Living Sacrifice

The amplified rendering of our opening text says I appeal to you therefore, brethren, and beg of you in view of [all] the mercies of God, to make a decisive dedication of your bodies [presenting all your members and faculties] as a living sacrifice, holy (devoted, consecrated) and well pleasing to God, which is your reasonable (rational, intelligent) service and spiritual worship. This is the first time you will see in scriptures that a sacrifice has the ability to be living, that’s because every sacrifice is expected to be dead to be an actual sacrifice.

Therefore, the Christian life can be a challenge for believers that do not understand the place of submission to the Holy Ghost and total obedience. Let us give a little illustration. If you get for instance a goat and you tie it up and cut its throat to a level where it is not dead, but bleeding and you hands off, what do you think will happen? The goat will most likely run for its life. Living sacrifices always have the temptation of running away from who they are sacrificed to and that is the challenge of the Christian life.

Many believers do not really understand the place of total submission and obedience in serving God. So, most times they will prove to God that they are living even though they are supposed to be a sacrifice. As stated earlier in the amplified rendering of our opening scripture, it says you have got to make a decisive dedication.

It is not the Holy Ghost that will make that decision for you, it is something you have got to tell yourself. There are times when nature will want to speak probably through your flesh, and you will have to shut it up and declare that every aspect of your body and faculties is devoted to God as a sacrifice.