Living Sacrifice & Evangelical Mission

Nor“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”¹.

What does it mean to be a living sacrifice?

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Evangelical Missionaries Working Themselves To Death?

Does being an Evangelical Missionary or for that matter a Christian, mean that I have to work myself to death?

Being a living sacrifice is something I have been struggling with all my Christian life. None of the common explanations makes any sense to me.

When I was a child, I attended Christian Children’s camps. It was not uncommon, when talking about living sacrifice and evangelical mission, for the speakers to tell the following story:

Two preachers were sitting in a room. One young the other much older. “I’m so tired, said the younger to the elder. I think that I must be doing something wrong. I never imagined that ministry would be so tiring. The older missionary sits up and says by way of encouragement “To the contrary you must be doing something right. You are supposed to be tired or you would be doing something wrong. You know that the scriptures say that you are to be a living sacrifice.”

My thought at that time was if that is what it means to serve the Lord I am never going to be able to achieve it. Over time I have decided that the older missionary was quite wrong.

The Lord Resting His Head

The Lord may have had nowhere to rest his head ² but that does not mean that he didn’t make every effort to try.

I am convinced that this is a reference to the itinerant nature of the Lord’s mission and to let the disciples know that is what they and we were in for. But it was not a reference to Him or us never being able to get rest.

For example, he always tried to escape the crowds³. Logically, if being a living sacrifice meant that one had to run oneself into the ground, it would seem to contradict the heavenly Father’s edict to have a Sabbath and other Holy days of rest.⁴

More than this the very term is contradictory to the above concept. You can’t be a “Living” Sacrifice if you are half-dead. No, all in all, the concept of killing yourself for the Lord seems to me to be very Pharisaical.

Aroma Pleasing

Apart from death, there is another aspect to sacrifice. Whenever the sacrifices are mentioned in the Old Testament at some point in time they will often be followed up with “an aroma pleasing to the Lord”⁵. This changes the meaning of a living sacrifice from one of death to one of Life.

More than that, the term “living sacrifices” comes from Paul’s favourite book of the Bible, Isaiah‬.

It says:

‬“I will set a sign among them, and I will send some of those who survive to the nations—to Tarshish, to the Libyans and Lydians (famous as archers), to Tubal and Greece, and to the distant islands that have not heard of my fame or seen my glory. They will proclaim my glory among the nations. And they will bring all your people, from all the nations to my holy mountain in Jerusalem as an offering to the Lord—on horses, in chariots and wagons, and on mules and camels,” says the Lord. “They will bring them, as the Israelites bring their grain offerings, to the temple of the Lord in ceremonially clean vessels. And I will select some of them also to be priests and Levites,” says the Lord.⁶”

The phrase “as an offering to the Lord” clearly refers to the people streaming to the holy mountain of the Lord.  Thus they are a “living sacrifice”.

In the Isaiah context, Paul, in a very real way, explains what he means by being a “living sacrifice”, in the remaining part of the letter to the Romans.

What Does it Mean To Te A Living Sacrifice? 

We are required to live our lives as “an aroma pleasing to the Lord”. Surely, if we follow the rest of the letter to the Romans (12:2 – 16: 24) this is meant to mean:

1. Honour God
2. Be humble by having an honest assessment of yourself.
3. Respect and be accountable to the rest of the body of Christ.
4. Respect God’s ordained authorities.
5. Going where He wants us to Go (with as much rest as possible) ⁷
6. Growing in Grace every Day.

By doing the above, are we not being a living sacrifice and “an aroma pleasing to the Lord”?

Fairdinkum

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1. 1. Romans‬ ‭12:1‬ ‭NIV‬
   2. Mt 8:20
   3. Mt 14:13, Lk 9:18, Mt 14:23, Jn 6:15
   4. Ex.20:8
   5. Nu 28:27 ESV
   6. ‭‭Isaiah‬ ‭66:19-21‬ ‭NIV‬‬
   7. Romans 14:18

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