Bodies as A Living Sacrifice? By Babatunde Olugboji
In Romans 12:1, Apostle Paul states, “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 reasonable service” (NKJV). Which begs the question, how can a believer present himself or herself as a sacrifice when a ‘regular sacrifice” is meant to be killed? 
Paul’s exhortation to the believers in Rome was to dedicate themselves to God, not as a sacrifice upon the altar, as the Mosaic Law mandated the offering of animals, but as a living sacrifice. The dictionary defines sacrifice as “anything consecrated and offered to God.” As believers, how can we consecrate and present ourselves to God as a living sacrifice?
Under the Old Covenant, God accepted animal sacrifices. However, these were merely a prefiguration of the sacrifice made by the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ. As a result of His ultimate, once-for-all sacrifice on the cross, the Old Testament sacrifices have become obsolete and are no longer effective (Hebrew 9:11-12).
For those who are in Christ through saving faith, the only form of acceptable worship is to fully dedicate ourselves to the Lord. Under God’s authority, the believer’s yet-unredeemed body must be surrendered to Him as an instrument of righteousness (Romans 6:12-13; 8:11-13). In light of Jesus’ ultimate sacrifice for us, this is only “reasonable.
What does a living sacrifice entail in practical terms? The following verse (Romans 12:2) aids our understanding. We serve as a living sacrifice for God by refusing to conform to this world. The world is characterized for us in 1 John 2:15-16 as the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. Everything the world offers can be distilled into these three categories. The lust of the flesh encompasses all that appeals to our appetites and includes excessive desires for food, drink, sex, and anything else that fulfills physical needs. The lust of the eyes primarily pertains to materialism, coveting what we see that we do not possess and envying those who have what we desire. The pride of life is characterized by any ambition that inflates our ego and places us on the throne of our own lives.
How can believers avoid conforming to the world? By being “transformed by the renewing of our minds.” This transformation occurs mainly through the power of God’s Word. We must hear (Romans 10:17), read (Revelation 1:3), study (Acts 17:11), memorize (Psalm 119:9-11), and meditate on (Psalm 1:2-3) Scripture. The Word of God, applied to our hearts by the Holy Spirit, is the sole power on earth capable of transforming us from worldliness to genuine spirituality. Indeed, it is all we require to be made “complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
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