For the six weeks of the church season of Lent, as well as for “Maundy Thursday” (the Thursday before Easter), I have tried to explore how fully invested the Lord Jesus was in regard to securing our salvation.  The penalty for our sin was no small thing, and it exacted a huge toll on him.  Yet he was determined to be our holy Substitute. 

Each week I’ve shared some thoughts on yet another part of Jesus’ body which he committed to the cause.  I’ll do so once more.  This final “Fully Invested” post will form the basis of our Maundy Thursday evening worship discussion.  I pray all of these posts have provided wonderful food for thought, and blessed encouragement to all of us!

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To state that our Savior, Jesus, was fully invested in winning our forgiveness and salvation would be an understatement.  He literally sacrificed every part of his body to accomplish the task.  His mind, head, back, hands, feet and heart were all engaged in the process.  The torture they endured in turn caused significant physical stresses to his organs and the rest of his body.  There was no portion of his body unaffected; no part uninvolved, and none unimportant.

Jesus, his entire body, and the blood that coursed through that body, were fully invested.  And they had to be!  Jesus was the holy fulfillment of all of the Old Testament Passover lambs and sin offerings, in which the living sacrifices were slain for the sake of the people.

The Lord explained the necessity of shed sacrificial blood in the Old Covenant in Leviticus 17:11: “For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life.

Yet the writer to the Hebrews in the New Testament/Covenant makes this remarkable statement: “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (Hebrews 10:4).

The Holy Spirit inspires the writer to then quote from Messianic Psalm 40 where Jesus (through David) says to his Heavenly Father, ‘“Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased. Then I said, ‘Here I am — it is written about me in the scroll — I have come to do your will, my God.’” (Hebrews 10:5-7). 

In other words, Jesus was saying, “Father, I obediently offer my own body and blood to make atonement for sin in place of the countless and ineffective animal sacrifices, as you planned and desired all along.”  

The book of Hebrews then summarizes this significant truth; Jesus, God’s Holy High Priest, offered his physical body as the once-and-for-all Sacrifice for us.  So he was in effect the Sacrificer and the Sacrificee!

“We have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But [then] this priest [Jesus!] offered for all time one sacrifice for sins … By one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy” (Hebrews 10:10-12, 14).

What did the fully invested Jesus offer in his sacred Sacrifice?  His entire body and his divine blood. 

The Apostle Peter explains:

“For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect” (1 Peter 1:18-19).  “Christ suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit” (1 Peter 3:18).

It took a fully invested Savior to save you and me; a Savior fully invested in enduring the ordeal of crucifixion and all that it entailed.  Archeologist Kristina Killgrove writes this about the process:

“Like death by guillotine in early modern times, crucifixion was a public act. But unlike the swift action of the guillotine, crucifixion involved a long and painful – literally, excruciating – death. The Roman orator Cicero noted that ‘of all punishments, it is the most cruel and most terrifying,’ and Jewish historian Josephus called it ‘the most wretched of deaths.’ So crucifixion was both a deterrent of further crimes and a humiliation of the dying person, who had to spend the last days of his life naked, in full view of any passersby, until he died of dehydration, asphyxiation, infection, or other causes.”

Yet despite the trauma Jesus’ body endured, it was not his wounds that killed him.  No, the eternal, almighty, God-Made-Man surrendered his life (“gave up his spirit”) at his own time and of his own accord.  When all was “finished,” the Lord Jesus simply shut down his body. (Matthew 27:50, John 19:30).

 It was two men from the Jewish Ruling Body, the Sanhedrin … both secret followers of Jesus … who removed the Lord’s body from the cross to bury it in a new tomb.  The corpse they claimed looked very different than it had just days earlier in life.  It was battered and bruised; pierced and torn and bloody – nearly unrecognizable from the pleasant, loving, thought-provoking Rabbi they had seen and heard before.

Little did they know that just a few days later, this dead body they deposited in the tomb would return to life again and walk victoriously back out of that sepulcher.

Our fully invested Savior had invested his entire body to redeeming us.  He did everything he needed to do, using every part of his body and shedding copious amounts of his blood. 

Yet he gave us something more.  The body and blood he brought into this world to offer as the holy sacrifice for the sins of all people he now offers to us as a testimony to all he has accomplished for us, and as a recurring gift, bringing faith and forgiveness to his own.  Jesus gave (and gives!) us his special Supper.

Most are familiar with Paul’s words regarding this gift. 

“For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Corinthians 11:23-26).

How astonishing that our Lord would wrap himself in a body of flesh and blood, and specifically so that this body could be tortured and killed, and this blood could be spilled. 

Equally astonishing is the fact that our Lord offers this same body and blood to you and me to eat and drink, and thereby joins together with us in an exquisite union.  It’s an earthly communion that will continue until the Lord calls us out of this world and into his perfect presence in Paradise where we will commune with him face-to-face in glory. 

Jesus’ body and blood.  Just another example of our fully invested Savior, offering his everything to bring us everything.