A Living Sacrifice

I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your true worship. —Romans 12:1

Romans 12:1 is the manifesto for the Christian’s surrender to God. Our “bodies” represent the sum total of all we are, all we have, and all we do. As those Old Testament believers signified their consecration by offering up sacrifices to be utterly consumed on the altar, so we are to offer ourselves in totality to be consumed by God.

Unlike the Old Testament sacrifices, however, we’re to offer ourselves as living sacrifices—we are to go on living in these bodies, recognizing that they’re not our own, that they belong to God, whose temple we are. The surrender should be made once and for all, as well as a daily, recurring sacrifice of our lives to God.

It’s a complete presentation of ourselves to God, devoting to Jesus not just our spare evenings but our whole lives. Being a living sacrifice pictures living out that devotion, one day at a time, as we respond to God on the basis of that initial consecration.