Day 3 Present Your Body as a Living Sacrifice
Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Romans 12:1
All theology is practical and all Christian practice is theological. The gospel is both deeply theological and eminently practical. The good news about Jesus Christ (the gospel) transforms people’s lives. Until Christians own and live out the theology, the gospel has not achieved its purpose.
‘Therefore, I urge you, brothers’ (12:1). The choice of the word ‘brothers’ is intentional. Throughout the letter’s earlier chapters, Paul has been conscious of the tensions between Jews and Gentiles in the Roman church, and in chapters 9 to 11 he has been describing the roles of Israel and of the nations in God’s unfolding, historical plan. He will go back to them again in chapters 14 and 15. But now, all brothers and sisters, irrespective of their ethnic origin, are brothers and sisters in the one, international family of God. All have the same calling to be holy, committed, humble, loving and conscientious people of God.
The ground of Paul’s appeal is emphasised by the word ‘therefore’ and the reference to God’s mercy (literally: mercies). The key word of chapters 9 to 11 has been ‘mercy.’ Salvation depends ‘not … on man’s desire or effort but on God’s mercy’ (9:16) and His purpose is ‘to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy’ (9:23). As the disobedient Gentiles ‘have now received mercy’ so too Israel will ‘now receive mercy’ (11:30f). ‘For God has bound all men over to disobedience that he may have mercy on them all’ (11:32).
It is ‘in view of God’s mercy’ that Paul makes his appeal. There is no greater incentive to holy living than a full and healthy understanding of God’s grace. Far from encouraging or even condoning sin, God’s grace is the foundation of righteous living.
Paul’s appeal has a double nature. It concerns our bodies and our minds, the presentation of our bodies to God and our transformation through the renewal of our minds. Christians no longer offer literal sacrifices; Christ has fulfilled and so brought to an end the Old Testament sacrificial system. But the New Testament use of temple language has an important salvation-historical function, claiming for Christianity the fulfillment of those institutions so central to the Old Testament and to Judaism. Here in 12:1 the sacrifice we offer is our bodies themselves. It is not just what we can give that God commands; He demands the giver.
‘I urge you … to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship’ (12:1). Paul sees us as a priestly people who, in gratitude for God’s mercy, ‘offer’ or present our bodies as living sacrifices. The verb ‘present,’ unlike its parallel in 6;13 and 19, means ‘offer as a sacrifice.’ Our bodies, offered in this way are described as both ‘holy’ and ‘pleasing’ to God, which seem the moral equivalents to being physically unblemished (or without defect) and a fragrant aroma (cf. Leviticus 1:3,9). ‘Holy’ is a regular description of sacrifices and implies that the offering of ourselves to God involves being ‘set apart’ from the profane in dedication to God’s service.
This offering of our bodies is our ‘spiritual act of worship’ (12:1). The term ‘spiritual’ here could mean either ‘reasonable’ or ‘rational.’ If ‘reasonable’ is intended, then the offering of ourselves to God is seen as the only sensible, logical and appropriate response. If ‘rational’ is intended, the meaning is something like ‘the worship offered by mind and heart,’ spiritual as opposed to ceremonial, an act of worship that involves our mind.
This living sacrifice is the presentation of our bodies to God. This would challenge much Greek thinking that saw the body as the tomb in which the spirit was imprisoned and from which it longed to escape. The traditional evangelical invitation is to give our ‘hearts’ to God (and not our bodies). But no worship is pleasing to God that is only inward, abstract and mystical. Biblical worship will express itself in concrete acts of service through our bodies. Christian discipleship likewise will include both the ‘mortification’ of our body’s wrong deeds (8:13) and the open presentation of our bodies to God.