A Sacrifice That Is Acceptable to God

A Sacrifice That Is Acceptable to 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 of God.” Rom. 12:1. [Norw.] This is to be my everyday life. Each day is to consist of me, just as I am, presenting my body and being a sacrifice—this is the spiritual service of God. I must use my strength, my time, and maybe even my money, as a sacrifice for the others.

Paul not only writes that we should be a sacrifice, but he writes very clearly: a sacrifice, acceptable to God, that is, a sacrifice that is well-pleasing to God.

If we want to have a good life in this world, we must answer “yes” to our calling. We must be set free from sin, and then we must become a servant of God. Rom. 6:22. After we have been set free from sin, we need to enter into the service of God, and we must serve Him with all our hearts. If we don’t do this, then we will certainly quickly fall back into our old sinful habits. But if we enter into the service of God with everything that we have, it will produce fruit to holiness, and the end, everlasting life!

We must answer “yes” to this calling—and let it be a true, genuine, and resounding YES! We must truly enter into service for Him, for then, and only then, can we become a sacrifice that is pleasing to God. Then there will be no more living for people.

“For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I still pleased men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ.” Gal. 1:10.

If I serve people, then I am not a servant of Christ. I can sacrifice my time, my strength, and my money to a great degree—but if it is not done for God, it is completely useless. When I am serving God, I only want to do His will: “His will to see and obedience to render shall be your rod and your staff where you go.” WotL 146.

Instead of serving people according to their will, I instead can be set free from my conscious sin, throw myself into the service of God, and work together with Him. And then, through His promptings, I can present myself as an instrument of righteousness to God! Rom. 6:13. I must be free from people in order to sacrifice myself for them according to what God wants me to do: “And not only as we had hoped, but they first gave themselves to the Lord, and then to us by the will of God.” 2 Cor. 8:5.

Everything I do, must be done for God— only His will should mean anything to me. What people think and their opinions is meaningless when God is at work. May we obey God’s promptings through thick and thin. Irrespective of whether people around us praise us to the skies or trample us into the mud, we can take up our cross, find our life, and be saved. Then we can be happy, because we know that what we have done has been for Him.