Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. (Romans 12:1)
Beloved, God is calling all his true children in the last days before His coming to a higher realm of existence, yes, into the realm of sacrificial living. For Christ will come again to receive His holy and consecrated people from the world. (Revelation 19:7).
To live a sacrificial life is to imitate Christ, the ultimate sacrifice and this is the highest calling a Christian can attain. This is also the ultimate readiness for the coming of Christ.
How do we begin to attain this level of Christ readiness? It is by learning the act of giving it all up for God: laying down our most prized possession, which is our self-desires and cravings on the altar of sacrifice to God. It is an act of giving up our struggles, our own way for God’s way, and allowing his way and will to have the ultimate say in our lives.
Offering our life as a living sacrifice for God will cost us because it will require a decisive and painful decision and not a tentative decision of part sacrifice. Where we get to keep a part of our lives from the fire of sacrifice and giving up the other.
No, it will require a wholesome sacrifice of our lives. It is a final stroke of the death of selfish living in exchange for living for Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. It is being alive to God among the spiritually dead.
This is the most difficult navigation in the pilgrimage of a Christian because the “killing of our self-desire” on the altar of sacrifice for Christ is the most painful step in our ascension towards heaven. Yet it is a necessary decision if anyone would be like Christ.
What does the Bible say about this matter?
Living sacrificially for God entails the ability and the willingness to continually transform our lives to that of Christ by not conforming or allowing the world and its expectations to determine our ambitions and desires. It is about knowing for ourselves what the will of God is and working towards this alone.
No wonder the Bible admonishes the true Christian, saying, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.”
In this context, in living sacrificially, we must understand what God’s expectations are if we must live a victorious lifestyle as Christians.
God expects us to live up to His expectations in terms of knowing that we are called out of a dying world and to live for Christ while sacrificing worldly desires on the altar of Christ.
A Christian willing to navigate this most difficult bend in his pilgrimage must recognize that he is called and chosen for a holy purpose, away from the world of sin and selfish desires (Deut. 14:12).
To this end, the Bible tells the sacrificial Christian, who wants to live like the lamb of God in a wicked world not to “present the parts of your body to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and present the parts of your body to Him as instruments of righteousness. (6:13).
Beloved, the world and all its present pomp and glory are dying and only those who have chosen to live sacrificially for God in this present age will inherit a crown that never fades, at the end of this age.
And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away. (1 Peter 5:4).
Now, know this and have peace in Christ, “And this world is fading away, along with everything that people crave. But anyone who does what pleases God will live forever”. (1 John 2:17).
Doing the will of God at the expense of those things which our self will desires is the ultimate calling of a Christian and therein is the power of God made available to the church.
The demonstrable power of God to convict the world of sin and convince them of His saving grace lies in our sacrificial living.
Reading
Romans 6:1-18
