Sacrifice

 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.