A MERCIFUL SACRIFICE
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· 9 viewsThe motivation for Christian commitment is the “the mercies of God.”
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I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
Romans 12:1 is Christianity’s foundational and most well known verses concerning Christian commitment. One commentator said of this passage; “Here lies the formula for how to avoid the wasted life.”
Romans 12-16 marks the transition from the redemptive acts of Christ to the logical expectations that flow from that theological base. If God had not done what he did for us, there would be no compelling reason why we should now do what he says.
Romans 12:3-16:14 calls Christians to a certain lifestyle. Though Paul dedicates five chapters to Christian duty he dedicates eleven chapters to Christian doctrine. The Christian life is not based on ignorance but knowledge, and the better we understand Bible doctrine the easier it is to obey our Bible duties.
When people say, “Don’t talk to me about doctrine—just let me live my Christian life!” they are revealing their ignorance of the way the Holy Spirit works in the life of the believer.
“It makes no difference what you believe, just as long as you live right” is a similar confession of ignorance. It does make a difference what you believe, because what you believe determines how you behave!"
And so let us not forget that the vital part of doctrine is "do"! You may think you know Romans 1-11, but you don't unless you are allowing it to "know you" and you are living it out in the practical issues of day to day life. James nailed this down by warning us not to be hearers but doers of the word, lest we live in a state of self delusion.
But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.
You have not really learned the Word of God unless you do the Word of God. The doing I speak of is not legalistic but empowered by the Spirit and strengthened by the grace of Christ Jesus.
Today’s church is made up mainly of two groups; those who love doctrine and those who love doing. Most church people fall into the latter group. One group wants more Bible study yet they are not excited about doing anything with their study. The other group wants to breakthrough the four walls and just do something yet they are not completely sure as to why they are doing what they are doing.
But both views are out of balance. To leap into the practical section without the doctrine would be like building a house without a foundation. A solid foundation may not be exciting to look at, but without it your house will not stand for long. On the other hand, to spend all of your time on the foundation and never to build the house would be useless. The whole point of laying the foundation is to build an attractive house to live in.
Therefore always precedes “just do it” in Scripture. Therefore in Romans 12:1 connects chapters 12-16 to chapter 1-11. God never responds to His children’s why questions with “just do it because I told you so.” Though He has every right to do so He knows our heart well. He knows their are those whose heart’s gravitate towards legalism and will obey to win His favor. He knows their are others whose heart’s gravitate towards licentiousness (those who disregard rules) and will view Him as restrictive and unloving. He wants our hearts to be motivated by what motivates His heart, love. Therefore, connects our head (doctrine) to our heart (duty). For the legalist it gives their heart a right motive and for the licentious it gives reveals to them the Father’s freedom and love.
Real, authentic, Christianity responds to the call of sacrificial commitment with the question, why? Jesus taught in Luke 14:25-34 true disciples count the cost. We follow Jesus with both our heart and head. Those who count the cost, with help of the Holy Spirit, see this commitment as a right and reasonable response in light of what Christ has accomplished on their behalf.
The motivation for Christian commitment is the “the mercies of God.”
Romans 12:1a, “Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God ….” Each word in this phrase is important.
In one sense, therefore follows directly from
For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.
If all things are from God and through God and to God, then it follows that our lives belong completely to God. If all things are going to culminate in God’s glory, then we should give our lives totally for His glory.
But there is another sense in which therefore relates back to everything that Paul has said in Romans 1-11. He began by showing that we all are hopelessly, helplessly lost in sin. He sums it up
as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one;
no one understands; no one seeks for God.
All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins
in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—
among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us,
If that is our true condition outside of Christ, then we all need one thing above all else: God’s mercy. Paul uses the plural, mercies, because the Hebrew word is a plural with a singular meaning. God’s primary display of mercy to us is at the cross, where Christ died for us as sinners. However, his mercy doesn’t stop at the cross. They are manifold, meaning they are numerous and varied. Jeremiah teaches us that they are eternal and renewed each morning. Fresh mercy for failures.
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
None of us can claim that God owes us salvation because of our good works or for any other reason. We’ve all disobeyed God thousands of times. We deserve His judgment. All that we can do is cry out to Him for mercy. Listen to God’s promise to those who will cry out for mercy
For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
Paul assumes that his readers have taken hold of God’s great mercies in Christ, because he calls them brethren. All that have experienced the new birth through God’s Spirit have been born into God’s family. Here Paul wasn’t asserting his apostolic authority, but he put himself on the same level as them. The ground is level at the foot of the cross, where we all find God’s abundant mercy.
In the same vein, he says, “I urge you.” The Greek word comes from two words meaning, “to call alongside.” The noun form is used of the Holy Spirit, who comes alongside to give us help. It can mean exhort, but here it seems to have the gentler sense of urge or appeal, as it is translated when Paul writes to
Accordingly, though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do what is required,
yet for love’s sake I prefer to appeal to you—I, Paul, an old man and now a prisoner also for Christ Jesus—
Paul is urging us to respond to the great truth of God’s mercy even as he has done, by giving our bodies totally to God as living sacrifices.
Motive is crucial in everything we do. Have you ever had someone act nicely towards you and then you found out later that he was doing it to manipulate you into doing something for him? His ulterior motive canceled everything nice that he had done. Your motive for giving yourself totally to God is crucial.
The proper response to receiving God’s mercy is to give yourself totally to Him out of gratitude. Years ago, Captain Shaw, a medical missionary with the Salvation Army in India, visited a leper colony that his mission was taking over. He saw three men with shackles on their hands and feet, cutting into their diseased flesh. Captain Shaw’s eyes brimmed with tears as he told the guard, “Please unfasten the chains.”
“It isn’t safe,” replied the guard. “These men are dangerous criminals as well as lepers!”
“I’ll be responsible,” said Shaw. “They’re suffering enough.” After the shackles were removed, he tenderly treated the men’s bleeding wrists and ankles.
About two weeks later, Captain Shaw had his first misgivings about freeing these criminals. He had to make an overnight trip and he hesitated to leave his wife and child alone. His wife insisted that she wasn’t afraid; God was there. The next morning she went to the front door and was startled to see the three former criminals lying on her steps. One explained, “We know the doctor go. We stay here all night so no harm come to you.” These men had experienced the doctor’s mercy. They responded out of love and gratitude by serving him.Everett Harrison puts it this way (Expositor’s Bible Commentary, ed. by Frank Gaebelein [Zondervan], 10:127).
“Whereas the heathen are prone to sacrifice in order to obtain mercy, biblical faith teaches that the divine mercy provides the basis for sacrifice as the fitting response.” The great motive for giving yourself totally to God is that you have experienced His great mercy in Christ. Have you experienced His mercy by calling on Him to save you? Without that, all service to God is just moralism, based on wrong motives. The only right motive is God’s mercy through the gospel.
The basic commitment for Christian living is to give your body totally to God as a living, holy, and acceptable sacrifice, which is your reasonable service of worship.
Believers are exhorted to “make a decisive dedication” of themselves as worshipers stepping forward to place their offerings on the altar. Holiness of life rarely progresses apart from deliberative acts of the will. While sanctification is gradual in the sense that it continues throughout life, each advance depends upon a decision of the will.
THIS COMMITMENT IS AN ACT OF THE WILL.
It isn’t automatic. It’s a decision that you must think about rationally and then make. You have to decide to give your body, your possessions, and your entire life completely to God.
The sacrifice spoken of here is different from the O.T. for it speaks of a “living sacrifice”. In the O.T. the sacrifice lost its life in the N.T. the sacrifice voluntarily gives up its life, which makes the sacrifice “holy and pleasing to God.” Our living sacrifice made in response to God’s abundant mercy is pleasing to God.
This is the worship due from you as rational creatures. In view of God’s acts of mercy it is entirely fitting that we commit ourselves without reservation to him. To teach that accepting the free gift of God’s grace does not necessarily involve a moral obligation on our part is a heresy of gigantic proportions. The popular cliche “He is Lord of all or not Lord at all” is absolutely right.
Paul means that it is only rational that believers dedicate their entire life to God, by living in a spiritual way that worships Him, based on all He has done for us.
Commitment isn’t our giving anything to God. It is taking our hands off what already belongs to God.
If you ever find it hard to do what you know is the right thing, don't say, "I ought to do this or that" "Ought" won't help. Instead, think of God's MERCY to you & of Christ's great love. In view of God's MERCY you will want to do right.
THIS COMMITMENT IS BOTH INITIAL AND ONGOING.
“Present” is in the aorist tense, which means you’ve got to keep renewing this commitment. You present all of yourself that you’re aware of to all of God that you know. As you grow in the Christian life, you become aware of areas in your life that are not yielded to God. So you put those things on the altar. You become aware of more about the lordship of Christ than you knew. So you yield again and again to Him. The Christian walk is a constant laying oneself in new and fresh ways on the altar of sacrifice as you grow to understand more about yourself and God.
THIS COMMITMENT IS YOUR REASONABLE SERVICE OF WORSHIP.
The word which Paul used is often translated reasonable. It is the word logikos where we get our word logical. In light of what God mercifully has done for us, it’s only reasonable that we should give ourselves totally to Him.
If you weigh all that God has done in mercy in the light of who you were as a sinful, hopeless enemy of His righteousness, the only reasonable response is to lay your life on the altar for Him.”
Worship translates refers to the service of priests in the temple. Paul is applying this word for religious worship to our everyday lives. He means that everything that we do should be offered up to God as an act of worship.
Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe,
In Hebrews 13:15-16 the writer uses the language of sacrifice to say,
Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name.
Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.
John Calvin has a wonderfully helpful chapter, “The Sum of the Christian Life: the Denial of Ourselves.” He writes:
We are not our own: let not our reason nor our will, therefore, sway our plans and deeds. We are not our own: let us therefore not set it as our goal to seek what is expedient for us according to the flesh. We are not our own: in so far as we can, let us therefore forget ourselves and all that is ours.
Conversely, we are God’s: let us therefore live for him and die for him. We are God’s: let his wisdom and will therefore rule all our actions. We are God’s: let all the parts of our life accordingly strive toward him as our only lawful goal.
F. B. Meyer reflected on a turning point to his spiritual life and how he overcame this fear. “The devil said, ‘Don’t do it!. There is no knowing what you may come to.’ At first I thought there was something to it, then I remembered my daughter, who was a little willful then, and loved her own way. I thought to myself as I knelt, Supposing that she were to come and say—‘Father, from tonight I am going to put my life in your hand. Do with it what you will.’ Would I call her mother to her side and say, ‘Here is a chance to torment her’? .I knew I would not say that. I knew I would say to my wife, ‘Our child is going to follow our will from now on. Do you know of anything that is hurting her?’ ‘Yes, so and so.’ ‘Does she love it much?’ ‘Yes,’ ‘Oh, she must give it up. But we will make it as easy for her as we can. We must take from her the things that are hurting her, but we will give her everything that will make her life one long summer day of bliss.’“
Have you experienced God’s great mercy in Christ? Then give yourself totally to Him.