“Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship.”
Romans 12:1
We are now in the season of Lent in the Church. It is 40 days in which we reflect on Jesus’ sacrifice for us on the cross to break the chains of our sin, make payment (atonement) for that sin, and enable us to be cleansed and made righteous before a Holy God. Lent is a time where we can consider the enormity of His mercy and grace and how we might live sacrificially for Him and what He has done for us.
The Bible speaks a great deal about sacrifice. In the Book of Leviticus in the Old Testament, God had set forth sacrificial requirements for the Hebrew nation for the atonement of sin or for uncleanliness. God is a holy God and a righteous God, and His desire was for the Hebrews to reflect that righteousness by remaining clean. And when they weren’t clean, they had to make sacrifices to remove their sin and uncleanliness. But the Old Testament also speaks of the sacrifices that the pagans made to appease their gods. That included human sacrifices, something that has always been detestable to God because mankind is made in His image!
Sacrifice is also at the center of the New Testament. Jesus came to make the ultimate and final sacrifice of His own life to atone for the sins of all people for all time. As a result, sacrifice has taken on a whole new meaning for Christians today. No longer are we called to make animal sacrifices for our own sins and uncleanliness. Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross did that for us. Instead, we are called to offer ourselves as “living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God” according to Romans 12:1 above. And in Luke 9:23, Jesus calls His followers to sacrifice when he said, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take ups his cross and follow me.”
How do we do that? We do it by sacrificing our desires for His will, sacrificing ourselves through our time and talents in service to God and others, and sacrificing our resources to help those in need. I would like for us to consider these 3 key areas of sacrificial living where we can demonstrate our thankfulness to God for His great and undeserved gift to all of us.
Sacrificing our Desires
All of us are born sinful and with an attitude of self-interest. We are also given free will to make our own choices. We all want to choose where we want to live, what we want to do, and what path in life we want to take. We all have a will and desire to control our own lives and our own destinies. Unfortunately, we often choose poorly. Proverbs 3:5-6 says, “Trust in the Lord will all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.” God is essentially telling us to trust and follow his ways and His path and not our own. That means that we need to sacrifice our desires and choices for His purpose and plan for our lives! This requires us to be humble and willing to trust Him for our daily needs as well as our future. We all need to look at our lives and consider where we can sacrifice our desires for God’s will for us. If we submit to His will for our lives, we will not only be blessed (Luke 11:28), but we will also discover a greater purpose and plan for our lives than we could ever imagine on our own!
Sacrificing Ourselves
Our time and our talents are the means by which we can serve God and others. While God knows our time on earth, we do not. Every day and every minute is a gift from God to be used to glorify Him and to serve others. Time is also a precious thing that can never be re-used, so we must spend it carefully and wisely and not waste it frivolously on ourselves. He desires that we use (or sacrifice) our time to grow in faith and to serve God and others as Jesus served us (Matthew 20:28). We also need to invest our time in things that matter to God, such as worship, prayer, and serving & witnessing to others. If we spend all of our time on ourselves and what we like to do, we are not obeying His command to love God and love others as ourselves (Matthew 22:37-39).
Secondly, we can serve God and others with the gifts and talents that God has given to us. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 12:7 that we are each given spiritual gifts and 1 Peter 4:10 says that “each one should use whatever gifts they have received to serve others.” These talents and spiritual gifts are given to us to bless others and not to satisfy ourselves. When we sacrifice our time and talents to serve others, we are obeying Jesus and giving glory to God! (Galatians 5:13)
Sacrificing our Resources
There are two main resources that we are given that we can sacrifice to help those in need. First, there is our money. Money is a resource that is uncertain (1 Timothy 6:17) and that we must be careful not to squander or waste. The Bible also warns us against greed and the pursuit of money for our own gain. Jesus said in Matthew 6:24 that “you cannot serve both God and money.” The money we have or earn is a gift from God (James 2:17) and it should be used for His purposes. That includes our physical needs but also the needs of others. We are commanded to be generous and to share what we have been given to help others in need. If we are not willing to sacrifice some of our money to help others or to serve God’s purposes, we are choosing to serve money over God!
Secondly, we have also been given possessions that we can use to help others, including our homes, our vehicles, our clothes, our food, and other things. We can share our home with those in need of shelter. We can use our vehicles to give rides to those who have no transportation. We can give our old clothes to those who have little to wear. We can provide food for the hungry and we can donate our old electronics & appliances to those who don’t have them. Remember the words of John the Baptist in Luke 3:11 when he told the crowds “The man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same.”
According to the dictionary, the definition of sacrifice means the surrender of something for the sake of something else. For the Christian, that means sacrificing something of ours for the benefit of someone else, and for the sake of Jesus! As it says in Acts 20:35, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”
This Lent and every day, let us live sacrificially because of Jesus and for those He loves!