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)
One of the exercises in the book I’m
looking through examines Romans 12. We began yesterday, but today we’ll take a
step back and start at the beginning of the chapter. It’s a verse we all know. “Present
ourselves a living sacrifice.” Yeah, yeah, we’ve heard it before. Kick all fun
out the window and go about life as a martyr.
There’s a phrase that seems to be
ignored: “in view of God’s mercy.” The Greek term for “mercy” is transliterated
oiktirmon. It means “compassionate, experiencing deep pity (lamentation)
as God has for people who look to Him for help in their difficult situations.”
The first, most easily viewed mercy
is that of the Cross. Jesus’ death and resurrection not only provides us with
salvation by the mercy of God, but it also provides us with evidence that even
if our sacrifice results in death, He can raise us to life again.
But think a little more about what
it means that God shows us mercy. It means that He doesn’t want to see us fail
or be harmed. We sometimes wince when we see someone get hurt – and God may,
too.
We may know some of this but that
doesn’t mean we have enough of a sense of it to be motivated by it. But Paul
tells us that it is because of His mercy that we should present ourselves a
living sacrifice, not a dead one. Because of His mercy, we may sacrifice
ourselves with thanksgiving and joy instead of reluctance and martyrdom.
This is a change of attitude,
approach, and perspective I desperately need.
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