Romans Series – Living Sacrifice

God planned his promise before the foundation of the world.  We are very temporal, very event oriented people.  So it can be confusing to know that to God, Jesus was always the sacrificed lamb.  So the irony is strong when we look at when the Roman and religious leaders presented both a murderer and Jesus to the Jewish crowd asking which one to set free.  And the crowd chose to release a murderer, someone to takes life, and condemn Jesus, the giver of life.

I appeal to you therefore, brothers,1 by the mercies of God, ato present your bodies bas a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

This verse is critically important.  Pay attention to the word “therefore”.  When you see it ask, “What is it there for?”  Jesus lived as a perfect example for us.  But more than that, he lived a tempted life.  And we can even say that Jesus was tempted beyond anything we could.  It is very unlikely that Satan would appear to us and say that if we were children of God, turn a stone into bread.  We would just look at him and laugh.

So we have to ask if Jesus was so sacrificial in his love and grace-filled actions, what are we to do?  What is it there for?  The reality of who we are in Christ means that we get to hold on to God as our Heavenly Father.  And we are being transformed into the likeness of Jesus.

The reality of who we are in Christ means that we get to hold on to God as our Heavenly Father.  And we are being transformed into the likeness of Jesus.  And as we are transformed we are called to put our lives, our bodies, our existence forward as a living sacrifice.

We will continue to look at what this looks like in the coming weeks.  How the start and finish to each day should be committed to God.  But we must realize that we have to start with the relationship.  We start with our relationship and accept Jesus as our Savior.  We are saved at that moment!  Therefore, because of that truth, we will give our lives, our actions, our day-to-day lives to God as living sacrifices.  And when we do this, it is seen as our true, reasonable, and proper worship to God.

And when we do this, it is our true, reasonable, and proper worship to God.