Presenting Our Soul To God As An Act Of Spiritual Worship

Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, which is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:1,2, NASB UPDATED)

In my previous blog entitled "A Living Sacrifice," I shared to you that we, Christians, are a kingdom of priests whose goal is to offer up spiritual sacrifices - like prayer, praise, giving, and service - but there is one act that is the supreme and all encompassing and all effecting act that a believer must do in his life as a true worshiper and that is to offer himself as a living sacrifice, that is for a new covenant believer to present his soul, his body, his mind, and his will. Today I will be sharing to you the one of the elements in presenting oneself as a living sacrifice, and that is the soul.

Let us examine the first part of Romans 12:1, "Therefore I urge you, brethren,..." The term "brethren" implies  that the recipient of this message are believers whose souls have already been given to God in salvation. Therefore, this is a call to a regenerated soul to make a proper offering. This is not something that a person can do unless they're redeemed. Nothing else can be offered to God if the soul hasn't been offered.

WHY AN UNREGENERATE PERSON CANNOT OFFER HIS BODY, MIND, AND WILL TO GOD?

The very reason why an unregenerate person cannot offer his body, mind, and will to God is because he cannot respond to God at all. 1 Corinthians 2:14 explains why, "...natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised" (NASB UPDATED). In other words, there's no way that Scripture would ever appeal or the Holy Spirit would ever appeal to an unregenerate person to make a supreme act of dedication to God. So the implication here is that the soul must come first.

Paul tells us another reason why in Romans 8:8 that says, "and those who are in the flesh cannot please God" (NASB UPDATED). To be in the flesh means to be unredeemed, therefore, an unredeemed person cannot please God. This means that if I am not one who possess the love of God then all my acts of self-sacrifice are worthless.

HOW DOES THE SCRIPTURE DESCRIBE AN UNREGENERATE PERSON?

In the parable of the sower found in Matthew 13:3 to 9, Jesus, talking about the different kinds of soil, said that there was a soil that had rock bed underneath the ground. When the seed went into it and the roots hit the rocks, it couldn't go down - though it certainly flourished for a while - and when the sun came out, it was burnt and withered away. The LORD explains that this is the one who hears and listens to the message but when tribulation comes or when persecution comes - because they have no real root - they die. The idea here is that these are people who make a joyful and immediate response to the truth about Christ but it's never genuine as proven by the fact when it calls for sacrifice, they die. The situation is the same with the soil that was filled with weeds - representing the riches and cares of this age - that choked out the seed.

The Scripture also tells us a story about the rich young ruler who, when was told by Jesus to sell everything he have and give it to the poor, went away because he was not willing to make such a sacrifice and that he was not willing to obey the LORD for he was not a redeemed soul.

A REGENERATE PERSON IS ONE WHO RECEIVED THE MERCIES OF GOD

The mercies of God are everything that God has done for the believer as listed in chapters 1 through 11 of Paul's epistles to the Romans like God's love; that nothing can separate us from the love of God; Grace; the Holy Spirit; that the Holy Spirit dwell within us;  Peace and elsewhere it says we've received peace; faith that was repeated over 20 times; comfort; power; hope; patience; kindness; glory and honor and righteousness and forgiveness and reconciliation and justification; security and eternal life; freedom; resurrection; sonship; and intercession... all of those are the mercies of God.

So what Paul is saying is that we have received all of these marvelous things from God. We don't deserve any of these but because of the work of Jesus Christ we experienced the mercies of God. And since we received the infinite, unending, and eternal mercies of God, we should, as an act of instant response, give ourselves to God as a living sacrifice.

Therefore, when we say that we are to present ourselves a living sacrifice, that has to begin with the soul. And that is to come to Christ and receive Him as Savior and LORD and receive the salvation that He offers - that's were it starts by giving your soul to God.

In my next blogs, I will be sharing the other elements in presenting oneself as a living sacrifice, that is the body, mind, and will.

A Living Sacrifice

Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, which is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:1,2, NASB UPDATED)

In my previous blog entitled "The Supreme Act Of Spiritual Worship," I shared to you that we, Christians, are a kingdom of priests whose goal is to offer up spiritual sacrifices - like prayer, praise, giving, and service - but there is one act that is the supreme and all encompassing and all effecting act that a believer must do in his life as a true worshiper and that is to offer himself as a living sacrifice.

Today I will be sharing what the phrase "a living sacrifice" mean, which is the central concept in Romans 12:1 and 2. As mentioned from 1 Peter 2:5, we are spiritual priests offering up spiritual sacrifices and the primary sacrifice we are called to offer , as Paul says in these verses, is ourselves.

THE OLD TESTAMENT OFFERING OF SACRIFICES

In the Old Testament an offerer would come to God bringing his lamb or his turtledove, whatever it was he was going to sacrifice, he brought that sacrifice to the holy place. It was given over to the priest and the priest took it, slew it, put it on the altar and as it were, offered it to God.

But look what the prophet Samuel said in 1 Samuel 15:22, "Has the LORD as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams" (NASB). This means that it was not the dead animal that was offered but instead a living soul. The dead animal was an outward symbol of the offering of the heart and the soul. This is the same idea found in Psalm 51:17 that says, "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise" (KJV). And also in Psalm 141:2 that says, "Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense; and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice" (KJV).

In other words, these Old Testament Scriptures tell us that an Old Testament Jew who offered a dead animal was not offering a dead animal instead he is offering himself; his action is only an outward symbol of the inward reality of which he was also committed and that was offering his own heart.

THE NEW TESTAMENT OFFERING OF SACRIFICES

That system of offering has come to an end for God no longer desires that dead animals be offered to Him. Now what God wants is living sacrifices, that is living men and women. The central act of a new covenant believer is the presentation of his heart, his soul, his mind, all that he is as a living sacrifice. The outward sacrifices have ceased and God calls only for the living sacrifice - that is, a call of dedication and commitment.

The elements that are included in the presentation of a believer as a living sacrifice includes the soul, body, mind, and will. I will discuss these elements in detail in my next blogs.