Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:
1I am urging you, therefore, brothers, because of the sympathies of God, to present your (pl.) bodies [as] a living sacrifice, holy, [and] well-pleasing to God, [which is] your (pl.) logical/reasonable act of worship..
Continuing through this verse, Paul would urge us to present our bodies as “a living sacrifice, holy, and well-pleasing to God.” Just for the sake of context, we should realize that pretty much all ancient religions involved actual sacrifices. Certainly, the Jewish Christians were intimately familiar with animals being killed as sacrifices. However, it was true of the Gentiles as well.
In ancient cultures, basically “religion” equaled “sacrifices.” In fact, that was so true, it sometimes led to human sacrifices and even parents sacrificing their own children. Such a thought is a horror to us, but remember that is the culture of the people to whom Paul was writing. I’ll stick to discussing animal sacrifices, as the thought of human, and especially child, sacrifices is too horrible to even consider.
How strange this “new” religion must have seemed and even felt, where there are no sacrifices. You’ve always understood that religion meant you bring some animal, even as small as “two young pigeons” (Luke 2:24) and watch it slaughtered. You come to this Christianity and learn that Jesus was “the Lamb of God,” that He was a final sacrifice, that no more are needed. Suddenly you don’t have “sacrifices” to make you feel religious. It must have seemed very strange to them.
Get yourself in their mindset, and then hear Paul tell you to offer your own body as a sacrifice! Of course he qualifies it as a living sacrifice, yet still it is a sacrifice. When it comes to that word “sacrifice,” I suspect we’ve lost their sense of death, and pain, and bloodshed (and even smell!) which the word would have conjured in their brains. So, here they are, in this religion with no more sacrifices, yet it turns out you are the sacrifice!
Into that world, Paul calls them (and us) to be “a living sacrifice, holy, and well-pleasing to God.” In Philippians 2:17, he calls himself “an offering being poured out upon the sacrifice and service of your faith.” You and I are the offering. That really is no surprise. What is it the Lord has always truly wanted? Is it not we ourselves? Paul said of the Macedonians, “They did not do as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then to us” (II Cor. 8:5).
Even under the Old Testament Law, Micah understood this truth. He said, “With what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before the High God? Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I give my first born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has shown you, O man, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God” (6:6-8).
As we’ve noted before, you and I are both the least and the most we have to offer God. Like the Macedonians, the absolute least you or I can give Him is ourselves. We can say to Him, “Lord, I feel like I have so little to give, but whatever little that may be, I give it to you. Though they could only find five loaves and three fishes to feed the thousands, what did Jesus say? “Bring them to Me.” On the other hand, you and I are the most we can give, No matter what else we do, or how much “greatness” we may think we can accomplish, it actually means nothing if we don’t first give ourselves! “Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels and have not love, I am nothing.”
However, then what does it mean to give ourselves? What sort of answers does He give? “Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that confess His name. 16 And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased” (Heb. 13:15,16).
What He desires from us is a living sacrifice. It is a sacrifice of our living. I like what D.G. Dunn said of this offering of our bodies here: Body here “is the physical embodiment of the individual’s consecration in the concrete realities of daily life,,,his concrete relationship within this world; it is because he is body that man can experience the world and relate to others…It is as part of the world and within the world that Christian worship is to be offered by the Christian.”
The Lord is not calling us to hide away in a cave somewhere. He wants you and me to live. For a chosen few, His call may mean some form of full-time ministry, but God’s intent for the vast majority of Christians is for us simply to live. Paul told the people, “Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your hands” (I Thes. 4:13).
In that passage, especially note how Paul goes on to tell them why they should live that simple life: “…so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders” (v.13). In Titus, Paul tells workers to “be subject to their bosses in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them, and not to steal from them, but to show that they can be fully trusted, so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive” (2:9,10). The loudest voice the world should hear from us regular Christians is our lives. You and I are “the gentle rains” that “soften the earth,” so that when God’s seed is sown, it might find good soil to grow in people’s hearts.
The key then is that we live for Him. All day every day, as you and I go to work and do our jobs, as we interact with people, as we go home to spend the evening with our families, as we mow the grass and change our babies’ diapers, He wants us to do it all for Him.
He loves every one of those people. He would draw them to Himself with His love. He could do it Himself, but He is offering to you and I the wonderful privilege of being the immediate expression of that love into the lives of people – everyone in our family, our friends, the people at work, the people at our church, our next-door neighbors, the cashier at the grocery store. As you and I go about living, we are exactly where the Lord wants us to be.
All of this then feeds into how else Paul describes our offering – “holy, well-pleasing to God.” “Holy” means first of all “consecrated.” As I go out into my day, my heart should be reminding me, “I am a servant of the Most High God.” With all of my life, “My meat is to do His will and to finish it.” However, it is His will. Circling back to the idea of a living sacrifice, you and I need to let our ambitions be driven by Scripture, that we might in fact be “well-pleasing to God.” We mustn’t let our lives be driven by even “church” traditions,” but rather by our knowledge of the Word.
Paul warned the Colossians, “See to it that no one takes you captive through deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition rather than on Christ” (2:8). This then will lead into Romans 12:2, “Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed…,” but we’ll have to be patient and consider that next.
A living sacrifice. May, in fact, our living today be truly for Him. May all of our believing lives, we His church, together be a beautiful symphony, drawing the world into the loving arms of our Jesus!
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