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. 2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
- Soul
- Body
- Mind
- Will
SOUL
- First of all, you cannot please God in any way if you don't give yourself to Him, your soul, the essence of who you are. That’s the foundation of the sacrifice. It all starts with the soul.
- Now, any time you see “therefore,” you know that this is simply a transition into the consequence of what has been established before. For 11 chapters, the apostle Paul has been delineating the mercies of God. We’re not talking about “mercy” singular. We’re talking about “mercies.” Things given undeserved. That’s “mercy” – things that are presented to us, granted to us, applied to us, credited to us, which we do not deserve. There are many mercies of God.
BODY
- “Present” is a temple term. It means to surrender up, to yield up, to offer up, and that is to hold nothing back. Like a priest who brings a sacrifice and lays the whole thing on the altar, you put your body on the altar, and by doing that, you are saying, “I give You, God, my body.”
- if you look back at chapter 6 for just a moment, Paul says in verse 12 of chapter 6, “Do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts.” So you there that the body means more than just the material. It means the immaterial desires and lust, as well, but he says in verse 12, “Do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey its lust,” verse 13, then, “Do not go on presenting,” there’s that same verb, “the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but presents yourselves to God...,” and he’s talking about the body and the component parts of your humanity.
- Romans 6:16 “Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness?” In other words, you're making a presentation of yourself to obey your master.
- Sanctification is the result of an active presentation of the soul first and then the body to God.
- In your salvation, you declared God as your sovereign, Christ as your Lord and Master, and this is your responsibility, then, to come to worship Him and to offer yourself as a living sacrifice.
MIND
- If you're not going to give your mind to God, obviously you're not going to be able to sustain giving your body to God. Along with the body, the mind must come.
- If you don't program your mind correctly, your body will come off that altar (presentable sacrifice to God). This is reality. The mind is critical. So how do we deal with the mind? Negative. Don't be conformed to this age. What is the this age?, the fallen world, all unbiblical philosophies which Satan uses to promote his goals and ambitions.
WILL
- Finally, the will must be given to God. We know things, but we don't necessarily do what we should. Paul says, “I don't do what I should do. I do what I don’t want to do.” The will is a very important reality. The final word, then, is that you would prove, by your life, what the will of God is – prove not in the sense that you validate God but in the sense that you demonstrate it. You demonstrate the will of God. You put the will of God on display because you do His will.
- to live the Christian life is a strong, strong desire generated by the will based upon what the mind knows of the Word of God which informs what the body does, all in gratitude for the mercies of God granted graciously to us in Christ. This is the sum and substance of the path of sanctification. There’s no other way to get there
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