What is a Living Sacrifice?

God is pleased with sacrifice only when it is according to His word. Many different religions practice sacrifice as worship, but like Cain’s sacrifice, are empty because they lack what God is looking for; His word.

But Romans 12:1 – 2 states that God is pleased with a holy and acceptable living sacrifice. He rewards it with the revelation of His good, pleasing, and perfect will. And so, what is the living sacrifice that is pleasing to God?

The key word is “living” and comes from the Greek word zoe, and means something that has life in it. In this case, it is a sacrifice that has life in it; holy and acceptable life. In John 6:51, Jesus called Himself the living bread, referring to the holy life in His body, which He would give for the life of the world. Taken out of context, the phrase living bread would have the meaning of bread that had weevils in it or something else alive.

The living sacrifice that God is looking for is the life of His Son, Jesus Christ, living in my body. This is the holy and pleasing (acceptable) life that abides in you who have been born from above. It is the life of God, the Holy Spirit.

But a sacrifice is something that is given to God in death. God’s word is not instructing you to present Christ in you as a sacrifice, but rather your body as the sacrifice, which has the life of Christ. Your mind and your body have sin in it (Romans 7:17 – 20), even though the penalty for your sins has been paid in full by Jesus Christ and His death on the cross, the power of sin is still active in you. This is the conflict between the Spirit and the flesh that Paul so often describes (Galatians 5:16 – 26). Paul gives instructions for overcoming the power of sin in you in Romans 6, and here in 12:1 – 2 he gives instructions of true worship as you present your body under the search light of the Holy Spirit to reveal sin to turn from (gift of repentance) by seeing it for the deadly, destructive, deceiving thing that it is! This is an act of true worship.

During this season of sacrifice (lent), ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you lies that you have believed and sin that you have accepted and tolerate. Sacrifice it rather than some food you give up for lent. Let this be a daily act of worship. Memorize Galatians 2:20 during lent. God is pleased with this because He sees His Son in it, and the great sacrifice He paid to remove your sin as far as the east is from the west!

Tomorrow we will see the role of your saved mind in repentant-worship.