The problem with living sacrifices...

The Christian life is marked by humble service and reverent submission to Christ, out of gratitude for what he achieved at the cross, namely, our salvation. With this in mind, Paul exhorts the believers in Rome to present their bodies as LIVING SACRIFICES to God (Romans 12:1); “living”, because it is Christ who died in their place and “sacrifices” because the motivation for such a life is praise and thanksgiving.

We all are “living sacrifices” wholly devoted to God, renewed each day by his Spirit and living for his Glory no matter what the cost… at least … that’s what we ought to be…

Thinking about what it means to be a “living sacrifice” makes me feel like the “chief of sinners”, I know I don’t live up to the definition it wrote just thirty seconds ago so what is the problem with “living sacrifices”?

Answer – we keep crawling off the altar.

We long we be people who are devoted to gospel living, and look up to men like Paul who declare “to live is Christ and to die is gain” (while he stands atop a skyscraper with his cape blowing in the wind) but the sad reality is that there are two things that cause us to crawl off the altar of living sacrifice:

1) We stop being a “living sacrifice” when we crawl off the altar of praise and thanksgiving in order to wallow in the old sins of our old life.
As human beings we love sin, can’t get enough of it and wouldn’t do it if we didn’t enjoy it; lust, pride, greed, envy, fear of man (in no particular order). As Christians we still struggle with the presence of sin (Romans 7) and this can leave us feeling frustrated and discouraged but, remember, Paul has brought us to Romans 12 via Romans 1-11! And in Romans 6 he declares that we DIED with Christ and as a result we live as though we are dead to sin and alive to God; not least because that is exactly what we are.
Moreover, Jesus has brought our JUSTIFICATION (our being right before God) “by his blood” (Romans 5), this means that the sin that entices us away from a life of living sacrifice can be overcome because Christ’s death secured the victory over sin and its effects. Therefore, we must rejoice and be motivated by our new life in Christ, he has brought us from death to life and as a result we live a transformed life by the power of his Holy Spirit.
Too often we look longingly at our old lives and desire sin like it were a meaningless moment of adult naughtiness and not as it really is, the relationship destroying, decay and degradation for which Christ had to die.

2) We stop being a “living sacrifice” when we crawl off the altar of praise and thanksgiving in order to contribute something to our own salvation.
Christianity looks like to easiest religion in the world, it not about what we do its all about grace and what Jesus has done for us. The reality is, however, that as humans we feel a innate sense of indebtedness, that we ought to repay someone’s kindness. Often this comes from a place of pride, we work or pay back or reciprocate so that we don’t feel beholden to anyone. How dangerous this is for our salvation!
The greatest gift anyone has ever given is God’s own giving of himself in his son Jesus to be our saviour; for this reason Paul can say that “we are saved by grace through faith, not of ourselves but a gift of God, not a result of works so no one can boast” (Ephesians 2: 8-9)
The problem with such immense generosity is we want to pay God back so that we can say, “I did something to earn that I don’t have to feel so bad about accepting it”. What subtle pride!
If our motivation ever strays from, gratitude and praise into working for acceptance we have emptied the cross of its power and rejected the sufficiency of Jesus sacrifice.
As living sacrifices we must lay down our pride and come to Christ with open hands and declare with the blind man “Son of David, have mercy on me a sinner”