"Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God - this is your true and proper worship."(Romans12:1)
The law is a type of the atoning sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ, offered once for all. It's a dead sacrifice. It is a ritual that is postponed until the reality comes. Dead sacrifices offer ransoms such as animals, grain, and money. By dying by the law of Jesus Christ, He offered Himself as a sacrifice for the law, paying the full price for our sins. Since the wages of sin is death, He paid the price for that death by dying.
The Old Testament sacrifice of atonement offered substitutes not people. However, the unclean thing could not be given as a substitute. But living sacrifices are offered in the body. It is necessary to comprehensively and deeply examine the individual salvation and the total salvation of true Israel, which were recorded before Romans 11. This is the reason why I cannot preach the words after Romans 12 lightly. Alwsys hesitate.
We need to think deeply about how I, who became one with Christ through the merits of Christ's cross, who was born in sin and flesh, was born again and spiritual in Christ. It is to contemplate the grace of Christ's atonement and follow the way. If this mental activity takes place within you, you are a person of the spirit who was called by God and received a revelation.
The most important basis in living sacrifice is understanding one's own subject through the grace of Christ's atonement. Even a dead sacrifice cannot offer an unclean thing. How much more can a person who has not attained righteousness and holiness in Christ offer his body as a living sacrifice? That is why he cannot tell anyone to offer holy living sacrifices recklessly. This means that the church cannot use this word to get its members to work.
Called in Christ, justified and glorified (Romans 8:30), we offer our bodies according to mercy, in a spiritual state. It is not a living sacrifice of one's own will. The severity is judgment, but the goodness is salvation. Therefore, the living sacrifice is the sacrifice of salvation. But a dead sacrifice is the sacrifice of judgment. Since we have been saved, we can offer living sacrifices, and offering living sacrifices itself is the continuation of salvation. It is spiritual worship.
Spiritual worship is worship in which the Word becomes reality and manifests itself in life. For that purpose, only when the Holy Spirit and the truth are combined, it becomes the first worship gathrring and the second worship of life.(John4:24) Therefore, it is essential to be baptized with Christ by the Holy Spirit. (1Corinthians 12:13) The Holy Spirit will not work indwelling unless complete forgiveness of sins is achieved through complete repentance through the baptism of death and resurrection with Christ.
Without the indwelling work of the Holy Spirit, it is only a dead sacrifice as a substitute. Isn't there a lot of that kind of figure front and rear left and right? In Christ, through the Holy Spirit, you must be able to kill your body with the spirit and come to God according to the knowledge of the truth in order to offer a living sacrifice. Therefore, it is a message that cannot be preached to those who belong to the flesh.
The living sacrifice is first the sacrifice of the living body, that is, the sacrifice of life. Therefore we must first learn to live as Christ, not myself.(Galatians 2:20) That is the message of the cross.(1Corinthians 1:18)
The Old Testament must die, but the new covenant is the sacrifice of living through Christ.
The second condition of the living sacrifice is to be offered in holiness, that is, in a state of spirit. I must be not in the flesh, but in the spirit, not under the law, but in the commandment of the love of Christ.
No one is holy under the law. But in Christ we are sanctified by the truth.
The third condition of the living sacrifice is a sacrifice that pleases God. It is a sacrifice that conforms to the will of God. It is God's justification and that is the sacrifice. We feel this condition. Bliss comes. Let our bodies learn to be driven by the indwelling Lord Jesus Christ, and as those who have attained righteousness in Christ, always turn on the switch of the living sacrifice, who are led by the Spirit of truth to achieve holiness and conform to the will of our Heavrnly Father.
If you learn the principle of personal salvation in Romans chapters 1 to 8 and the providence of salvation for all Israel in chapters 9 to 11, your body, not just your mouth, believes in the Lord and enters the stage of offering holy living sacrifices, that is, spiritual worship. It means that love is realized in the Holy Spirit and in the truth. Although it is a long and difficult journey, it is now the next high point we must challenge.
Written by Ptr. Yohan Kim.
Translated by Nancy Chung
COME AND SEE WORLD MISSION