need to treasure Him. Therefore, the path of Calvary is a loving choice of God for each of us. It is commanded – take up your cross daily. Daily live at Calvary before the world. Daily endure pain, loss, persecution, ridicule, insults, slander, deprivation, physical lack, physical pain, fatigue, even your very life – for others to see Christ. And in this act of selfless sacrifice – you gain the sweetest joy on earth, being of one heart with the Son of God.

We know the love of God by looking at the cross. We express the love of God, and so dwell in it even further when we take the cross again and again for the sake of the brothers – the brothers that are, and the brothers to be. Paul said: “Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.” (2 Timothy 2:10)

When Christians run away from the cost of love, they waste their lives. When Christians believe there is some kind of safe life, some kind of sheltered life apart from the path of sacrificial obedience – they deceive themselves. Life is about the glory of God. Hence it is a battleground, not a playground. It is where eternal realities are being played out. And when we pad our lifestyles and ignore missions and build nothing but our private bank accounts, we are like Nero fiddling when Rome burned, We are like the band playing on the Titanic. We pretend to be oblivious to the reality of eternity.

God always overcompensates our sacrifice. As we said, a sacrifice never ultimately loses. Just ask Abraham. God’s call for sacrifice is not to gain something from us, it is to give us Christ in His purest form. Stripped of all that clutters, we see Christ is all we need, and Christ is all we want.

Our lives rise up as a fragrance to God – a fragrance that speaks of His value, His worth, and it delights Him.

God’s plan is to magnify His worth, His value for all eternity. To that end, He has called on us to do that by loving Him with all our heart, soul and mind. The only way we can love Him in the sense of treasuring Him is when the Holy Spirit reveals God in the face of Jesus, as we submit to Him in humble faith.

The key place will always be the Word of God. He will always magnify Christ, first and foremost in the Word by illumination. The heart of humble faith will see Christ and treasure Him in the Word.

From there, the heart that has treasured Him in the Word will start to become like what it loves. Our hearts will be transformed, and we begin to look like Christ. This is the work of sanctification. Here the Holy Spirit is revealing Christ to us in His Works by imitation. He enables us to become like Christ, He imparts the divine nature to us. The more like Christ we become, the more we adopt the servant posture. We lay aside our own rights and needs, to gladly meet the needs of others in our family, church and world. This is the work of Service. Again, the Spirit will reveal Christ to us by imitation, as we are in the place of Christ. In both cases, we see Christ, know Him and treasure Him in His works – His work in us and His work through us. We further see His ways, His purposes, His will, His nature.

And as we live in this way, we will increasingly be led by the Spirit to the place of sacrifice. We will find ourselves seeing the contradiction of speaking of loving God with all our heart, but loving possessions and goods and reputation and self more than Him. And He will lead us to acts of sacrifice which, like the cross, make a very clear point – nothing created is worth more than Christ, the Creator. All can be given up for Him, and it is gain. He is most precious. And in these acts of humble faith, the Holy Spirit opens our eyes to where, like Stephen, the first martyr, it may be effectively said of us, “But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.” (Acts 7:55)

To love Him and therefore glorify Him, you must see Him. To see Him, you must submit to the Holy Spirit in humble faith as He uses His Word – the Scriptures, His Works – Sanctification & Service and His Worth – Sacrificial Suffering to show you the glory of God in the face of Jesus.