July 14, 2023

Romans 12: 1 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. (NIV)

Jesus does not ask me to die for Him but to lay down my life for Him.*

There are some major differences between animal sacrifices and the sacrifice that this passage urges us to make: 

1.  Animals were slaughtered before they were offered as sacrifices. We are called to be living sacrifices. 

2.  If the animals were placed on the altar while still alive, they would have had to be restrained to keep them there. We must place ourselves on the altar and willingly stay there. 

3.  Our sacrifice is an act of worship; the animal’s sacrifice was someone else’s act of worship. 

We know what the sacrifice of an animal looks like – bloody death. But what does a living sacrifice look like? Well, yours might look like passing up a lucrative business opportunity in order to serve in a ministry position, or giving up some overtime hours so that you can spend more time with your family. My living sacrifice involves serving the Lord in obscurity instead of satisfying my craving for being where the action is.

As Oswald Chambers writes: “There is actually only one thing you can dedicate to God, and this is your right to yourself.”* Whatever form your sacrifice takes, it will require you to give up your self and give it to God. That is your true and proper worship.

True worship should . . . involve the question, “Lord, what do you want of me?”*