The Hour Is Come — Major Ian Thomas

Tonight, so glad to see you. I'd like to say at my word of appreciation to the choir for their faithful attendance night by night. We appreciate their being here and for the message they bring to us in song.

I appreciate, too, the faithful way in which so many of you have been coming night by night. It makes it so very much easier to be able to speak to the same folk consecutively. Thus we are confronted with the accumulative evidence of the word of God.

The Accumulative Evidence of God's Word

Not just a text here or a passage there, but the whole accumulative evidence leading us relentlessly to that relationship to the Lord Jesus that enables him to implement in us and through us that purpose for which God first created us and he has redeemed us.

Remind you that the midday meetings are of a consecutive nature, too, and it's been lovely to see the folk coming day by day and enabling us to draw the wonderful conclusions to which the Holy Spirit brings us in his word.

Remember the purpose of these meetings, not just to entertain even in a healthy fashion, not just to pack our heads with new facts, but that we may see the sheer logic of it and be compelled to yield that spiritual obedience from the heart that releases divine action in terms of our redeemed humanity.

As God enables me, it's my purpose, not hurriedly but thoroughly, to lay open first principles, principles that I trust will never depart from me. It may well be that if you've never discovered the principles that we are examining this week that it will be calculated completely to revolutionize your Christian life.

And I believe sincerely with all my heart, because it always happens, that there are some for whom life will never be the same again from this week. It's a fact. It may well be that some of you who have been coming so faithfully haven't quite got the point yet.

It hasn't sort of clicked over. Well, keep at it, and one day you'll come up with a smile, and you'll be so glad. We're going to turn tonight to the twelfth chapter of John's Gospel. John's Gospel, chapter 12, verse 23.

The Hour of Christ's Glorification

And Jesus answered him, saying, The hour is come that the Son of Man should be glorified. The hour is come. Was there a particular hour in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ that was charged with greater significance than any other?

Wasn't his whole life, in the thirty-three years that he was man on earth, charged with divine significance? Yes, of course. There was never one moment in the life of the Lord Jesus that was not charged with deliberate, purposeful significance.

And yet there was an hour, the hour, without which he would have been born to live in vain. I don't mean that he wouldn't have returned to his Father. He would have done so, for he had the right at any given moment throughout the whole of those thirty-three years to return to his Father.

He would have shared in the eternal ages to come the glory that he had with the Father before ever the world was, for he had the right to it. He was God. He need never have become man. But apart from this, the hour, he would have been born to live in vain.

It is an hour which is referred to on several occasions in this Gospel. Chapter 7, verse 30. John 7 and verse 30. Then they sought to take him, but no man laid hands on him, because his hour was not yet come.

Chapter 8 and verse 20. These words speak Jesus in the treasury as he taught in the temple. And no man laid hands on him, for his hour was not yet come. Chapter 13, verse 1. Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour was come, that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end.

Chapter 17, verse 1. These words speak Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, Father, the hour is come. Glorify thy son, that thy son also may glorify thee. Yes, this was the hour for which he was born, and for which he lived, and without which he would have been born to live in vain.

For the Lord Jesus says, in the 24th verse of the 12th chapter, the hour is come that the Son of Man should be glorified. Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone.

Reading from the Amplified New Testament, Jesus answered them, the time has come for the Son of Man to be glorified and exalted. I assure you, most solemnly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, I want you to listen to these words very carefully.

It remains, I want you to notice there, it remains, just one grain, never becomes more, but lives, I want you to notice there, but lives, goes on living, by itself, alone. It remains and lives, by itself, never becomes more, alone.

And that would have been the result, had the Lord Jesus been born into this world miraculously conceived of the Holy Spirit and fashioned in the womb of Mary to live on earth in sinless perfection for 33 years, for anything other than this hour.

He would have remained and he would have lived by himself, alone, to be eternally lonely. You know, the significance of this hour for the Lord Jesus involves the whole redemptive purpose of God. And as there was an hour for him, so there is an hour for you.

What would the Lord Jesus Christ have accomplished, had it not been for this hour in which he died and rose again from the dead? Supposing he had only been man, in all his sinlessness, what would have happened?

Well, he would have gone straight to heaven. There's only one thing that keeps man from heaven, only one thing that keeps man from the presence of a holy God, and that is sin. And the Lord Jesus, even had he only been man, never sinned.

Even if he had never been God, only man, and he was both God and man, but supposing he had never been God, but only man, would he have had the right to go to heaven? Of course. The Father looked down from heaven and said, this is my beloved son, in him I am well pleased.

We're told that God made him to be sin for us who knew no sin. God laid our trespasses upon the one in whom there was no stain. He suffered the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God. And even had he never been God and only been man, the Lord Jesus at any given time would have stepped straight from earth into heaven on his own right.

The Law Reveals Righteousness and Guilt

You see, if you turn with me to the tenth chapter of the epistle to the Romans, we read this. Romans 10, verse 4. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness. Christ is the end of the law for righteousness.

That simply means this, that the Lord Jesus, in his sinless person as man on earth, was the last word in righteousness. Every demand the law could ever make upon him in righteousness was completely and fully consummated in his person.

There wasn't any degree of righteousness that the Lord demands on man on earth that was not fulfilled by Jesus Christ in his perfect, sinless humanity. In other words, the righteousness demanded by the law and the life that he lived are one and the same thing.

If you want to know the quality of righteousness that the Lord demands of man, look at Jesus Christ and you will see that righteousness that the Lord demands. And that is why even as man, Jesus Christ would have had the right to go straight into his Father's presence, for his life was the righteousness that the Lord demands.

What therefore could the life of Jesus Christ have done for you 1 ,900 years ago on earth apart from this, his hour? What does the Bible teach you that the law can do for you? Romans chapter 3. Romans chapter 3, verse 19.

Now we know that what thing soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law. In other words, supposing there were a man or a woman or a boy or a girl here tonight who was prepared to look up into God's face and say, God, I've heard a preacher talking about conversion and the need for repentance.

I've heard a preacher talking about being redeemed in the blood of Christ. I've heard a preacher talking about the vicarious atoning sacrifices of your son upon the cross, that there is cleansing and forgiveness on repentance and faith.

Well God, I want you to know this, I don't need your son. I don't need redemption. I don't need cleansing from my sin. I want you to know this, that I claim the right to be judged by the law, because I consider that apart from anything that your son may have done upon the cross, I am perfectly adequate to stand in my own right in your presence and claim entrance into your kingdom, by virtue not of what your son has done for me, but by virtue of what I am.

I demand to be judged by the law, because I consider that if I were to put my life contrary to your law, I'd make a pretty good showing. I wonder if there's somebody like that here. But I want you to know this, if that's your claim, your claim will be allowed.

Your claim will be allowed. If you wish to be judged by the law, you may be judged by the law. If you demand in God's presence that you be judged on your own merits, God will accede to your request, and you will be judged by the law.

You have the right to opt, either to be redeemed by the atoning sacrifice of Christ and be accounted a forgiven sinner for Jesus' sake, or, alternatively, to stand on your own two feet in your own righteousness and seek to vindicate your own adequacy for God's presence and for God's heaven, according to the demands that the law makes upon you.

The absolute demand of God's absolute righteousness. You have the right to opt. That's what conversion involves. A man who is truly, genuinely converted is one who repudiates forever the right to opt trial by law, and claims to be redeemed by grace.

That's what conversion involves. So what thinks whoever the law saith? It saith to them who are under the law, who have opted to be judged by the law, on the basis of their own merits. What will the result be?

Read on, verse 19. That every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Verse 20. Therefore, by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in God's sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.

If you opt to get to heaven on your own merits, God says, all right, I accede to your request, just stand please alongside my law, and we'll measure you up. And what happens when your life is measured up by the law of God?

Your mouth is stopped, and you are proved guilty before God. That will be the result. You'll be exposed for what you are, a guilty sinner who has fallen short of the glory of God, and you will be condemned.

Because the law can only do one thing, and that's teach you that you're a sinner. Just like a plumber, I might be an amateur bricklayer, and my hobby is building walls in my back garden. And I'm pretty proud of my achievement.

I invite my friends to see my lovely walls. I always give them a good tea first, and I find that they're most enthusiastic, depending on the nature of the tea. But I'm pretty flattered. I consider that I'm pretty good, pretty cute.

To be quite frank, I'm not altogether satisfied with the flattery that I have earned from my near neighbors, my relatives, and friends. I know a friend of mine who's a master bricklayer, and I want him to come and give his verdict, because what he says goes.

And I don't doubt for one moment that he's going to confirm my own estimate and my own endeavors. And so I invite him in to tea, give him especially good tea. And I take him out into my garden, and I show him around.

I say, this is my latest. Did it all myself. Yes, he said, I can see that. I said, what do you mean, getting rather hot around the collar? Well, he says, it isn't bad for an amateur. The only thing is that it isn't straight.

I said, I beg your pardon, it is straight. I built it. He says, I know you built it, that's why it isn't straight. And I begin to get all fussed and bothered, most indignant. This is entirely unfair. So he says, now don't get all ruffled.

Just a minute. I'm not going to argue with you. Just a minute. And he goes into the house, and out of his overcoat pocket, he brings a plumb line. And he puts it against my wall. The plumb line that cannot lie.

And it's two and a half inches out at the bottom. And he stops my mouth, and he proves me guilty. I want you to notice that the law doesn't put my wall straight. It just teaches me that it's crooked. And that's all the law can ever do for you.

It'll never put your life straight. It'll simply expose you for what you are, a crook. I mean crooked. That's what the life of Christ, exposed through a redeemed sinner, is intended to do. Exposed to the world the true nature of affairs.

Christ's Life Revealed Through Redeemed Humanity

Did you ever notice that? Philippians chapter 2. When you allow God to work in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure, your life will convict the world of sin. So that in Philippians chapter 2, you are to be blameless and harmless, verse 15, the sons of God without rebuke in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation.

In other words, you are to be harmless and blameless in the sight of God without rebuke in the midst of a nation of crooks and a nation of perverts. A crooked nation and perverted nation. A nation of crooks and a nation of perverts.

I say, does your life as a Christian show up the godlessness and sinfulness of the world around you? I don't mean are you always standing on a soapbox and thumping your Bible and telling people they're going to hell.

I don't mean that. I mean by the unconscious expression of what Christ is in terms of your redeemed humanity. Without you saying a word and without you giving a thought to the situation. Instinctively, automatically, manifestly.

What Christ is displayed through you stops the mouths of the guilty and proves them sinners. Well now that's all the law can do. Look in Galatians chapter 3. Notice first of all that the law was added 430 years after God to Abraham gave the promise of grace.

May I just interrupt one moment? There are one or two seats in the front. I'd be so happy if you'd come and sit on them. That's lovely. Thank you. We're very glad to see. If there are others, please occupy the seats.

It'll be more comfortable for you. On the end, folk will move in I'm sure to the center. Tomorrow night folk will eat less supper and there'll be more room for the additional bodies. That's lovely. It's always a good thing to have to squeeze folk in.

That's fine. Notice this, verse 17, Galatians 3. Better read verse 16 to get the true context. To Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not unto seeds, plural, as of many, a nation, a national characteristic, but as one singular to thy seed, which is Christ.

This was God's promise to Abraham. Not the promise of a nation, but the promise of a person, Christ. This I say, that the covenant, God's promise to Abraham, that salvation would come through an individual, that was confirmed before of God in Christ.

The law, which was 430 years after, cannot disavow that it should make the promise of none effect. In other words, 430 years after, God promised Abraham that in his seed, singular, Jesus Christ, salvation would be made possible for a guilty, sinful world, God didn't change his mind.

And suddenly say, well, when I made that arrangement with Abraham, I wasn't thinking. I've changed my mind about that and I'm going to have salvation another way now. Oh no, God doesn't change his mind like that.

We're told by James and the 17th verse of his first chapter, that in him, the father of lights, there is no variableness, neither any shadow of turning. He never changes his theology. He leaves that to the theologians.

God never does. And so the law coming 430 years after, the promise of salvation through Jesus Christ, did not render that promise null and void. The legitimate question you may therefore ask, is the one that is asked here, verse 19, wherefore then serveth the law?

Why did God give a law 430 years after promising salvation through a person, Jesus Christ? Well, the answer is very simple. To teach people that they need Jesus Christ. To teach people that they're sinners.

To put the pond line against their crooked lives and stop their mouths and prove them guilty, so that they will stop being self-righteous. Stop trying to vindicate their own righteousness. Recognize that they fall short in self-righteousness from God-righteousness, and then they will be ready to receive a savior who came to save sinners.

That's why you will read, verse 24 of the same third chapter of the epistles of the Galatians, the law was our schoolmaster. What's a schoolmaster for? Well, you may never believe it. The primary intention, the original intention, is that they should teach somebody something.

They never succeeded too well while I was at school, but that's the object of the exercise. The law was our schoolmaster, to teach us something. To teach us what? That we were guilty sinners whose mouths had been stopped in the face of a holy God, who needed desperately a savior.

Wherefore, the law was our schoolmaster, to bring us unto Christ, promised by God to Abraham, 430 years before ever he introduced the law. That we might be justified by faith. In whom? In him to whom the law brings us.

Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins. After the faith has come, verse 25, after you've learned your lesson, after you've admitted that you're a guilty sinner, after you've repented toward God and put your faith in Jesus Christ, we're no longer under a schoolmaster.

We've left school, we've learned our lesson, and in true repentance toward God, we've received Christ as Redeemer, you are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus, and not by keeping the law.

Now that's all abundantly plain, isn't it? Now why have I labored to tell you this? Well, I trust that it may have swept the cobwebs out of some folks' ideas, concerning how to be saved. It may be that you're not converted, it may be that you have been taught that you get to heaven by trying to keep the law.

Well, I trust that this, once and for all and forever, has banished that thought from your mind. Because the law can only be your schoolmaster to teach you that you're lost, to teach you that you're cut off from God, to teach you that you were born in sin, to teach you that you were born in this world uninhabited by God and inhabited only by sin, guilty, lost, and dead, and totally, utterly unfit for heaven.

Unless grace, unless grace makes it possible for a holy God to receive you without doing violence to his own righteousness. G-R-A-C-E, grace. God's riches at Christ's expense. That's grace. God's riches, forgiveness, a clean heart, a place in heaven, peace with God at Christ's expense.

Now that's the law, and all the law can do is condemn you, prove you guilty. But half a minute, we have seen that the life of Jesus Christ is the end of the law for righteousness. That his life is all that the law demands.

But if the law can only condemn you, and the life of Christ fulfills that law, what can the life of Christ do but condemn you? My dear Christian friend, my dear unconverted friend, if you place your life alongside the law, what does the law do for you?

Proves you guilty, like the plumb line and the crooked wall. Put your life alongside the life of Jesus Christ that fulfills that law, the plumb line. What does his life do for you? Condemns you. Proves you guilty.

So whether it be the law, or whether it be the life of Jesus Christ, both condemn you. That's why if anybody gets up into a pulpit and tells you that in order to be a Christian, all you've got to do is gaze at the life of Jesus Christ and conform to it.

He deceives you, he's a liar. He may be very sincere, but he's an emissary of hell. Because it would be as futile for you to try to live the kind of life that Christ lived, as it would be for you to try to fulfill the law and the energy of the flesh.

The Cross and the Life of Christ Within the Believer

For the word of God tells us in Romans chapter 8 and verse 3,. What the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh. God sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and forcing condemned sin in the flesh.

What the law could not do through the weakness of the flesh. And I'll tell you this, that what the law cannot do through the weakness of your flesh, that is to say, get you to heaven fit for heaven. What the law cannot do through the weakness of the flesh, nor can the life of Jesus Christ that he lived 1 ,900 years ago do for you, because of the weakness of the flesh.

For you can no more live the life that he lived then, in your own self-energy, than you can fulfill the law in your own self-energy. The weakness of the flesh disqualifies you from getting to heaven through the law, and the weakness of the flesh disqualifies you from getting to heaven by imitating Christ.

Because the flesh is the sin principle of satanic origin, which you are told in the same epistle of Paul to the Romans chapter 8. This satanic principle is at enmity with God. It is not subject to the law of God.

Verse 7, neither indeed can it. You are born into this world destitute of divine life, uninhabited by God, spiritually dead. Ephesians 4 .18, alienated from the life of God, occupied only by the wrong man.

The sin principle of satanic origin, and this sin principle within you can no more imitate the life of Christ than it can fulfill the demands of the law. And that is why if Jesus Christ had been born only to live 33 years on earth in perfection, then go straight to heaven without a cross, he would have been born to live in vain.

He would have gone back to heaven to remain and to live alone, just one grain forever, for his life, no more than the law, can never get to heaven. Now that's sheer logic. So what happened? We enunciated last night as we closed this simple principle.

The life he lived, a sinless, spotless life, qualified him for the death he died. That the death he died, in its atoning, vicarious, substitutionary significance, is one sacrifice for sins forever. That the death he died might qualify you to become the recipients by the restoration to you of the Holy Spirit of the life he lived.

His atoning death upon the cross was that which satisfied the demands of God that makes it possible for him to receive you back as a forgiven sinner, and thereby as a forgiven sinner to restore to you the Holy Spirit that re-imparts to your redeemed humanity the divine content, so that the life he lived then condemns you, but the life that he lives now in you saves you.

But unless somehow the life he lived then can come to be lived in you by him, he was born to live in vain. So we may understand that whatever it was that happened in this the hour, it was designed in God's economy to make it possible for him to live today in you, the life that he lived then for you.

Is that clear? Whatever he did in the cross, it was designed to make it possible for him, the same Jesus Christ, to live today in you, the life that once he then lived for. And if that can't be achieved, then you and I are of all men most miserable.

Because we shall never in the energy of the flesh either satisfy the law or imitate his life. By both we shall be condemned, announced, taught, proved guilty and eternally lost. But this is the genius of the cross.

The life he lived then condemns you. The life that he lives now in you saves you. How did it happen? Well, first of all, it is an absolute imperative that the life he lived then should be sinless, in point of fact, fully fulfill the final demands of the law in righteousness.

That could only be possible, and may I reemphasize this tonight, that could only be possible by virtue of Christ's miraculous birth. For ever since Adam fell into sin, man was born in Adam's image and not in God's image.

Those of you who were with me midday a couple of days ago will forgive if I reiterate the statement made in the fifth chapter of the book of Genesis, verse 1. This is the book of the generations of Adam.

In the day that God created man in the likeness of God made he him, singular. Created in the likeness of God in his innocence. But Adam fell into sin. He repudiated his love to war, he repudiated his dependence on.

He forfeited the divine presence, the Holy Spirit was withdrawn from the human spirit, and the human soul was invaded by the satanic agents he called the flesh. And from that moment on, we are told, verse 3 of Genesis 5, Adam lived 130 years and begat a son in his own likeness, not in the likeness of God.

After his, Adam's image, not after God's image. Ever since Adam fell into sin, who was created in God's image, all mankind was born of natural birth of a corruptible seed in his image. And inherited a fallen nature, the sin principle that had invaded the human soul, prostituting the human personality, mind, emotion, and will to his own wicked ends.

So that instead of God being what God is in terms of man's behavior, righteousness, Satan became what he is in terms of man's behavior, sinfulness. And he that committeth sin is at the door, springing from the root and producing the inevitable fruit, the works of the flesh.

That which coming from within, Jesus said, defiles a man, the dirty water from the dirty well. The dirty water from the dirty well. But what about Jesus Christ? If the Lord Jesus Christ had been born physically, naturally, just as you and I were born, he too would have inherited, as you and I inherit, the same fallen nature.

And you do not become a sinner because you have committed sins. From your earliest age, you commit sins because you were born a sinner. In sin did my mother conceive me. You didn't even have to be taught to commit sin.

From the earliest days before you could ever say boo to a goose, you were stamping your foot through your cot. I'm sorry. Some doors open. Yes, certainly. We'll have those open again. It's always good to have a little cool air together with the hot air.

Maybe there are none of the windows open. That's the reason. Hot air always rises. So if one or two of you who are by the windows would open those. It is very warm. Thank you for mentioning. Thank you very much.

I've got three boys at home. And as I've mentioned, they're very wonderful boys. They have a wonderful start. They're like their mother. I never had to teach them to be selfish. I've had to teach them to be unselfish.

I never had to teach them to be disobedient. We've been at great pains to teach them to be obedient. And you could go all down the line. And we don't have to be taught to sin. We are egocentric, self-centered from the start.

And a baby before it can ever talk is the only person that counts so far as that baby is concerned. And everybody has got to be at his demands. And if he wants to pull the tablecloth off with all the best china, he has the right to do so.

And if you prevent him, he'll scream until the cows come home. Because he is basically egocentric. There is incarnate in his baby form the basic lie that man is man by virtue of what man is and not by virtue of what God is in man.

And he's his own king in his own realm. And most of us get disagreeable and get irritated and get frustrated simply because we can't have our own will. I have the right to please myself. And if Jesus Christ had been born as you and I were born, there would have been inherent in him by his natural birth of a corrupt seed the same capacity to sin.

And he would have sinned and gone on sinning. He could and he would have sinned by virtue of what he was by his natural birth. But whereas you and I as the fallen seed of the fallen Adam are born to this world uninhabited by God, inhabited only by sin.

Whether you like it or not, it's true. The Lord Jesus born miraculously of the Holy Spirit fastened in the womb of Mary was born utterly uninhabited by sin but only inhabited by God. For the Father gave to him the Holy Spirit without measure.

For 33 years on earth he was filled with the Holy Ghost. His whole sinless humanity, his whole perfect personality completely unquestioningly every moment of every hour of every day of every year given over to the Father.

This was the nature of his sinless perfect humanity. And it was only possible by virtue of the virgin birth. Because this holy thing that shall be born of thee, born of the Holy Ghost, shall be the Son of God.

So when the Lord Jesus came to this world, he came without sin. So that as I reminded you yesterday, John 14, verse 30, we could say the prince of this world is come, the devil. He's got his kingdom in all your souls, but he hath nothing in me.

He doesn't have one iota of territory within my soul. Because whereas you were born the fallen seed of the fallen Adam, uninhabited by God but inhabited by the devil, I was born inhabited only by God and uninhabited by the devil.

He hath nothing in me. And for 33 years he lived in sinlessness until the hour for which he was born and for which he lived. The hour in which your sinfulness and mine was added to his sinlessness. That's what happened on the cross.

God made him to be sin for us who knew no sin. 2 Corinthians 5, 21. God made him to be sin for us who knew no sin. In that his hour, all your guilt, all your shame, all mine was added to him. And that was only possible by virtue of his sinlessness.

For our sinfulness could never have been added to his sinfulness. He could only have died for his own sins. Our sinfulness could only be added to his sinlessness. And by virtue of that fact he could die and make one sacrifice for sins forever.

An atoning sacrifice. A vicarious substitutionary offering. This was the difference, of course, between the picture of the Old Testament and the substance in the New Testament. Hebrews chapter 9, verse 24.

Hebrews 9, 24. For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands which are the figures of the true. Speaking of the high priest who once went into the holy of holies every year to make a sacrifice for the people.

But, alternatively, into heaven itself. Not entered into the holy places made with hands behind the curtains, the holy of holies. But into heaven itself. Now to appear in the presence of God for us. Nor yet that he should offer himself often as the high priest enters into the holy place every year with blood of others.

For then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world. But now, once in the end of the world, hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.

So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of men. And unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation for the law. Having a shadow only of good things to come.

And not the very image of the things can never with those Old Testament sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect. They were only foreshadowings, types. Speaking of the one who should come to implement the promise that God gave to Abraham.

That in his seed all the families of the earth should be blessed. Verse 3. In those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.

But this man, verse 12. But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God. Wherefore, verse 5, when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice nothing thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me.