7. “Presenting Our Bodies to God as a Sacrifice” (Romans 11 & 12, Part 1)

Many years ago in college I was taught that if you want to understand the argument someone is making in an essay or a book, sometimes it can be helpful to go straight to the conclusion. There you will find the goal of the writer, where he or she hopes to take you. When you have a better sense of where it’s all going, you can more easily understand how the arguments are meant to lead to this outcome.

For the season of Lent, that’s essentially what we will be doing in our study of Romans. We’re going to jump forward in the text to see where Paul takes this argument, to see where Paul is taking us. For the first 11 chapters, Paul is sharing with us a story: the story of the gospel, the story of how God has rescued us in Jesus and is continuing to rescue us. Throughout these chapters, there are almost no commands—it’s almost all description and explanation. And then we get to chapter 12. It’s like at this point Paul takes a breath and says, “Okay, do you see what I’ve been saying? Now, here’s what you do with this.” 

You can hear that shift as chapter 12 begins, “I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God,” and then comes what is the central command in the book of Romans: “Present your bodies as a sacrifice to God.” 

If we are reading Romans rightly; if we are hearing the gospel rightly and allowing it to change us, this is where it will all take us. To us offering our bodies as a sacrifice to God.

These verses are so dense and so filled with meaning that I believe it will be profitable for us to spend a few weeks just meditating on them. What do they mean? Why is this where the gospel takes us? How do we live this out in our lives?

And this morning I want to zero in on this specific command. What does it mean for us to “present our bodies as a sacrifice” to God? To answer that, we’re going to need to spend some time thinking about sacrifices.

If you’ve ever tried reading through the Bible in a year, if you started at Genesis, you probably did okay through creation and Noah and Abraham and Jacob and Joseph. Then you have Moses and the Exodus, and you’re probably tracking there. But then it slows down with the building of the tabernacle. And then, then we come to Leviticus, and we get chapter upon chapter about sacrifices.

But, believe it or not, rightly understood, Leviticus is an amazing book, and that stuff about sacrifices is profound. Because it’s all about the relationship we are meant to have with God. Some of the sacrifices especially focused on dealing with sin, about repairing the breach in relationship caused by human betrayal of God. Their focus was on cleansing. Other sacrifices functioned essentially as a shared meal, where believers were able to eat of what was sacrificed, symbolizing eating together with God. But perhaps the central and most significant of the offerings, simply known as the burnt offering, was about consecrating. Its focus was on giving oneself to God.

If a man—usually it was a man acting on behalf of his family or a priest on behalf of his people—if a man wanted to offer a burnt offering, 

• First he needed to find an animal from his flock that was living—you couldn’t just take an animal that just died—and, what’s more, that was flawless; it was whole and without any blemish. 
• He would lead that living bull or sheep to the entrance of the tabernacle, symbolically, before God. 
• Then, before doing anything else, he would place his hand upon the animal’s head, which was important, because this signified that this animal in a real sense signified HIM and his household. That all that was to happen to the animal after this represented the worshipers. 
• Then, right after this close contact, the worshiper would take a knife and slaughter his animal (which, remember represents him). Priests would take the blood to splash upon the altar to cleanse it from the taint of sin. 
• And then, finally then the entire animal itself would be placed upon the altar, and all of it would remain there until it was completely burnt until, symbolically speaking all of the flesh was transformed into something different, into smoke that would rise upward to heaven as a gift. And that gift, Leviticus tells us, would be a pleasing aroma to God.  

Now the OT is very clear that what is happening in this ritual is not really about the animal itself. God doesn’t need cows—he owns cattle all over the world. No, it’s about the worshiper symbolically offering himself—which is why the placing the hands on the animal is so important. When he slaughters the animal, the worshipers are renouncing their claim upon their lives, they are, in a sense, dying to their former way. And by offering the entire animal that represents them on the altar, there is a complete giving over of themselves to God, as it rises up to him. 

With this burnt offering, God was teaching his people something important. That restoration of relationship with him is about more than just cleansing from wrongs. Yes, sin polluted their relationship. As we spoke of a couple of weeks ago, God’s righteous opposition to all that is wrong needed to be propitiated for our relationship to be possible, and that’s part of what sacrifice pointed to. But if this is all that God’s redemption did, what we’d have is just a peace treaty, an agreement that we wouldn’t need to be afraid of God judging us. But God desires much more for us than an impersonal truce. God desires communion with us. And for us to experience communion with the God who has given himself to us, we also need to give ourselves over to him. 

Because this is how truly loving relationships work. This is how communion works.  

Communion might feel like a churchy word, since we use it most when talking about the Lord’s Supper. But it’s an important word, because it describes something central to every deep loving relationships. Communion is what happens in a relationship when two people give of themselves to each other and at the same time delight in receiving. It is the heart of intimacy.

A healthy marriage involves both the husband and the wife learning to give themselves up to the other. They learn how at times to sacrifice their own desires as they seek the good of their spouse. They learn to let down their guards and share their most vulnerable self with the other. When both partners learn to do this, when both are truly giving of themselves and also lovingly receiving from the other, it’s a powerful and beautiful thing. That’s communion.

This same giving and receiving happens in a different way between a parent and a child. When a child is born, her entire life is quite literally placed in the hands of her parents. Her whole life is dependent on her mom and dad. As she grows up, she learns how to entrust herself by listening and obeying and loving. At the same time, when parents are at their best they are laying down their loves for their kids. They are willing to endure sleeplessness, financial expenses, reorganizing their entire lives, doing all sorts of things to seek the good of their children. When the relationship is how it should be, both parent and child are giving themselves to the other and joyfully receiving the other’s gifts. That’s communion.

Our human relationships help point us to something even deeper. At the very heart of everything, you and I were made for communion with God. In the beginning, God created us to enjoy with him a relationship of mutual self-giving. In the beginning, God gave us everything out of the vast bounty of who he is. He gave us life and joy and beauty and this created world; and more than this, he shared with us himself so that we might know him and delight in him. In the beginning, in the Garden of Eden, when everything was how it was meant to be, we in turn gave ourselves gladly to God, like a trusting child. We loved God and delighted in serving him. And even though our God didn’t need anything from us to be happy, because he loves us, he took delight in our gift of ourselves to him. In the beginning, God gave himself and we received his gifts with joy, and we gave ourselves, and God took delight in us. In the beginning was communion with God. This is what we were made for.

And this is what we lost when humanity sinned. We, the human race cut ourselves off from God, choosing death and darkness over life and goodness. We were cast out of Eden, disconnected from God’s presence. And having ruined this relationship that is at the very heart of what we are, we have been left hungering, searching, aching for the loss we’re not even willing to acknowledge. Ever since, our world has been haunted by a question: is there any way back? Can humanity ever be restored to intimate communion with its creator?

And from the very beginning, God has answered clearly with promise after promise, “Yes, there is, a way back to me. For I will rescue you.” And this, in fact, is what God was showing his people with the sacrificial system. He was offering signal markers, indicators of the kind of redemption he would bring. With these sacrifices he was saying, “This is what I will do. I will cleanse you from sin—and more than that, I will restore you back to communion with me, where I give myself to you, and you give yourself to me in love.  This is what the burnt offering was all about: each time in this ritual, the worshiper was expressing a form of self-giving, acting out the kind of relationship God intended to have with him. 

And yet at the same time with this offering the worshiper was being reminded of a need that was not yet satisfied. Because this burnt offering didn’t happen only once; it was an action repeated again and again over the person’s lifetime, showing that this animal was only a symbol and not the real thing. Giving this animal was not the same thing as the worshiper truly giving himself to God. The worshiper couldn’t give himself to God in the way he was meant to. Because unlike the living and unblemished animal, the worshiper was spiritually dead and corrupted by sin. And the worshiper didn’t just have a problem with his guilt, but also with his heart. He couldn’t in any real sense “die” to himself and break with his natural way of existence. The only way for him to die to this life was, well, to literally die. 

And so every time Israelites performed this burnt offering, they were participating in a stopgap, a shadow-version of the kind of communion they were meant for. The Israelites could not offer themselves fully and in a manner pleasing to God, so they offered this animal in their stead, waiting for the time when God would more fully restore them.

But what Paul teaches in Romans is that what was impossible for the OT Israelite now has become possible because of Jesus. Everything the Old Testament sacrifices pointed to, Jesus accomplished. Two weeks ago in chapter 3 we saw how Jesus, by his blood has propitiated the wrath of God, making all believers in him now alive and holy and pleasing in God’s sight; his death has cleansed us from our sin. And as Paul will continues his argument in chapter 6, he will speak of how, through Jesus, it’s not just our guilt that has been taken away, but we also are changed. In his death, believers have broken with the old way. In Jesus, you and I die and yet through the resurrection may live in a new way. 

And what that means is that, because of Jesus, we now can enter into the communion with God we were always meant to experience. Because of Jesus, as we, in him experience God giving himself to us, we now, in Christ, are also able truly to give ourselves in love to him, knowing that God delights in us.

And so, after spending 11 chapters speaking of the amazing things God has done in Jesus, Paul says, “Therefore, offer your bodies as a sacrifice to God!” He’s not talking here about offering a sacrifice for sin. Jesus has already done that once and for all; our sin has been dealt with. He’s talking about the burnt offering, the sacrifice of consecration. Before Jesus, worshipers were dead and corrupt and objects of wrath. But now, by the mercies of God, we are, as Paul tells us, “living and holy and pleasing to God.” Before Jesus, worshipers could only offer an animal to represent themselves. But now, we can truly offer ourselves to him and experience God’s pleasure in this gift. Through Jesus, we can now experience communion with God. And so this is what we are called to do.

If you’re wondering why Paul says, “Present your bodies,” his point is not “Give your bodies, but not your souls.” Your body is the part of yourself that you have to give. Your body is how you take action; your body is what has the energy that you can spend on yourself or another, and it’s your body that feels the sacrifices you make. All that we have to give is connected to our bodies. When Paul is saying, “Present your bodies,” he’s saying, “Give yourself to God—all that you have and all that you are, give to him.” 

If we keep in our mind the different steps involved in the burnt offering, we will understand that we are being called to a 2-part action. On one hand, offering our bodies involves the act of giving up, renouncing, letting go. Previously, before we were saved by Jesus, we related to ourselves by holding on tight. Previously, we sought to keep control, to protect ourselves from discomfort and suffering, to be the ones who were responsible for our fates. But in Jesus, that’s no longer who we are and what our life is. So part of this offering of ourselves involves choosing to place on the altar our old way and old desires and old identity, accepting the Spirit’s work of burning that away as we are being transformed. In short, it’s an act of surrender.

And, along with giving up, there’s also a giving to. Along with renunciation, we’re also participating in consecration, in dedicating ourselves wholly and completely to God. We’re handing ourselves over as a gift, allowing God to take control and transform us into the life he has called us to live. It’s an act of self-dedication: “All that I am, all that I have, I give to you.” This is part of what we are reaffirming every time we confess the first question of the Heidelberg Catechism: “I am not my own, but belong body and soul, in life and in death, to my faithful Savior Jesus.” We are consecrating ourselves, giving ourselves over to our God.  

This is what Paul is talking about when he says, “I appeal to you brothers, by the mercies of God, present your bodies as a sacrifice.” This, says Paul, is where the gospel takes us. This is where God is taking all of us who trust in Jesus. As we receive God’s promise in Christ; as by faith we take hold of his gift, we will find God lovingly bringing us back into the relationship with him we were always meant for, where God as he gives us himself, also enables us to respond by giving ourselves to him. This is our future. This is what we long for. This, communion with God, is the goal of the Christian life.

Therefore, through the mercies of God, offer your bodies as a sacrifice to him. This the central command of Romans and at the heart of what it means to be a Christian. And for that reason, this focal command is what we will consider for the upcoming weeks as we move toward the cross, toward the time when Jesus quite literally offered himself as a living sacrifice in love toward God in order to rescue us. 

But I realize that in all of this talk about sacrifice, I haven’t really drawn a picture of what this means. What are we talking about really? What does it look like in our lives when we offer our bodies as a sacrifice to God. How should we expect our lives to look? 

And I think the beginning of the answer comes by us simply looking at Jesus. Jesus is, you might say, the perfect worshiper, the one who in every way gave himself to God, offering his body as a sacrifice to him. And when we look at Jesus to see how this plays out, what we see is a life of loving this world. As Jesus gives himself to the Father, the Father sends him to the world in love. And as we learn to offer ourselves to God, we should expect that same—that God will call us to show our love for him in the way we love others. Which makes sense, because God is love. 

And when we understand that, that forces us to understand something about this. Yes, this life of giving ourselves to God is what we want, it is what makes us most human, there is nothing greater than communion with God. But at the same time, this life of offering ourselves to God as a sacrifice will be hard. Because it is hard to love a world filled with sin.  

It’s hard because of the sinful resistance within us. You and I have deeply internalized within us that our job is to protect ourselves. Our job is to make ourselves happy. And so when we are faced with the call to surrender our control, to give ourselves over so that we no longer do what we think we want, but what God wants—to love as Jesus loved, there is so much within us pulling the other way. There are deep habits, wrong ways of thinking, such that it will sometimes feel like we’re pulling an elephant in a sled uphill. 

A small example: I’ve had a long day and the kitchen is dirty, and for some reason I decide it’s Jennifer’s turn to clean the kitchen. Now, deep down I might know that she’s had an even harder and longer day. Deep down I know that the way God is calling me to is to love my wife. But there is so much resistance! 

And there are countless examples like this. As we seek to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice to the God who loves us, we should be ready for this to feel unnatural. We should be prepared for change to be a slow and somewhat arduous process. Because our old habits and beliefs run deep.

And yet, even still, you can be confident. Because this is the relationship God is absolutely committed to restoring us into. It will happen. We can seek to change knowing that we will, no matter how much resistance, no matter how slow.

And it’s also hard to love a world filled with sin, because when we love people who are sinful and broken like we are, we open ourselves up to be hurt. We need only consider the cross to see what happens when we seek to love others as Jesus has loved. The way of self-giving love to God is the way of loving people that we know can likely hurt us; hoping in people who quite possibly will disappoint us; giving to people who may well take advantage of us; and then when we are wronged, forgiving. The way of self-giving love to God means sharing with people the greatest possible gift you can give them, inviting them to know Jesus, even as you know that sometimes you will be mocked or rejected, and for some Christians even imprisoned for this. The way of self-giving love to God in this world is the way of the cross. We should not be surprised if at times it feels like a kind of death. 

But beyond this kind of death is resurrection. Beyond these temporary troubles lies eternal joy. This is why Paul can say, “I do not consider that our present sufferings are even worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed in us.” Yes, the life God calls us to will be hard at times in this sinful world. But in the end, we will rejoice in it.

In view of God’s mercies, therefore, offer your bodies as a sacrifice to God. Because you were made for communion with him.

Whenever we together confess our sins and hear the good news of the gospel, we are reaffirming this very thing. In our confession, we are seeking to place on the altar and burning away our old way, and as we hear the gospel we again are taking hold of the new way of belonging to God.