Covenant Presbyterian Church

In the days of his flesh, Jesus was often hungry. On one such occasion, he sent his disciples into a nearby village to buy food while he remained seated at a well on the outskirts of town. After his interchange with the Samaritan woman, the disciples returned and urged Jesus to eat. He responded, "I have meat to eat that you know not of." This set the disciples to wondering who had brought Jesus something to eat in their absence. He then explained, "My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work."

We often forget that we are saved because Jesus was wholly consecrated to the will of his Father, to obeying every jot and tittle of God’s wondrous and holy law, to seeking and doing the righteousness that is the condition of fellowship with God. While the cross is the culmination of his obedience, his life was a minute-by-minute pursuit of righteousness. We should think often of the Messianic declaration in the fortieth Psalm, which is repeated in Hebrews 10:7,9: "Lo, I come to do your will, O God." It is of inestimable importance for us that we understand this declaration. The Son of God came to earth to obey God in place of our disobedience, to practice submission in place of our rebellion, to delight in God’s law in place of our depraved loathing of it. The writer to the Hebrews immediately follows with this conclusion: "By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus once for all." It is because Jesus Christ perfectly obeyed the will/law of God that he was able to offer himself as the sinless, substitutionary sacrifice on the cross for our behalf. It is because his meat was to do the will of the Father that we are made righteous through faith in him. His righteousness is imputed to us, credited to us, becomes ours through faith, which is the gift of God.

Troubled consciences find rest here and only here - in the obedience of Jesus Christ. It is not by my works of righteousness that I am right with God - I have none. It is not through having just the right conversion experience, or a second and third experience, or being baptized, or taking the Lord’s Supper. It is because Jesus’ meat was to do the will of his Father that I am righteous before God. And Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners by obeying the law of God for us, taking the curse of the law’s penalty for our lawbreaking, and giving his righteousness to us as a gift. This righteousness is what Paul terms "the righteousness of God." Think about this for a moment. If you trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, you have the righteousness of God - perfect, infallible, efficacious, unshakeable, divine righteousness. It is this righteousness that will give you confidence when you stand before the judgment seat of God. You will turn away from your own life - considered in itself it is an embarrassment, worthy of judgment, of no avail before the scrutiny of divine, holy justice. You will look for only one face, only one righteousness in that moment - that of the sinless Lamb of God that was slain. And you will be filled with boldness because in Jesus Christ you have a righteousness that suffices before the throne of God. Think often, believer, of the obedience and righteousness of Jesus Christ. It is because his meat was to do the will of his Father that his sacrifice is sufficient, his intercession efficacious, and his person able to save you to the uttermost. Place all your confidence and hope here - nowhere else. The greatest single cause of uncertainty in the believer’s life, his lack of assurance, spiritual impotence, and joyless experience of grace, is the failure to consider daily the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ. You must be often looking unto Jesus in his sinless perfection and complete consecration to the will of his Father. This is the sure anchor of our soul within the veil of God’s presence.

This is not the only significance, however, of Jesus’ declaration to the disciples. In John’s gospel, he immediately draws from it a very personal and empowering application for us. His meat is our meat. This is not only true in the sense that his righteousness is our righteousness through faith and imputation but also in the sense that his ongoing work in our lives is to transform us by his Spirit so that doing and delighting in the will of God also becomes our meat. We often forget that one reason for Jesus’ consecration to the will of the Father is that we might be personally transformed, that we might select the right meat again. When we are joined to Jesus Christ by faith in a union and communion of grace and glory, he sanctifies us by his Spirit so that we are fed upon the same meat that fed him. Jesus was able to sacrifice his temporal needs in order to pursue a greater need. The fields were white unto harvest, and the conversion of the Samaritan woman was the first fruit in that region harvested by the mighty sickle of his word. When we are saved by omnipotent grace, we too are freed from the dominion of sin, from the dominion of fleshly craving, from the all-consuming pursuit of earthly good, for a higher goal - the manifestation of God’s righteousness throughout the world through godly lives and a faithful testimony to God’s grace. And we are not left to our own resources and strength in this pursuit. We are joined to Jesus Christ. We have his life in us, hidden as yet, but nonetheless operative and effectual. We have a new meat, a new life’s purpose, a new power unto godliness of which the world knows absolutely nothing. It is the life of our consecrated Savior which he gives us, with which we commune daily as we walk with him, drawing from his bread, wine, vine, light, and life all necessary strength to do the will of our Father in heaven.

Lest we dismiss all this as religious enthusiasm, we should look around at the rotten meat that men are voraciously consuming in their desire to find something, anything in this sterile, valueless, and pointless order created by the secularists. Entertainment, education, material prosperity, sex, and popularity - the cumulative effect of this meat is far worse than would be a worldwide outbreak of E Coli or the Bubonic Plague. It is wrecking lives and families. It has transformed our schools from institutions of learning into lifeless, dangerous, immoral halls of statist indoctrination. But this is what happens when men eat rotten meat - when they make doing their own wills the guiding principle of life. By the power of divine grace and the gift of divine righteousness, we have been delivered. Set before us is heavenly manna, a daily feast of participation in the life and power of Jesus Christ. O how believers around the world must share this meat. The fields remain white unto harvest, and throughout them we see sick and starving men, eating the putrefying corpse of sin. To do anything about this, every believer must devote himself to seeking the new meat of Jesus Christ, of delight in the law of God, of consecration to doing the will of God, of daily communion with our heavenly manna, Jesus Christ, the very life of God.

Believer, you have been given a tremendous gift - not only righteousness and holiness through Jesus’ sinless life and sacrifice but also a new life within you. Live it. Allow nothing to hinder your pursuit of the glorious meat of doing the will of God. It is the food that will bring joy and peace to you. It is the food that will sustain you in your hard contest with the world, the flesh, and the devil. It is the food that will enable you to live by every word that comes from God’s mouth when so many are eating the rotten meat of secularism. It is the food that will finally bring you to heaven, where you will behold the Bread of Life and the Wine of the world. Eat only this meat, child of God - for the sake of your soul and the souls of others, for the sake of the world, and for the glory of God.