Being a Living Sacrifice

Romans 12:1 - “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”

I read about sacrifice in My Utmost for His Highest several days ago, and I've been ruminating on different ideas about sacrifice ever since then. I decided to write up my conclusions to focus them better for myself. Since I was writing them up anyway, why not post them on the blog? These are just a few thoughts I had on sacrifice, a sort of combination of my paraphrasing of Oswald Chambers as well as a few insights I received from reading the about Abraham's intended sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis.

Sacrifice simply for the sake of sacrifice is pointless. God never demands that we sacrifice just to sacrifice. Our sacrifices need to have a purpose; they need to be useful to God. It took me a while to grasp fully what Chambers was getting at in this entry (and the above is my paraphrase of what he wrote), but I found myself thinking about Lent, and this really worked as a good illustration for me to understand this concept. Fasting or abstinence from something during Lent was designed to prepare the believer to focus more deeply on the death and resurrection of Christ, to clear out worldly distractions and leave only Christ. But it has become a meaningless ritual for a lot of people. A lot of people give something up at Lent simply because it's a custom. And a lot of people choose to give up something that they won't even really miss. Such a sacrifice is pointless. It is neither holy nor acceptable, and it is useless to God.

Being a living sacrifice means sacrificing our lives to God's purpose. Our talents, our skills, our assets, our plans. Being a living sacrifice means giving up these things not so that we can never use them again at all, but so that God can use them in a way different from the selfish way in which we would use them, so that He can use them to accomplish His divine purpose.

God requires unquestioning obedience from us. And this in itself is a type of sacrifice.

Genesis 22:9-12 - “When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son. But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here am I.” He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.”

God told Abraham to sacrifice his son, the son he had waited for for so many long years. And Abraham was not only willing, he never even questioned God. To follow God with such unquestioning obedience, Abraham had to sacrifice all of his own personal thoughts, feelings, questions, and plans. And in spirit, he did sacrifice his own son, for the willingness and intention were there.

But then God stayed Abraham's hand, allowing Isaac to live. Because God had plans to work through Isaac to establish His people. He needed Isaac alive to complete His work, needed Isaac to be a living sacrifice.