DAILY DEVOTIONAL – June 21, 2021
“Living By His Mercies”
Prayer: Dear Jesus, You lived a perfectly faithful life toward God; a life you sacrificed so that our life of sin could be atoned for. Help us, Lord, to follow You and live as living sacrifices by the mercy and power of Your Holy Spirit. Amen.
Scripture: Romans 12:1-3
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. 3 For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.
Devotional – “Living By His Mercies”
This first verse from our passage today is an often-quoted verse and a verse that I think at first glance may seem to be easy to grasp, but when we really think about what Paul is saying there is a depth of meaning here that even a lifetime’s worth of study couldn’t reach the bottom of. In this text Paul encourages Christians to do something that appears to be contradictory; to live as a sacrifice. A sacrifice is something that is put to death, yet, Paul says that by the mercies of God we should be a living sacrifice. What is Paul communicating here by using apparently contradictory terms, and furthermore, what does a life lived as a sacrifice look like?
Paul says being a living sacrifice means, “not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.” Paul says in verse 2, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Knowing what God wants and even wanting to do what God wants, is not doing what God wants. To realize in our lives the blessings of transformation that God has worked in our hearts and minds through faith, we must be a living sacrifice. We must live dead to ourselves, to our greed, to our pride, and to our agenda.
We all in our sinfulness go against the very thing we know is true and right in our hearts, because “by the mercies of God” as Paul says, Christ has revealed to us what it means to be a living sacrifice through His own sacrificial death and resurrection from the dead. As Jesus Himself prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane as He was in agony over the hard road to Calvary that lay ahead of Him, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” – Matthew 26:39.
Paul said in verse 1, “By the mercies of God.” “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice.” When we by faith in Christ remember that Jesus is the resurrection and the life and that by the mercies of God working in the waters of baptism we have already died and been raised with Christ, and that though we die yet shall we live in Christ, then living as a sacrifice to God becomes possible.
We find the strength to die to self and to live as a sacrifice to God when by faith in Christ we remember that we have already been saved by the name that is above every name (and title), the name of Jesus. When by faith in Christ we remember that we have already been given a name more powerful than any title given to us by men, the name “Child of God”, then we are able to relinquish the hold that we by nature have on the approval of others. When we remember by faith in Christ that all of heaven itself, that Christ Himself who is heaven’s treasure, has been given to us for all of eternity, then we are able to let the riches of this world die so that we may truly live.
Being a living sacrifice means that all our living, all of our life, is a sacrifice to the God of mercy who has saved us in the blood of His Son Jesus and who has promised to set us free and give us true life, not just in the eternal day after we die, but today this very day as we walk by faith in Christ.
Thanks for spending time with me today in God’s Word, and remember, that God has forgiven yesterday, is with you today, and has already taken care of tomorrow. Amen.
