"Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God - this is your true and proper worship."
I couldn't get this section of our passage out of my head today. Such meaning and power and truth is carried in these few words...
First, did you notice how the plural of "bodies" becomes a single living sacrifice? What does that mean for us as Christians? For me it is a reminder that we are not alone. So many Christians act as if their faith is simply a matter of their own individual relationship with God. Some of them believe that they do not need community...that they are fine operating as loner Christians who only need God. Guess what? That is not the picture painted in the New Testament. The earliest Christian writers saw Christianity as a communal experience...saw faith as a product of people in community offering their lives to the one true God. We must rely on each other...push one another...love one another...that is how we will be able to most effectively offer ourselves sacrificially to God.
Second, the word "holy" really stands out to me. Holy means to be "set apart." The act of becoming a living sacrifice is about setting ourselves apart...setting ourselves aside for God - to please God. We are called to set ourselves in opposition to a culture and world that is absolutely at war with God. That doesn't mean that we live in Christian compounds and have no contact with the world - that would remove the light that is so desperately needed. What it means is that we are supposed to be a culture within a culture. A holy people in the midst of an unholy world...shining as a beacon of truth and light.
Third, why is sacrificing ourselves so "pleasing" to God? Because, greater love has no one then he/she who would lay their lives down for a friend. Self sacrifice is the ultimate picture of love held up for us by scripture. When we offer ourselves as living sacrifices, we are laying down our lives completely for God. We are saying that there is nothing more important than Him...that He is the absolute and total love of our lives...that nothing matters more - not money, not sex, not power, not fulfillment, not achievement - NOTHING! My daily self sacrifice is an act of devotion towards God. When I set myself apart...when I refuse to bow to the temptations of this world...when I deny my own selfish desires to more fully serve God...my life becomes a love song to Him. He deserves so much more, but all I have to give is all that I am. That is how we say, "I love you" to the God who loves us, and that is why it pleases Him.
Finally, this definition of "worship" seems so different then what we usually believe. Worship is not simply about singing songs, dancing for joy, listening to sermons or anything else on the Christian checklist. Dying. Dying is our true and proper worship. Dying to self and living for God on a daily basis...what could possibly be a more meaningful act of worship? What could possibly show our love for God more?
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