12 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. 2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
The supreme act of spiritual worship is to give. It`s not to get something out of God. It`s to give. It`s to give ourselves as a living sacrifice. The only way to fully receive the blessing of God is to give ourselves fully to Him.
MacArthur:
the essential act of the Old Testament Jew's life, his religious life, was the presentation of a sacrifice as an indication of the genuineness of his faith. The central act of a new covenant believer is the presentation of his heart, his soul, his mind, all that he is as a living sacrifice.......an Old Testament Jew who offered a dead animal was not offering a dead animal instead of offering himself but only as an outward symbol of the inward reality of which he was also committed, to which he was also committed and that was offering his own heart. In the New Testament, the outward sacrifices have ceased. And God calls only for the living sacrifice. This is a call to dedication. This is a call to commitment. And this, beloved, is the logical, the only logical conclusion to redemption. There is no other logical conclusion. This is it. Romans 12:1 and 2 is the only proper response to God's redeeming work, the only proper response.
So, what does this mean exactly? How do we offer ourselves as a living sacrifice?
The four elements that are included in the presentation of a believer as a living sacrifice are these four: soul, body, mind and will...soul, body, mind and will. They are the four elements. And they appear in this passage.
First of all, offering myself to God as a living sacrifice implies that my soul has been given to God. It implies that. It all starts at that point. I cannot offer anything else to God unless my soul has been given to Him...this is not something that a person can do unless they're redeemed. Nothing else can be offered to God if the soul hasn't been offered. An unregenerate person cannot give God his body for service, cannot give God his mind, cannot give God his will, cannot respond to God at all......if I am not one who possesses the love of God, all my acts of self-sacrifice are worthless. It doesn't mean a thing to God. He may give to charity, he may give himself to philanthropy, he may sell everything he has and dispense it to poor people and think in his heart he's making an offering to God when the fact of the matter is that's not the case at all.....only when that innermost self has experienced the saving mercy of God does it have the power and motivation to desire a life of sacrifice to God...only then....
Paul then is speaking to believers, "I beseech you," he says....It's a word of gentleness. It's a word of tenderness. It's a word of affection. He comes alongside brethren who are already bent toward this kind of dedication because their souls have been given to God...It isn't anything far removed from their desire. It is the most natural response to their redemption. And so he speaks to them in terms of love and calls to them as fellow believers and brothers. It carries the authority of an Apostle, and yet the tenderness of a loving brother....
Believers have experienced the mercies of God. And since we have experienced the mercies of God, therefore...therefore, we ought to do this...
I believe the mercies of God are everything that God has done for the believer listed in chapters 1 through 11, the whole thing, all the provision of God's mercy for man's sin, all of it. And what have we learned in these first eleven chapters? It is an impressive list.....
And what does mercy mean?.....We don't deserve any of them. But we have been given love and grace and the Holy Spirit and peace and faith and comfort and power and hope and patience and kindness and glory and honor and righteousness and forgiveness and reconciliation and justification and security and eternal life and freedom and resurrection and sonship and intercession, and there are more.
What should be our response who have received so much?...here the greatest motivation of all motivations is given. It is the motivation, listen to it, of gratitude...of gratitude. And he is saying it is almost simply consequential for a believer who has received the infinite unending and eternal mercies of God to, as an act of instant response, almost a reflex, give himself a living sacrifice to the God who gave him so much. To hold back...to hold back at all is an incredible act of injustice and ingratitude, demonstrating a woeful lack of thanks to a gracious, merciful God...
Secondly, then the text tells us the body must be given to God.....Now that isn't always easy because the body is the place where our humanness resides, isn't it? If you don't think so, then you've missed the point of death. Because when a person dies, their spirit goes to heaven, their body goes to the grave. And once that separation is made, there's no problem. The body is that which contains our humanness and our humanness is that which contains our flesh and is that which contains our sin as Romans 6 and 7 so clearly point out to us.
So, it is essential then that we yield the body.... We cannot offer it to the world. We cannot offer it to its own desires. We cannot allow its lusts and passions to run rampant. Our redeemed spirit already His must make a presentation to God of our body.....What God wants is a perpetual offering. What He wants is not something that you bring once and it's burned up, but something that is perpetually offered and never dies and is never consumed, it's just always offered, always offered, always offered....It isn't that God is saying to you, are you will to go get burned up? Are you willing to go out and die? What He is saying is, are you willing to say to God I will live the rest of my life without anything that I now hold dear if that is Your will? And that is a perpetual and lasting commitment. That's the stuff of which a living sacrifice is made....
What God wants is an unspotted, unblemished self sacrifice....With the sacrifices of total commitment, of purity, God is satisfied....He's satisfied, then, when we offer our bodies totally holy, set apart, pure, undefiled, and this is, notice at the end of verse 1, this is your spiritual worship.....You come to worship God with an offering. What are you bringing Him? Are you bringing Him a defiled carcass? Are you saying, "O yes, Lord, I give You myself," in the midst of all your defilement, of all your sin of all the garbage in your life? Maybe it's a lot, maybe it's a little, but either way you're not unspotted. God only accepts a holy sacrifice....here it is used of the believer priest offering up his body in consecrated sacrifice to God. ....God isn't looking for your talent, folks. God isn't looking for your innate gifts of leadership. God is looking for you to give yourself....
The third one is the mind must be given to God.... It is in the mind that our new nature and our humanness find their mix, right? It is in the mind that we make choices as to whether we will express that new man in holiness or allow our flesh to act in unholiness. So if the soul is to present the body, the mind must be renewed....
we are called by the Spirit of God through the Apostle Paul here to not allow ourselves to become conformed to the purposes and ethics and standards and moralities of our time which are Satanic....Don't sit there and allow it to be done....Don't pattern yourself, don't allow yourself to be continually patterned after the world and the spirit of the age which is not connected to what you are on the inside. Don't wear the mask of the world...
The renewed mind is a mind that is saturated and controlled by the Word of God... It's that constant influx of the Word of God that brings about the transformation to a renewed or renovated mind so that a renovated mind then can more readily present the body to God....
And finally, we must present the will to God...the will. And when we've presented the soul and the body and the mind, we will approve what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. We will say I approve of Your will, God. We will give our will up and we will say You're good and You're perfect will, I approve. That's what I want. I don't want what I want, I want what You want. Good, genuinely good, I mean, really good, acceptable, perfect will of God. See, it calls for giving up our own will ultimately. I don't want my own will, I want Your will. Can you say that? I don't care...I don't care where I live, I don't care what I possess, I don't care what I have and don't have, I just want whatever You want, that's all...that's all.
A renewed mind, a renewed mind will be expressed in a submissive will and in a body presented as a living sacrifice. It all comes in one package. You can't present your body unless you have a renewed mind because you won't have the will to do that. But when you have a renewed mind, your will will be submissive to God and you will offer your body as a living sacrifice. And the key is a saturated mind, an obedient will, body presented.....you do it how often? All the time, every waking moment, it's a conscious renewing act. Give Him your mind renewed by the Word. Give Him your will, submitting to His will.
We need to constantly renew our minds by the Word so that we can choose to give Him our will which is submitted to His and live our lives daily as a living sacrifice, out of gratitude for all He has done for us when we were so undeserving.
Tomorrow's scripture focus: Romans 12:3-8
1 comment:
Oh man, this is such a timely post. I realize I'm reading it a few days late because I've been playing catch-up, but still... very timely.
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