“Abide in Me, and I in you” (John 15:4, NASB) is the maple sugar of the Bible, the plan of salvation boiled down until it is impossibly concentrated and precise.
These seven words, bursting with profound meaning, describe a reality where Jesus and believers become one new entity. This union is salvation. Just as a 2-cycle engine requires a mix of gas and oil, salvation requires both Jesus abiding in our hearts, and us becoming part of Him.
The penalty for sin is death, and Jesus died to bear that penalty. Yet Scripture is clear: only the sinner can justly pay for his own sin (Ezekiel 18:20). Therefore, for Jesus’ death to count for us, He had to make us part of Himself – members of His body. Our sins then become His, and His death rightly satisfies the penalty.
But Jesus is more than a physical body. He is “the Word” (John 1:1) – a way of life embodied. By internalizing that Word, we take Him into our hearts. And these teachings are not just lifeless rules; they are His Holy Spirit (John 6:63). His Spirit works in us both to empower us to obey the initial command we received and to progressively transform every area of our lives to be like Him. It is not that we amass a certain level of righteousness before God will give us the Holy Spirit. But He does require surrender – a continual turning toward God’s will, like a sunflower tracking the sun.
This union requires sacrifices on both sides. God paid an infinite price, giving His only Son to die for us and to minister to us continually. And in turn, coming to Him costs us everything – a complete surrender to His will. He consumes our old way of life, creating His character within us. The process is often painful, yet if we continue abiding in Jesus, He grants us eternal life.
Every spring I love to watch the bees collecting nectar from our blueberry plants. They carry pollen from one flower to the next, pollinating the whole bush. Eventually, both the pollen and flowers disappear but then come the branches laden with fruit, yielding weeks of delicious blueberries in summer. Just as the pollen and the flowers give way to fruit, so believers and Jesus are mutually consumed and give rise to a new, united entity.
Jesus’ sacrifice for this one new entity was foreshadowed by the Old Testament sin offering (Hebrews 13:12, NASB). The various types of sin offerings all teach something about Jesus’ sacrifice for believers. In one type, the priests processed the blood entirely in the courtyard. The flesh of this offering became the priests’ portion from the altar of burnt offering. That altar was the “table of the Lord” (Malachi 1:7). The things burned on it represent the things that God ate, and the things served from it represent the things that God gives to believers to internalize. This altar was most holy, and it is what caused at least some of the sacrifices to become holy (Matthew 23:19). In the reality that these things foreshadowed, Jesus is the most holy One who makes believers holy. He is the true altar. Just as the regular sin offering was served from the altar for the priests, so Jesus, the true altar, serves to all believers what is inside of Himself. He serves us His Spirit contained in His teachings, and we are to feast upon Him, the Word.
Although Jesus is our sin offering, the New Testament repeatedly calls believers sacrifices. Paul urged the people to present their bodies as living sacrifices (Romans 12:1). And to the Philippians he described himself as a drink offering being poured out “upon the sacrifice and service of your faith," (Philippians 2:17, NASB). Additionally, Jesus suffered and died once for all time, yet 30 years after Jesus’ sacrifice, Peter admonished the believers to “offer spiritual sacrifices” to God (1 Peter 2:5, NASB). If in the antitype believers are sacrifices, one can expect that in the symbols pointing to this reality, one or more of the animal sacrifices foreshadow these true sacrifices.
Historically, many Adventists have interpreted the burnt offering as foreshadowing Christ’s full devotion to the Father. In a way, they are right, but the implications are profound. Scripture frequently contrasts burnt offerings with what God truly desires from believers, suggesting the burnt offering itself foreshadows the living sacrifice God seeks. David declares,
“You do not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give it; You do not take pleasure in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, God, You will not despise” (Psalm 51:16-17, NASB.)
And Micah and the wise scribe echo the same truth: love, justice, mercy, and a humble walk with God matter far more than burnt offerings (Micah 6:6-8; Mark 12:33). The true sacrifice that God is looking for from us is that we humbly and lovingly submit to Him.
In Deuteronomy, God vividly illustrated this sacrifice. If an entire Israelite town turned to idolatry, everything in it was to be burned as a whole burnt offering (Deuteronomy 13:12-16). That town represents what happens to us in dealing with our sin problem. We, too, must become spiritual burnt offerings.
The burnt offerings were skinned and the internals were entirely consumed on the altar. This represents God consuming our entire inner life. Jesus is our great Sin Offering, the One who deals with both our past guilt and our present sin. But to receive its benefits, we must become burnt offerings, wholly consumed by Him. Like a light switch connects the light bulb to all the infrastructure and energy of the power grid, so this burnt offering is the final piece that initiates our union with Christ. The sin offering pictures us internalizing Him; the burnt offering pictures Him internalizing us. This mutual consumption creates the “one new man” (Ephesians 2:15).
Our sacrifice is not a separate sacrifice apart from Christ where we prove our devotion to Him and He then permits us to come near Him. Rather, we come just as we are, all sinful and corrupt, offering nothing but our willingness to follow Him. From the moment we consent to internalize His teachings, we abide in Him. Just as the burnt offerings were offered in stages – first the blood, then certain internal organs, then the rest of the body after being washed – so Christ sanctifies us in stages. But even from the first moment, all of it happens in Him. One could even say that since believers are members of Jesus’ body, these burnt offerings are an aspect of His sacrifice. He is consumed – both the head as a sin offering and the members of His body as burnt offerings – generating a pleasing aroma, the lovely fragrance of His Holy Spirit.
The Passover
The Passover beautifully illustrates the combined nature of this sacrifice. God instructed the people to clean out all leaven from their houses before the Passover, like how no leaven was ever offered on the altar of burnt offering. The house became a temporary altar, if you will, depicting things that the altar of burnt offering alone could not fully convey. The people then sacrificed the Passover lamb and applied its blood to the lintel and doorposts, like the priests applied the blood of the sin offering to the four horns of the altar of burnt offering, which was located “at the doorway of the tent of meeting” (Leviticus 1:5, NASB). The people then sheltered in the house where they roasted the body of the Passover lamb and ate it, just like the priests cooked the body of the sin offering and ate it. The people symbolically abode in the Passover lamb, and the lamb abode in them. This mutual abiding protected the firstborn from the destroying angel, and the Israelites emerged alive the next day.
Both the Passover lamb and the sin offering represent Jesus and His death. Thus, these sacrifices are two parallels that depict the same reality, each providing clues that amplify the meaning of the other. The Passover blood on the doorway suggests that when the sin offering’s blood was placed on the horns of the altar, that blood marked the door to the sanctuary. In the true reality, the suppliants are to enter through the passageway marked by the blood of the Great Sin Offering and thus abide in the true Altar. And just as the people ate the body of the Passover lamb in the house, the priests are to access the true Sin Offering in the Altar. As they consume the Sin Offering, the Altar consumes them. It is just as Jesus said, “Abide in Me, and I in you” (John 15:4, NASB).
Fascinatingly, nothing ever came out of the altar alive—yet the firstborn inside the Passover house lived. The contrast is powerful: the one who enters the altar ends up both dead and alive – a living sacrifice.
And just as the burnt offerings were offered in stages, so Christ perfects over time those who abide in Him. When a believer is united to Christ, that believer does not flipflop between a state of union and disunion every time he sins. Rather, this union with Christ is the very thing that Jesus uses to purify sinners. There is a judgment coming when Christ will separate out of His body all those who received Him but then forsook that lifestyle of repentance. But for now, He accepts impure people into Himself, and as they remain in Him, He zealously works to drive out their sin, just as the altar purified the sacrifices offered on it.
Paul described the reality to which the altar points. We die, and our life is hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3), just like the burnt offerings are hidden within the altar. When this union happens, we respond as dead to sinful ways (Colossians 3:5-9). And as we abide in the altar, we feast upon the sin offering, thus putting on the new self in the image of Christ (Colossians 3:10). The result is that Christ dwells in each of His followers, such that the collective organization of Him as the head and believers as the members of His body is known as Christ - “Christ is all, and in all” (Colossians 3:11, NASB). We become part of Abraham’s one and only seed (Galatians 3:16, 29). This arrangement puts Him in authority over us while still making us part of Himself, preserving His rulership and enabling Him to justly pay for our sins.
So come to the altar and feast upon the Word. And let that Word consume you, even if it is painful at times. Search the scriptures to find clues about God’s will and apply those things in your life, depending on God for strength. The sacrifice is truly worth it. All the wonders of eternal life are found when we abide in Christ and He abides in us.
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Bio: Jeff Wickham is the author of the book “United: The Staggering Message of the Kingdom.” He is a speaker, writer, and medical device engineer. His service within the church includes roles such as elder, head elder, and lay pastor, and currently, he serves as an Adult Sabbath School Superintendent and Youth Sabbath School Teacher at the Hendersonville SDA Church. He is married to Amy, his high school sweetheart, and they have four children. You can contact him at jeffrey.n.wickham@gmail.com.