Christ Our Sufficiency – Joseph Addai Kusi

No meat offering which ye shall bring to the Lord shall be made with leaven: for ye shall burn no leaven, nor any honey in any offering of the Lord made by fire… (Lev 2:11)

And such trust have we through Christ to God-ward: Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God. (2Cor.3:4-5)

To what end are these words written, and where can we place them in the life of the Son of God? To be sufficient means to be lacking in nothing, whole, complete and able. One who requires help from another to be complete cannot be said to be sufficient in and of himself. To be sufficient therefore means your arm or your strength is enough for you. When one is hungry, he begins to yearn for food to fill his emptiness, but after he has eaten to the full, there remains no more a need for him to be fed again because he has attained his sufficiency.

We know that we have come to partake of the Lord and of his table, and this means that Christ Himself has become our meat and drink. (Col. 2:15, John 6:53-57, 1Cor. 10:16-17) His very life has become our food….And this is the law of the meat offering: the sons of Aaron shall offer it before the Lord, before the altar…And he shall take of its handful, of the flour of the meat offering, and the oil thereof, and all the frankincense which is upon the altar, for a sweet savour even the memorial thereof unto the Lord… (Lev. 6:14-15) The meat offering speaks of the Lord’s life -it is also called the meal or the food offering; it speaks of the Lord’s pure life.

It contains no blood; it is the pure life of the Lord, how purely and delicately he lived on earth before the Father…The flour speaks of the pure substance of His life which is baked as bread for our food; as flour is good for man, so His life is our food. The oil speaks of His being the Messiah, the anointed one who was to come as the arm of the Lord’s salvation. Frankincense is a beautifully fragrant plant whose essence is distilled as a sweet perfume.

The frankincense in the meal offering speaks of the sweet smelling savour of Christ offered unto God; there is nothing in Christ’s offering that is blemished before God. If there was, we would need to make up for it, but Christ has offered Himself once for all, a perfect sacrifice… (Heb 7:27, 2Cor 2:14, Eph. 5:1-2) In this matter, Jesus Christ is sufficient and nothing can be added or taken from what he has done. How then must we relate to His sufficiency? We must by constantly beholding and feeding on Him live in the conscious realization of His sufficiency… The believer is given an inheritance in Christ whose riches are so vast that ten eternities will not suffice us to know all there is in Him; it is beyond comprehension and communication.

To us, He is sufficiency, but the depth of the riches of wisdom and knowledge that are in Christ are far beyond what we can touch in a million years. Now that Christ is seated in the heavens, what is His present working upon which we may boldly rely for our sufficiency? The answer lies in “He is able”…And being fully persuaded that what he had promised, He was able also to perform (Rom. 4:21)….Who art thou that judgest another man’s servant? To His own master, he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be holden up: for God is able to make him stand. (Rom 14:4) Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us.(Eph.3:20) Time and space will not suffice us to write out all the Scriptures that point to this. (2Cor.9:8, Phil. 3:21, 2Tim 2:12, Heb.2:18, Heb. 7:25, Heb.11:19, James 4:12, Jude 1:24) Jesus Christ is now in his High priestly ministry having accomplished all that has already been spoken of in the body of His death. Now, he is the surety and assurance for us as we run our race. We know that he was able to bring us to God through his sufferings as the captain of our salvation (Heb.2:9) Now in His High priestly ministry, he is able to make us stand, able to perfect us and able to present us blameless at His coming.

This means that Jesus himself is our insurance, and he is able to make us what he desires in us…. Wherefore, He is able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them… (Heb.7:25) It is a most blessed truth for our deep meditation and contemplation. The strength and sustenance of the life in us is the very One who gave that life. That he is able means that he himself works in us by his own means and ability; there is nothing I can add to it that he didn’t give me in the first place. For instance, someone rebukes a brother for not giving offerings and accuses him of being disobedient. He then tells him the Lord has blessed everyone abundantly for you to be able to give.

Therefore, the Lord has done his part, now you do your part by obeying. Now I ask, what is this “our part” that we can add to complete God’s work in us. I agree that we cannot be heedless and stubborn when the Lord speaks, but from what do I obtain my part to add to the Lord? Is the Lord incomplete? Is he in need of our addition to be sufficient? Let us not forget that the Lord is complete and he is not lacking in anything –it is us who need his sufficiency. He pours out His fullness in grace upon us and yet, he is still complete and whole. The brother who rebukes the other for not adding his part to the Lord loses sight of this; all that the Lord requires of us, He has given to us provision for it beyond what our need requires. He has lavished it superabundantly upon us and therefore, our part to play is from him also. This disturbs the natural human sense of equity, because that would mean the Lord does his work and then gives us our part also to play. The natural man asks… doesn’t that mean the Lord has to do the part of two, then where lies my part to play?

Let us set it forth then beyond all doubt that what we call our part is still the Lord’s part worked in us by him unto His pleasing. If God says…I shall give you a child, but you have to wait, by what device do I gain this waiting power; my own natural good instincts distilled into a pained self-effort of longsuffering or the Word spoken itself gives me the patience to endure? What will please God must be the fruit of his own hand, not that which we create and give to him. If we realize this, the ability to live right will no longer be a fight with our flesh; we would immediately look to the Lord and say…He is able.

What does he mean to call him the author and finisher of our faith? Our faith must first be planted, then built up or fed and then it must be perfected by yielding fruit. Jesus himself is the foundation of our faith, the building or substance of our faith and then the goal or end of our faith. He is the good shepherd, the great shepherd of the sheep, the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls and the Chief Shepherd of the sheep (1Pet. 2:24, Heb 13:20, John 10:11,1Pet 5:4) This means that our Lord Jesus is able to feed us, keep us, comfort us, heal us and perfect us in all things because He is the pastor over the church of God. (Acts 20:28) If he purchased the church with His blood, what won’t he do to perfect her? (Eph. 5:26, Rom. 8:32) Let us keep holy things holy; if the blood that purchased the church of God was His, then the hands that build it can’t be human hands. If God says…Be healed, we expect the means for the healing to come through what he has said – we take it for granted that His Word will do the healing the same way we expect a paper to burn when we put it in fire. The burning will happen just because it is fire. But what about when God says…Be holy, for I am holy. We take this as a marching order that we must do everything to obey by ourselves. He gave a command and the Word does not bear the power to make me holy just as “be healed” carries the power to heal? We must yield ourselves to God, for if we do not, His work cannot be done in us. We must also remember that the means to yield ourselves to him is the power of God. God has not lowered His demand, but neither has He left us without the means to fulfill his good pleasure. Of the meat offering, the Lord said…No meat offering which ye shall bring to the Lord shall be made with leaven: for ye shall burn no leaven, nor any honey in any offering of the Lord made by fire… (Lev 2:11) Leaven speaks of that which is of the self and the sinful nature – that which is weak in man. Honey speaks of that which man praises himself for and is proud of in himself….It is not good to eat too much money: so for men to search their own glory is not glory. (Prov.25:27). The Lord’s meal offering cannot be baked with leaven or honey; that which is of man, weak or strong cannot come into God’s life. If we will advance in spiritual life, we must come to gain the sufficiency of the Lord’s ability in us. Let us not ask what we can do in him, but what he can do in us, for we can only do in him after he has worked in us.

This same Jesus is the captain of our salvation, the forerunner of our hope and the High priest over the household of God (Heb 2:10, Heb 6:19-20, Heb. 10:19-20) All I seek to become in spiritual life must be the sufficiency of Jesus’ ability in me, so that men will see my profiting and say…Look what Jesus has done, and not..You have really done well for praying and studying the Bible so much. When I see a deficiency in me in one aspect, the Lord’s ability and supply in that is more than enough to make me whole. All I need to do is to trust in the Lord and receive his grace for my sufficiency, the obedience will be easy. It is a most blessed testimony and a true record of God…He is able.