Living Sacrifice

(Note:  I received several requests for copies of the message I preached at the New Life Seminary Awards Banquet. So I am posting it here for anyone who wants it.)

Rom 12:1-2

What is the most important decision you make in life, outside of your decision to receive Christ as your savior?  Is it whether or not to go to college? Is it your wife?  Is it your career? These are important to be sure, but people can change colleges, careers. They can even change wives.  Even if they do not, we can adjust wherever and to whomever we have. 

People to think that the most important decisions they make are the big ones. But what matters is the accumulation of a lifetime of little decisions, done over and over, until they become habitual. 

One little decision is a choice. Making the same decision twice is an inclination. Three times and it becomes a habit. We are defined or defiled by our habits. Habits do not make our lives—they are our lives.

We get fat when we develop a habit of eating.  We get rich when we develop a habit of saving. We get healthy when we develop a habit of exercise. We get close to God when we develop a habit of prayer. We become generous when we develop the habit of giving. We become beloved when we develop a habit of showing love to others.  These little habits define who we actually are, far more than our thoughts, intentions, hopes, or dreams. 

With that in mind, look at this passage.  Paul tells us—no, he begs us by the mercy of God--to we present our bodies as living sacrifices to God.  Why a living sacrifice?  Because it is a decision that we must make again and again. 

Suppose a man came into this room with a machine gun and said “Renounce Christ and I’ll kill you.” Most of us, I am sure, would choose without hesitation to stand firm, even to our death.  It is a simple, clear cut decision, which we would have to only do once. But following Jesus is not that kind of a decision. It doesn’t happen once, but daily, every day, for our entire lives. 

We make a promise to God that we will get up and have devotionshen hit the snooze button. We have just broken a promise to God. In that moment we have denied His authority over us. We promise Jesus we will fast today then change our minds.  We get angry at our spouse, and take our troubles out on her, even though we promised to love and cherish her forever. We put our love of college football above our love of the faith, by skipping church to go to a Clemson game. We critics and ostracize another believer, even though we promise God that we would treat others like Him.  In a thousand little decisions every day, choose self-indulgence over self-denial. That’s the problem with a living sacrifice—we keep crawling off the altar.

Please understand, I do not suggest that being a living sacrifice is hard. It isn’t—it’s impossible! No one does it perfectly. Fortunately, God’s in Christ has already forgiven our failures, so we don’t have to worry about punishment.  But the consequences are still ours.

 There is a difference between consequences are punishments. Punishments are corrections imposed upon us from without.  Consequences are the natural fruit of our efforts, or lack of effort.  If we eat ice cream three times a day, we will get fat.  No one makes us fat but ourselves.  Don’t blame it on God.  If we spend money on nice clothes, then can’t pay the mortgage, you are experiencing the consequences of a little decision.  If we walk in a path away from Him, why do we think we would feel close to Him later?  He has not moved--we have. 

But if we daily present our bodies to Him, denying our own habits in order to do His will, we will get closer to God. We either choose to get close to Him every day or we choose to get farther away every day.

Paul goes on do not be conformed to this world.  J. B. Phillips rendered it “do not let the world squeeze you into its mold.” There is a powerful force in this world pushing against us, forcing us not to follow Jesus every day.  It is the Devil. It is our own habits and inclinations. But Paul calls it “the world.” It is as if the whole world is out to keep you from following Him, which it is. 

If we do not choose to follow Jesus every day, we will become increasingly like everyone else around us and less like Jesus. Eventually we join our voices to their chorus pushing against people who want to follow him.  We either resist the enemy or we join it. As we look at the church around us, we can see that this has already happened. We are like  people trying to swim across a rushing river.  If we do nothing, you will be swept away.  Every moment, you must struggle not to let that happen.

Paul says be transformed by the renewing of your minds.  If you do this, you will be able to say “What Jesus wants is what you want.” Your will surrenders to his and we become what we want to become, true children of God, a new and different person. 

The tricky part of this passage is the term mind.  We get hung up there, especially Presbyterians, into thinking that if we are rational, if we just think hard enough, we will become like Jesus.  

Does this work in any other sphere of life? If you read a drivers’ manual, can you drive a car?  If you read the biography of a famous baseball player, do you develop a good pitching arm? This is not an intellectual exercise. It’s not that we don’t know what it means to be a Christian; we know, we just don’t act like Christians. 

Here’s how I was always taught this verse was supposed to work: We put God’s Word inside us. If we do this (so we’ve been taught), then God’s Word inside will push back against the opposing forces, and then we’ll be transformed and be like Jesus.  Only, it doesn’t work that way.

The Word of God can’t affect us if we don’t listen. Even if we did take the time to study, we still don’t want to do it. Knowing the Bible doesn’t change us. Faith in the Bible does.

This phrase “be transformed by the renewing of the mind” is read as a causal statement—that is, that the cause of the transformation is mind renewal. However, it may also be read as coincident-- that transformation and the renewal of the mind are caused together by something else.  This actually makes more sense in context. Paul says first we present our bodies to God—everything we are. If we present our bodies to God, in time our minds will be transformed, and then the renewed mind continue us in the right direction. 

This opens up an interesting idea. That the process of change is not always led by the mind, but our bodies--our Let’s look at each of these four parts aspects of the body—head, feet, hands, and heart. 

Our heads.  Knowledge does transform us.  When we grasp insight into God’s Word, it does transform our lives.  The more we absorb from God’s Word, the better off we are.

But there’s the problem.  How do I want to study it?  We need to give God our feet and hands, too—that is, to go to the places where we can make a difference. We’d rather keep our feet propped up in our recliners or stuck under our own dinner tables than to be among the lost. 

Our hands. Jesus used His hands to heal the sick and raise the dead. But that was not all. Jesus raised them to heaven, or folded them in prayer. In other words Jesus practiced the spiritual exercises of his tradition, praying, fasting, and giving.

Our heart. Jesus was anointed with the oil of gladness above his peers.  In other words, He was emotional about it.  We have emphasized coming to church as a duty, but do not emphasize loving and glorifying God as a duty. We are head heavy and heart poor. 

Jonathan Edwards wrote in his Treatise on Religious Affections that true religion consists in great part in holy affection. Furthermore, he insists that these affections should be given outward demonstration, since it is natural for them do to so, that the will is strengthened by affection, and that the without emotional inclination, religion is practice by definition with indifference. Or to put it another way, “If you’re happy an you know it/Then your live will surely show it/ If your happy and you know it say Amen.”

The ailment that affects us may not lie in our theology, but in our suppression of passion in religious life.  By emphasizing order, calm, and regularity, we have suppressed the emotional side of the faith so much that our desire to practice the duties of the faith has become virtually non-existent.

Presenting our bodies as a living sacrifice to God meant following Jesus and denying ourselves in the small areas and details of our everyday life--our head, heart, hands, and our feet.