The Believer's Supreme Act of Spiritual Worship
Romans 12:1‑2
We come together tonight as always on the Lord's day with eager hearts to dig into the Scripture. And I want to invite you to open your Bible to the twelfth chapter of Romans. And we're going to look together at verses 1 and 2...Romans 12:1 and 2, the supreme act of spiritual worship.
The text says, "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God which is your spiritual worship. And do not continue to be conformed to this world but be being transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may approve what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God."
A young lady approached me last week when I was at a conference speaking, and she was very tearful and very distraught. And she said to me essentially what I have heard in different words many times in my ministry. She said, "I just can't seem to live the Christian life the way I should." She said, "I am frustrated. I am without victory, without a sense of accomplishment. I struggle seemingly with the very simplest forms of obedience in my Christian walk. I'm constantly defeated. Can you help me?"
I said, "Well, what has been your approach to solving the problem yourself?"
She said, "I have tried everything." She said, "I...I've been going to a church where they speak in tongues, where they have healings, where they have all kinds of spiritual experiences." She said, "I've entered into all of them. I've spoken in tongues. I've had certain ecstatic experiences, gifts of prophecy, certain supposed miracles. I've been slain in the Spirit. And in spite of all of this, I am not pleased with my life." And she said in a rather telling remark, "I've tried to get all I could get out of God."
And I said, "That's your problem." The key to spiritual victory is not getting all you can get, but giving all you have. There's a big difference. And there are people literally flocking into churches and spiritual experiences to get more of God when the issue is not what they need to get but what they need to give. And that's the essence of this tremendous passage of Scripture.
Having concluded eleven chapters of profound and thrilling doctrine that defines what God has done for every believer, Paul does not say, "Now here's what you need to get." He says, "Now here's what you need to give." The key to powerful living is not getting something more, but giving all we have. And I'm somewhat admittedly frustrated by that particular idea that is so prevalent in Christianity that what you need to be successful in living the Christian life is to get something...when the real issue is to give.
You remember, don't you, back in John chapter 4 that Jesus said, "The Father seeks true worshipers." He redeemed us in order that we might give Him glory, that we might give Him ourselves. Paul writing to the Philippians in chapter 3 verse 3 defines a Christian as one who worships God in the Spirit, who rejoices in Christ Jesus and has no confidence in the flesh, one who worships. Peter writing in 1 Peter chapter 2, a monumental statement that all of us need to be very aware of, said, "You are living stones, a spiritual house, a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ."
We are a spiritual priesthood. Every much...every bit as much a priesthood as was the Aaronic priesthood, the Levitical priesthood. We are every bit as much a priest as was Melchizedek. We are priests under the Most High God. We are a kingdom of priests whose goal is to offer up spiritual sacrifices, even as priests of old offered up physical sacrifices of animals before God.
Now as spiritual priests there are many kinds of sacrifices. Scripture talks about the fact that we can offer the calves of our lips, Hebrews 13, the calves of our lips which is praise and thanks unto God. It says that we can offer God our petition and our prayer, that we can give to God of our substance of what we possess. We offer Him worship when we serve others which is truly an act of worship. But above all of these things, prayer and praise and giving and serving, there is one act that is the supreme and all encompassing and all effecting act that a believer must do in his life as a true worshiper and that is to offer himself as a living sacrifice. That is the issue.
And, frankly, that is very distant from most of what is being proported today as the key to spiritual living. We hear that in order to really have victory in your Christian life on the one hand you have to get more of God. Or on the other hand, you have to have a better estimation of your worth and see yourself better than you see yourself. But what Scripture says is it isn't a matter of affirming your own value, it isn't a matter of seeking something more, it's a matter of presenting yourself as a living sacrifice. That, dear friends, is the sum of eleven chapters. This is not some arbitrary thought pulled out of the air. This is a consummate conclusion to eleven chapters of great doctrine. What is the conclusion when we've said all that could be said about what God has done for us? The conclusion is we give back to him all we are. That's the conclusion, the supreme act of spiritual worship.
And I really confess to you that my own belief from experience is that that isn't easy, but that it is absolutely necessary if we are ever to know the fullness of the blessing of God and be able to render to him the service that is due to Him and bring Him glory...the giving of oneself totally to the Lord.
Most Christians never really come to that place fully. They flirt with the world, they flirt with the flesh. They flirt with their own personal indulgences and desires. They become victims of the philosophy and psychology of the world around them. They buy into the world's bag. They entertain themselves with the world's mode of entertainment. They think along the lines the world thinks. And so they never really come to the place of total commitment that is discussed in these two verses and therefore they forfeit the fullness of the blessing that God would have for them.
Now the central concept in these verses, look for a moment would you to verse 1, is the phrase "a living sacrifice." That is a very important phrase. As I mentioned from 1 Peter 2:5, we are spiritual priests offering up spiritual sacrifices. The primary sacrifice we are called to offer, Paul says here, is ourselves. Now the language here is definitely Old Testament. It is the language of ritual offerings. It is the language of ceremony. It is the language of the Levitical system. It is the language of the priesthood. It is the language of sacrifice. And in the Old Testament, we know that an offerer would come to God bringing his lamb or his turtledove, whatever it was that he was going to sacrifice, he brought that sacrifice to the holy place. It was given over to the priest and the priest took it, slew it, put it on the altar and as it were, offered it to God.
That system has come to an end. God no longer desires that animals be offered to Him, any kind of animals. There is no more animal sacrifice pleasing to God. That era has ended. No more dead sacrifices. Now what God wants is what kind of sacrifices? Living ones. No more dead animals, but living men and women. And so the essential act of the Old Testament Jew's life, his religious life, was the presentation of a sacrifice as an indication of the genuineness of his faith. The central act of a new covenant believer is the presentation of his heart, his soul, his mind, all that he is as a living sacrifice.
Now I want to add a footnote to that, lest you misconstrue the intention of the Old Testament. When I say that the central act of the Old Testament Jew in the ceremony and the ritual which God had instituted was to offer an animal, that was not to say that that animal was to be offered instead of his own life. It was to be offered as a symbol of the offering of his old...of his own life. For example, in 1 Samuel, I'll just call a couple of verses briefly to your attention, in 1 Samuel 15, I believe it's 22, Samuel said, "Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord?" And the answer implied is no, of course not. "Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice."
In other words, the intention in the Old Testament, in the offering of a sacrifice, was not that a dead animal was offered instead of a living soul, but that a dead animal was offered as an outward symbol of the offering of the heart and the soul.
In Psalm 51, we find again the same idea in verse 17, "The sacrifices of God are dead animals? No. A broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not turn down, refuse or despise." In Psalm 141 verse 2, it says, "Let my prayer be set forth before Thee as incense and the lifting up of mine hands as the evening sacrifice."
In other words, those three scriptures tell us that an Old Testament Jew who offered a dead animal was not offering a dead animal instead of offering himself but only as an outward symbol of the inward reality of which he was also committed, to which he was also committed and that was offering his own heart. In the New Testament, the outward sacrifices have ceased. And God calls only for the living sacrifice. This is a call to dedication. This is a call to commitment. And this, beloved, is the logical, the only logical conclusion to redemption. There is no other logical conclusion. This is it. Romans 12:1 and 2 is the only proper response to God's redeeming work, the only proper response.
Now we are then to offer ourselves as a living sacrifice. What does that mean? We don't want to just talk of it in rhetorical terms, just throwing it out as rhetoric, but we want to express specifically what it contains. So let me discuss with you out of this text the four elements in a living sacrifice...the four elements. This is very foundational to our spiritual experience. The four elements that are included in the presentation of a believer as a living sacrifice are these four: soul, body, mind and will...soul, body, mind and will. They are the four elements. And they appear in this passage.
First of all, offering myself to God as a living sacrifice implies that my soul has been given to God. It implies that. It all starts at that point. I cannot offer anything else to God unless my soul has been given to Him, right? Because it is to my soul that the text appeals. It is a call to a regenerated soul to make a proper offering. And if that soul is not a regenerated soul, not a redeemed soul, not a saved soul, not a transformed soul, there's no way that the message of God can be communicated to that soul. And there's no way that it can respond. So the very fact that he says "I beg you therefore, brothers, you who have experienced the mercies of God to present yourselves as a living sacrifice" implies that they are believers whose souls have already been given to God in salvation.
So this is not something that a person can do unless they're redeemed. Nothing else can be offered to God if the soul hasn't been offered. An unregenerate person cannot give God his body for service, cannot give God his mind, cannot give God his will, cannot respond to God at all, 1 Corinthians 2 says, that the natural man can't even understand the things of God. They're utter foolishness. There's no way that Scripture would ever appeal or the Holy Spirit would ever appeal to an unregenerate person to make a supreme act of dedication to God. So the implication here is that the soul must come first.
And this truth is repeated in Scripture. It's not even one that really needs to be discussed very much because it's so patently obvious. But just sort of as a basic reminder, it says in Matthew 16:26, "What does a man profit, or what does he gain, if he shall acquire the whole world and lose his own...what?...soul?" Now Scripture refers to the soul as that inner part of man which God seeks to redeem. Sometimes Scripture calls it the spirit of a man. The spirit or the soul is that inner part, that invisible part that is the very basic man himself, the essence of being. And that must be given to God.
In 2 Corinthians, to give you an illustration of it, in chapter 8, it discusses the churches of Macedonia which by indication of the text were very poor and very afflicted churches. They were having a very difficult time. And it says that they gave in great abundance of joy and they gave richly with liberality. In other words, though they had very little they gave much. And he says, in fact, in verse 3 of 2 Corinthians 8 they gave beyond what they were able to give. In other words, they dug into the very life blood, they dug into their food money and their survival money to give. And why is it that they would do that? Why such dedication? Why such commitment? Why such living sacrifice? Verse 5, "This they did not as we hoped but first gave themselves to the Lord." And that's the key. That's always the key. Before any single at of sacrifice can be done, there must be the giving of self. It all has to start there.
In Romans a little earlier than the text we're looking at, this is reiterated, when it says in Romans 8:8, it says, "So then, they that are in the flesh," listen to it, "cannot...what? please God." And to be in the flesh means to be unredeemed. An unredeemed person cannot please God, cannot make an offering to God, cannot worship God, cannot present anything to God. You hear an unregenerate person say, "Well, I do what I do for God." That's not so. God doesn't accept that. There is no sacrifice made of body, mind or will unless there is first the giving of the soul in redemption. And that's essentially what Paul is saying when he says in 1 Corinthians chapter 13 and verse 3 these very important words, "Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, though I give my body to be burned, if I have not love it profits me...what?...nothing."
In other words, if I am not one who possesses the love of God, all my acts of self‑sacrifice are worthless. It doesn't mean a thing to God. He may give to charity, he may give himself to philanthropy, he may sell everything he has and dispense it to poor people and think in his heart he's making an offering to God when the fact of the matter is that's not the case at all.
Now all of this is implied if you'll notice please in Romans 12 in Paul's opening statement. It is all implied when he says, "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God." It is because they are brethren, a term of identification of those who know the Lord, it is because they are brothers in Christ, it is because they have received the mercies of God that they can be begged to follow through the full phases of dedication. And I think you can sense that that's in the text. If the soul has not already been given to the Lord, then the rest of the exhortations are useless because it is the soul that responds to the beseeching. So all dedication to God begins with salvation. It begins with the soul and the spirit being given to God. And only when that innermost self has experienced the saving mercy of God does it have the power and motivation to desire a life of sacrifice to God...only then.
That's why, do you remember in the parables of Matthew 13, when the Lord was talking about the different kinds of soil, He said there was a soil that had rock bed underneath the ground? And when the seed went into what's called the stoney ground, or the rocky soil, as the roots went down they hit stone. And so the nutrients and the water and the sunlight and all the things that cause growth caused it to go up because it couldn't go down and it flourished for a while, but the sun came out and burned it and it withered away. And the Lord said this is the one who hears the message, who listens to it but when tribulation comes or when persecution comes they have no real root and they die. The idea there is that these are people who make an outward rather joyful and immediate response to the truth about Christ but it's never genuine as proven by the fact when it calls for sacrifice, they die.
In other words, since the soul was never really given to God, they can't make any other sacrifice, you see. It's very much the same in the soil that was filled with weeds, as it says there that the weeds began to grow along with the seed and they, which are the deceitfulness of riches and the cares of this age, choked out the seed. In other words, this is an unredeemed soul that can't make a sacrifice because it's never been redeemed. It's the same as the rich young ruler who when told by Jesus, "Sell everything you have and give it to the poor," went away. He was not willing to make such a sacrifice, he was not willing to obey the Lord, that was not within the purview of his tolerance because he was not a redeemed soul. He walked away. No such sacrifice would he make.
So, Paul then is speaking to believers, "I beseech you," he says. The word "beseech" basically means to beg, parakaleo, I come alongside to call you to this. It is a word of tenderness. The Holy Spirit is called the paraklete, isn't He? The one called alongside. It is a word sometimes translated "comfort." It's a word of gentleness. It's a word of tenderness. It's a word of affection. He comes alongside brethren who are already bent toward this kind of dedication because their souls have been given to God, you see. It isn't anything obtuse to them. It isn't anything far removed from their desire. It is the most natural response to their redemption. And so he speaks to them in terms of love and calls to them as fellow believers and brothers. It carries the authority of an Apostle, and yet the tenderness of a loving brother. It's very much like Philemon where Paul says, "Wherefore though I might be much bold in Christ to command you that which is fitting, yet for love sake I rather beseech you." I mean, I could as an Apostle command it, but as a brother I...I just exhort you to do this. Typical of Paul to encourage someone along these lines.
</
Unleashing God's Truth One Verse at a Time