A LIVING SACRIFICE
A LIVING SACRIFICE
By Des Walter
Paul challenges us, “I beseech you brethren, by the mercies of God that you present your BODIES a LIVING SACRIFICE, HOLY ACCEPTABLE UNTO GOD which is your Spiritual WORSHIP.” Rom 12:1. Here is the same test that Abraham faced on Mount Moriah. This challenge follows the chapter concerning the grafting in of the Gentiles to become partakers of the root and fatness of the Olive tree. Finally he states the basis for this challenge to present our bodies thus :
“FOR FROM HIM AND THROUGH HIM AND TO HIM ARE ALL THINGS, FOR ALL THINGS ORIGINATE WITH HIM AND COME FROM HIM, AND ALL THINGS LIVE THROUGH HIM, AND ALL THINGS CENTER IN AND TEND TO CONSUMMATE AND TO END IN HIM. TO HIM BE GLORY FOREVER AMEN. "Rom 11:36.
Paul uses the word “THEREFORE” which means, in view of what I have just said, I want you to present your bodies. What exactly does this mean to us today? OUR BODY was made to be a receptacle to contain the divine image and likeness. According to Paul everything found its origin in God, and everything depends upon God for its existence, and finally everything finds its fulfillment and consummation by returning to God.
The presenting of our Bodies to God as a living sacrifice is an acknowledgement of our origin and the purpose of our being. However it goes far beyond this. Most Christians are looking for immortality for this physical body. Did Abraham want his natural son to LIVE FOREVER, NO! If immortalizing Isaac’s physical life was all that he desired then Abraham could never have birthed the CHRIST through Isaac his seed. BUT Abraham saw beyond the physical and so was willing to sacrifice his natural son Isaac as a LIVING SACRIFICE, because the reality of his existence in Abraham’s understanding was not the physical body he had, BUT THE CHRIST he represented.
In exactly the same way we must see ourselves not from the point of view of our physical BODY fulfilling God’s will and purpose, but by the SPIRIT to see our INCORPORATION in the CHRIST BODY. So as we present our bodies to God as a LIVING SACRIFICE it is HOLY and ACCEPTABLE unto the Lord. This is OUR “Mount of Olives” experience, where Christ himself was drawn by the Father to present HIS body as a LIVING SACRIFICE. In the spiritual “suffering” of that offering he sweat as it were great drops of blood. In terms of REALITY it was there, alone, while the disciples were sleeping, that the real SPIRITUAL sacrifice was made and not at Calvary. Jesus had warned the disciples to pray that they enter not into temptation. This is the testing to ascertain the quality of their integrity or their commitment to Christ.
The disciples were not yet ready for such a test as the NATURAL still dominated the Spiritual, and Jesus knew that. The fact that they slept through that ONE vital experience showed they still needed a spiritual awakening. The cross was the physical outworking of a completed SPIRITUAL SACRIFICE.
Christians today have so majored on the PHYSICAL SUFFERINGS AND THE LITERAL CROSS on which the body of Jesus died, that the true SPIRITUAL SACRIFICE that brings LIFE TO MANKIND has been largely ignored. That Spiritual sacrifice was THE OFFERING OF THE BODY OF JESUS AS THE WILL OF GOD, ONCE FOR ALL, BY WHICH OFFERING WE ARE SANCTIFIED. Heb 10:10.
Beloved it is not the wooden cross or the DEAD BODY that hung upon it that gives LIFE TO THE WORLD. It is what that cross represents in putting to death the OLD MAN in that Spiritual sacrifice that Christ made on behalf of all mankind. In 2 Cor 4:18 Paul states , “The things that are SEEN (physical) are only temporary, BUT THE THINGS THAT ARE UNSEEN spiritual) THESE ARE ETERNAL. (The REALITIES).”
The bread and the wine are just symbols being visible and physical, which DO REPRESENT a SPIRITUAL REALITY. But understand it is not the SYMBOLS that minister LIFE but the REALITY they represent. The Body and BLOOD of Christ is the SPIRIT AND SUBSTANCE OF HIS BEING, which we must EAT or assimilate into our being so that it becomes what we are. Jesus said, if we “EAT” his flesh and drink his blood it would imparts to us EVERLASTING LIFE, being a quality of LIFE enjoyed by Jesus Christ on this earth. Spirituality, is the ability to see into the REALITY OF THINGS, no longer considering the VISIBLE to be the REALITY
Excerpts from THE WILL And PURPOSE Of GOD