Serving God

Serving God

“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service.” Rom. 12:1.

Our service to God is to present our bodies as an acceptable sacrifice to Him. What I have sacrificed is no longer mine. When He came into the world, Jesus said, “A body You have prepared for Me . . . . ‘Behold, I have come . . . to do Your will, O God.’” Heb. 10:5-7. He could have used His body to seek His own (John 6:38)—to seek honor and power, to lead a pleasant life, etc;—but He did not live to please Himself. Rom. 15:3. He presented His body to God as an acceptable sacrifice. Everything He did with His body was for our benefit and salvation. Now we are called to follow Him. Now the time has come for us to present our bodies as a sacrifice. We must take care that our body is always ready, holy, acceptable to God to carry out His will. We must not use it to seek our own, but rather for our neighbor’s best. Rom. 15:1-2. The tongue must not be used to speak on our behalf, defending ourselves, but to speak on God’s behalf—to speak to edification that it may impart grace to the hearers. Eph. 4:29. My legs shall not be used to run where I like to go, but to run where I can be of profit. My arms shall not be used to lay hold of and take what I like, but to give to the others what is profitable. Therefore, my body is meant to profit the others, not myself.

If I give everything I own to the poor, but have not love, it profits me nothing. Love does not seek its own. 1 Cor. 13:3, 5. If I give away everything I own, but seek to receive it again in the form of honor and a good report, then it is not a work done with a sacrificed body. I have sought my own and am nothing. Love does not seek its own. Works that are done with a sacrificed body will be treasures that are preserved for me in heaven. This is our spiritual service to God, and these are the works from which we rest. We have already received our reward for all the works that were done with a body that was not sacrificed. However good they were, they nevertheless served ourselves in one way or another, and we are nothing.