Romans 12:1 “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.”

For the better part of three chapters, Paul’s letter to the Romans digs deeply into the utter lostness of humankind. No one, from open sinners to deeply religious moralists, escapes his diagnosis–utterly lost.

Then comes the surprising grace of God. He gives his not guilty verdict as a gift. He sacrificed his own Son to satisfy the demands of justice. All sin is forgiven. All people are welcome. He is continuing the grace and forgiveness he showed to Abraham and David. It gives meaning to our suffering, freedom from the control of sin, power to our struggle with it, optimism and confidence in God’s love no matter how dark the days become. Our Lord chose to save us and make us his own purely out of his own mercy and compassion, and everyone he has chosen will be saved.

Can you look at all this, Paul concludes after 11 chapters, can you believe all this and not be changed? Isn’t this a call, even more, the inspiration to live our lives differently?

No reasonable Christian would deny that God deserves our worship in response to all the grace and mercy he has shown us. But what does that worship look like? An hour or two of songs and prayers on Sunday morning? Prayers before we eat or go to bed and a daily devotional?

How about every waking and sleeping moment for the rest of your life? You’ve probably never seen an animal sacrifice. I haven’t. But you know what they were about. The lamb or goat or calf was presented to the priest. He slit its throat. The animal bled to death. The hide was removed. The carcass was dressed. The priests slung the body up on the altar. Sometimes they burned the whole thing to ashes. Sometimes some of the meat was used to feed the priests and the worshipers. But for the sacrificial victim this was never temporary, or partial. It was permanent and required their entire lives.

The God of the Bible is a God who calls for human sacrifice, Paul reveals–but not for human deaths. “Living sacrifices,” he calls us. It’s still permanent. It’s still the whole life. But he wants the whole body for unending service, not a death that serves no one. What does this look like?

It does not mean that you all need to enroll in the seminary and become pastors, teachers and missionaries. If you have gifts and interests for that sort of thing, that is wonderful. Serve God that way. But church work is not necessary to offer your body as a living sacrifice.

Martin Luther once commented, “The Christian cobbler isn’t a Christian cobbler because he sews little crosses on the shoes he makes. He serves as a Christian cobbler by making good shoes.” Each pair is a service to God because he gives his neighbor the best he can make.

The Christian student isn’t a living sacrifice to God because he tries to use every class discussion as an opportunity to slip in some reference to Jesus and the gospel. No, he is a living sacrifice when he respects the teacher, and does his work faithfully, and gets the best grades he can because school is preparing him to do things that contribute to society.

The Christian doctor doesn’t make himself a living sacrifice by praying with every patient at every exam, or becoming a medical missionary, though both may be a fine thing to do. He is a living sacrifice when he takes every exam and every surgery seriously and does the best he can to keep his patients in good health.

The Christian who is sleeping isn’t a living sacrifice because every dream is about a Bible story. No, he is a living sacrifice because sleep is one way he takes care of the body God has given him, and it makes him strong and alert for whatever God has given him to do during his waking hours. You get the idea. Sacrificial living isn’t necessarily about pain. In some cases it could be. It is a picture of an entire life lived in view of God’s mercy.