A Living Sacrifice

"Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God - this is your spiritual act of worship.  Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind."  (Rom. 12:1-2)

Since the days of the Exodus, wherever a tabernacle or temple stood, faithful Jews would bring the best of their flocks and herds to a priest standing at the altar of God.  It was an act of devotion, a commandment handed down by God Himself.  There were various reasons for the command: The offering would, at times, serve as a symbol of sin and its ugly consequences; as a sacrifice of gratitude, acknowledging that every good gift comes from God; or as an act of devotion and worship, a gift from a loving heart.  Regardless of the reason, the origin of the sacrifice was always God - human beings clearly never created a ram or a bull - and the sacrifice was always a reminder of the horrible gap between the Creator and the created.

God bridged that gap with His ultimate sacrifice, of course - the body of Jesus on an altar made of Roman lumber.  The wages of sin were paid in full.  There are no more guilt offerings.  All that was left for us to do is to place our lives in Him.  Never before had such a gift been given, and never since.  Those who accept it have no sin to work off, no condemnation to dread.  We're left standing with nothing but our gratitude.

There is, however, an appropriate response.  It has nothing to do with merit or guilt, but only with the thankfulness that should naturally flow from a redeemed heart.  It is our spiritual act of worship.

The response is for us to walk to that tabernacle or temple as the Israelites did in days of old, approach the Priest, and hand Him the sacrifice that we brought out of our gratitude: ourselves.  We are to envision our Priest doing His duty by taking the sacrifice, placing it on the altar of God, and accepting it in His name.  But unlike the old sacrifices, this sacrifice still lives.  It lives a dedicated life, an altar life.  It now belongs to the Priest.  We are in His hands.

But what does it mean to lay our lives on God's altar?  Imagine a scene from the movies: In some distant tribal culture, one man saves another's life.  According to custom, the saved now belongs to the savior.  And why not?  If not for the rescuer, the rescued one would be dead.  His life rightfully belongs to the one who preserved it.  He might as well spend the rest of his days for the one who actually gave him the rest of his days.

So it is with Jesus and His sheep.  We were lost and, for all practical purposes, dead.  That's not our preferred assessment of ourselves, but it's what the Bible says.  Without Jesus, we'd be forever lost and lifeless.  But He rescued us.  And in His culture, we now belong to Him.  We are to live out the rest of our days - the days He mercifully gave us - for Him.

That's what being a living sacrifice is all about.  It means that when Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek, we don't have the right to say, "No, not this time."  When Jesus tells us to give all we have - our time, our talents, our money, or even our deepest desires - to some aspect of His work, we don't have the authority to decline.  We are not our own; we have no claim on our own lives.  We were bought with a precious, heavy price.  We were saved for the One who saved us.

Just as Jesus laid Himself on God's altar for our sin, we are to lay ourselves on that altar for His righteousness.  We don't earn His righteousness, of course.  But practically, God puts it into us - He works it into our spirits - to the extent that we lay down our tainted lives in exchange for His resurrected one.

The implications of that relationship are astounding.  Radical.  Relentless.  It was an "everything" purchase for a "forever" promise.  Living sacrifices don't live for themselves.  They live for Another.  That's their service of worship.