Presenting Your Body

“Presenting your body” is far more than a teaching; it is a life. Having an unusually good teaching, and at the same time leading a bad and unloving life, is dreadfully ironic. If there is no warmth and goodness toward those with whom we have to do, then we are no more than a lump of ice on which the sun shines. The wife of a certain preacher once said, “He cares for everyone but me.” It is terrible how unfeeling and blind one can be, in spite of one’s knowledge.

We have a powerful remedy for all this backsliding: to present our body. When Paul exhorts us to do this, he says, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.” Romans 12:1. It is so difficult to present our bodies to God, that we need all His grace and mercy in order not to harden ourselves against this exhortation.

Jesus always presented His body as an acceptable sacrifice to God. It was a life of battles, tears, and prayers. When He spoke of these things to the seventy disciples they thought it was “a hard say­ing,” and Peter said, “this shall not happen to You.”

We can meet all kinds of opposition from our own flesh and from other people’s flesh, but we must be firm in our determination, and look unto Him who endured patiently. There is a great reward wait­ing in heaven for each one who endures until the end.

When we present our bodies in serving God, the body of sin is destroyed, and we become spiritual. We cannot experience this as long as we are babes in Christ, and soulish. We become spiritual by God’s Spirit working in our life. We will therefore not experience this if we are influenced either by our flesh or our soul. We must be un­conditionally surrendered to the Spirit, so we, bound by the Spirit, can be led hither and thither—set free from all carnal and soulish considerations.

The fruit of the knowledge and of the form of doctrine to which we have been delivered must be that we present our bodies, that we both see and understand as Jesus did: “A body You have prepared for Me, and here I am, to do Your will.” The Spirit of God begins His work of circumcision in all those who have this attitude and this de­sire. When we pay heed to ourselves and to the doctrine, the Spirit will speak to us in the most intimate way. Our smallest defects and shortcomings will be bared, and our natural idiosyncrasies will be illuminated. It is extremely great to be transformed by God’s grace, from being merely human, to being gods. John 10:34. Our human traits, which are so evident in the beginning, must declare bankruptcy when confronted with the body’s surrender into death. We become like the wind that blows hither and thither. Nobody knows where it is coming from or where it is going. One can speak briefly, or longer. One can begin the meeting, or one can wait until the end. Nothing is done out of prejudice or partiality when the body is presented to serve God. The reason why everybody is quiet in a meeting, even when God is working unto praise and testimonies, is that they are bound. A body that is presented never binds or hinders the good, but is pleasing and acceptable before God and man.