Our Living Sacrifice

We have received great mercy and forgiveness of sins from our God. When He baptized us in His Spirit we received His nature in us. Yet often we find a war inside ourselves, a struggle between the old nature and our new identity in Christ (Rm 7:23). There is a force at work in us that is contrary to God’s ways, and it keeps us from obedience. We see the answer to this dilemma when Paul says to “offer (our) bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God . . . “ (Rm 12:1) This will change the way we think, leaving our fleshly ways behind and pressing forward into His thinking. Therefore, we understand the will of God in our lives, because we become spiritual (verse 2).

A person must offer himself in a way that is acceptable to God. God’s ways and calling do not readily come to our natural way of thinking at first because His thoughts are higher than ours. We might think to do an act of service, a good work to please Him. But God is asking for our obedience, and to obey God we must hear what He is saying to us.

God’s thoughts are imparted to us by His Holy Spirit (1 Cor 2:14). Without the Spirit, or we should say, in the natural way of our thinking, we do not understand God’s thoughts (1 Cor 3:1). This is because they are spiritual, as He is. If we have not discarded our fleshly ways and thinking, we do not understand what God is saying to us. The way God changes our thinking is through our living sacrifice, for this causes a “renewing of (our) mind.” If we will be a people who daily sacrifice our own ways for His ways then we will hear His thoughts and know how to please Him with our lives. It comes down to our surrender and willingness to obey what we hear God say to us. There is no other way to be “spiritual” (1 Cor 3:1) except to shed our former fleshly acts and thoughts.