{"id":173,"date":"2012-09-23T20:40:18","date_gmt":"2012-09-23T19:40:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/?p=173"},"modified":"2012-09-23T20:40:18","modified_gmt":"2012-09-23T19:40:18","slug":"living-sacrifices-romans-121-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/pbthomas.com\/blog\/?p=173","title":{"rendered":"Living Sacrifices – Romans 12:1-2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Romans 12:1\tTherefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God\u2019s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God\u2014this is your spiritual act of worship.
\nIt was the great preacher Doctor Martyn Lloyd Jones who said, \u201cwhenever you find a \u201ctherefore\u201d in Scripture you need to ask what it\u2019s there for.\u201d
\nThe third section of Paul\u2019s letter to the Romans beginning at chapter 12 verse 1 is a series of instructions for Christian living. The \u201ctherefore\u201d is there to give us the motivation for obeying the instructions which follow. \u201cTherefore\u201d refers to everything in the letter which has gone before. In the light of God\u2019s grace, in the light of the fact that we are saved by faith not by works, in the light of the fact that nothing can separate us from God\u2019s love, because of everything we have learned from the first eleven chapters of Romans, Therefore \u2026. in view of God\u2019s mercy says Paul, this is how you ought to live.
\n12:\tTherefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God\u2019s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices,
\nC.T.Studd was the 19th century captain of the English Cricket team who became a missionary first to China and then to the Belgian Congo. He once said, \u201cIf Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him.\u201d
\nIn the light of everything that Jesus Christ has done for us, each of us should
\nBE A LIVING SACRIFICE
\noffer your bodies as living sacrifices,(NIV)
\nTake your everyday, ordinary life\u2014your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life\u2014and place it before God as an offering. (MESSAGE)
\nThis doesn\u2019t sound too hard, until we remember that the only thing a sacrifice is called upon to do is to DIE. Paul is not saying here, \u201cGo to church.\u201d He is not saying, \u201cbe a good witness\u201d or \u201clive a good life,\u201d or \u201clove your neighbour.\u201d The function of a sacrifice is to die \u2013 to give up its life. To become a living sacrifice means to die with Christ, to die to self, to be crucified with Christ. The problem with most living sacrifices is that they keep getting up and walking off the altar and refusing to die. Even when we realize that we are forgiven and saved, most Christians are still so selfish that we want to choose for ourselves how we live and to do what we want to do. But instead God calls us to be living sacrifices,
\nHoly and pleasing to God
\nBeing holy means being set apart for God\u2019s service, belonging to God instead of belonging to this fallen world. Being holy means to be pure and free from sin and dedicated to serving and obeying God
\nAnd being pleasing to God means always doing what God wants instead of what we would choose for ourselves. \u201cHoly and pleasing to God\u201d \u2013 that\u2019s what it means to be a living sacrifice.
\nThis is your reasonable (spiritual) act of worship
\nTo be a living sacrifice is not some emotional response but rather a rational logical dedication of our lives to God\u2019s service. \u201cActs of worship\u201d were the words used for the worship offered in the Jewish Temple, but Christian worship is not just once a week in some religious place but rather a whole life filled with actions of a living sacrifice. This means continually focusing our minds on pleasing God in whatever we do. Somebody has written,
\n\u201cWorship in our time has been captured by the tourist mindset. Worship is understood as a visit to an attractive site to be made when we have adequate leisure. For some it is a weekly jaunt to church, for others, occasional visits to special services. Some, with a bent for Christian entertainment and sacred diversion, plan their lives around special events like retreats, rallies and conferences. We go to see a new personality, to hear a new truth, to get a new experience and so, somehow, expand our otherwise humdrum lives. We’ll try anything — until something else comes along.\u201d
\nThat kind of once a week, \u201ctourist worship,\u201d \u201cworship as entertainment,\u201d is not true Christian worship. Christian worship is a life filled with service continuously and consciously offered up to God, twenty-four \/ seven.
\nTherefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God\u2019s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God\u2014this is your spiritual act of worship.
\nBut being a living sacrifice in a world which hates God is not easy. It means we have to
\nBE DIFFERENT
\n2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
\nJ.B.\/Phillips translation puts it this way. \u201cDon\u2019t let the world around you squeeze you into its mould!\u201d
\nIt can be so easy and so tempting to fit in, just to go with the flow. But the only thing that goes with the flow is a dead fish. Christians are supposed to be different. Christians are supposed to stand out from the crowd \u2013 however much that costs. The job of a living sacrifice is to die, and Jesus Himself was crucified because he didn\u2019t fit in, because he was so different!
\nRemember what Jesus said in John 15 18 \u201cIf the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. 19 If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. 20 Remember the words I spoke to you: \u2018No servant is greater than his master.\u2019 If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also.
\nIf we are living sacrifices we can expect to stand out from the crowd! But sometimes we aren\u2019t brave enough to dare to be different! Russian Christians sometimes call us Westerners \u201cFour Wheel Christians.\u201d They think that we drive to church for our dedications and our weddings and our Christmas services, and ultimately for our funerals. But real faith should mean much much more than that. The life of a living sacrifice should be very different! So Paul says,
\nLET GOD CHANGE YOU
\nbut be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
\nThe gospel calls us all to repent, and the word repentance, in Greek metanoia, literally means a change of mind or a change of direction. The problem many of us face is that by the time we become Christians we have lived so long in the world that our ways of thinking are corrupted and perverted by the world around. We saw this so clearly in Romans 1
\n21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.
\n28 Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. <\/p>\n

So from the very start our minds are opposed to God, locked into evil thoughts and selfish attitudes. We can\u2019t begin to live holy lives or to please God until God has changed us.
\nOur minds need to be transformed, metamorphosed like a caterpillar into a butterfly, made new by God so that our thinking can glorify Him. Too often Christians are not caterpillars but simply chameleons, not transformed inwardly but simply changing on the outside to blend in with their surroundings.
\nbe transformed by the renewing of your mind.
\nOur minds need to be renewed so that our thinking can glorify God!
\nJ.B.Phillips Don\u2019t let the world around squeeze you into its own mould, but let God remould your minds from within.
\nThis renewing of our minds will take hard work. It will take learning, immersing ourselves in the Bible, learning from theology and church history and morality and ethics so that we will really know how to please God. And renewing our minds is an ongoing process, a lifelong process. It\u2019s about Sermons and Home Groups and personal Bible Study and prayer and reading Christian books. It\u2019s about asking God to revolutionise the way we think about everything!
\nPhilippians 4 8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable\u2014if anything is excellent or praiseworthy\u2014think about such things.
\nBe transformed by the renewing of the mind. It does disturb me how some churches in these days are only concerned with experiences and emotions and devalue and neglect study and developing a Christian mind. This is so important, says Paul, because only as God transforms our minds,
\nThen you will be able to test and approve what God\u2019s will is
\nGod has his general will, the way he wants all Christian to live, loving each other and loving our neighbours and proclaiming the gospel by every means that we can. But God also has His specific will for each of our lives, his perfect plan to give us the very best life we could possibly have.
\nhis good, pleasing and perfect will.
\nAnd the most appropriate response any of us can make to God\u2019s love for us is to devote our lives to finding out what God\u2019s good, pleasing and perfect will is for our own life, and then living that out day by day.
\nGod\u2019s will is GOOD \u2013 it has no bad bits, no sneaks, no tricks, no hidden surprises, no booby traps. Jesus said, \u201cHow much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask Him.\u201d Jim Elliott, the missionary martyr to the Auca Indians, said, \u201cThat man is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.\u201d
\nGod\u2019s will is PLEASING Obeying God pleases God, but it is also pleasing and satisfying to us. However much it costs, following God\u2019s will is worth it!
\nGod\u2019s will is PERFECT \u2013 it is complete, self contained, self-sufficient. If we are walking in God\u2019s will, we won\u2019t need anything else to live life which is a happy and completely fulfilled. It is enough to be a living sacrifice!
\nAnother missionary to Africa, David Livingstone, wrote this in his journal.
\n\u201cPeople talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. Can that be called a sacrifice which is simply paid back as a small part of a great debt owing to our God, which we can never repay? Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view and with such a thought! It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege.\u201d
\nTo offer ourselves to God as living sacrifices is indeed a privilege \u2013 after all Christ has done for us it is the least we can do!
\n12\tTherefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God\u2019s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God\u2014this 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\u2019s will is\u2014his good, pleasing and perfect will. NIV<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Romans 12:1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God\u2019s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God\u2014this…<\/span><\/p>\n

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