Romans 12: 1, 2 (NIV): Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Jesus said to love God most. The first Commandment says to put God first. Here, Paul says to give ourselves completely to God. I'm seeing a pattern: God wants to be our God. He is a loving Father who wants us to surrender our lives to him. He wants first place in our lives, and he wants us to trust and obey him. As God's children, we need to understand that we belong to him. He created us, he purchased our salvation, and he knows what is best for us.
Paul says our spiritual act of worship is to offer ourselves as living sacrifices to God. This means we surrender our wills to him and live our lives holy and pleasing to him. Perhaps the very heart of worshiping God is to surrender to him. In other words, to love him most, put him first, and live our lives for his pleasure, not our own.
Easy enough to understand, but it is not easy to do because we don't like the idea of surrendering. We like the idea of being our own boss, doing what we want to do, not letting someone else tell us what to do. We want what we want and we want it now. But the Christian faith says “give up what you want and give God what he wants instead.”
The pattern of this world says if you surrender to someone, you lose to him. Paul is saying, yes that's exactly right! Lose to God. Surrender to him. Give him your body, your hopes and dreams, your wishes and desires. Give it all to God. What I've found to be true is that we are all going to surrender to something anyway. Paul says surrender to God and God alone.
The idea of a living sacrifice seems to be a contradiction. When an animal was sacrificed, it was killed first and had no choice in the matter. What Paul is urging us to do is voluntarily climb on the altar and sacrifice ourselves to God. And since we are still living, that means we can crawl off the altar again if we choose. My advice is, when you do, simply climb back on. We have to continually surrender to God. Frankly, we do better some days than others. Don't give up. Surrender to God today, then again tomorrow. When you do, God will transform your mind to become more and more like Christ. He will prove to you that surrendered to him is the best place to be. After all, he is God.
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