“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. 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.”

Romans 12:1-2

These verses in Romans are a picture to us of what it means to become a Christ-follower. What Paul is talking about when he refers to a “living sacrifice” is those animals placed on the altars of the Old Testament temple in Jerusalem, offered as a dutiful sacrifice to God. Here, in Romans 12, we are commanded to place our own selves on the altar of sacrifice in worship to God, similarly to how the sheep or doves were placed on the temple altar. The animals were no longer “their own,” so to speak—no longer doves flying freely in the sky or lambs frolicking in the grassy meadow. The lives that those animals had lived were no more. They were dead: dead to those things. Dead to that life. Their lives were no longer their own.

In a similar way, we are told to think of our duty to worship God as leaving behind ownership for the life we knew, to take up a different kind of life. We must present ourselves to God’s altar just like the sheep and doves were presented by the faithful worshippers at the Temple. We are not killed, but live. And we don’t atone for sin in this sacrifice. In fact, the atonement for sin of the animal sacrifice in the Old Testament Temple was God painting a picture in advance of Jesus’s atonement for sin. Jesus accomplished the real atonement on the cross.

This picture of atonement and sacrifice was also a picture to help us understand our own worship. Here, we are told clearly what constitutes worship for Christ-followers: worship is not about how often we go to church, pray, read the Bible, sing hymns, or talk about our faith. We are not physically dying like Jesus or the lambs and doves, but rather, we are to live continually as if we were laying on His altar at all times, dead to self, a “Living” sacrifice, alive, but dead to self. The life we knew is no more, if we want to follow Christ.

Additionally, we are told that it is by the “mercies of God” that we can and should offer our bodies as a living sacrifice. The sacrifice is not a punishment or deprivation, but rather, our response to what Jesus has done for us. God has allowed us to be on his altar, offering ourselves to Him, and that is how we worship Him. This privilege is also a command. We do this daily, continually, living it out.

Now, many people don’t think of the Christian life like that. Too often, people think that following Jesus is a wonderful way to fulfill ourselves and feel good, to lose that “Guilty feeling.” Other people think that becoming a Christian is a way to punch our ticket out of hell to free ourselves from the condemnation of sin. One of these views make us feel like God “owes” us a nice happy and comfortable life; the other, might lead to us thinking of ourselves as better than all those who don’t follow Him.

But, if our emphasis on the Christian life is on experiencing miracles, financial provision, answered prayer, or blessings of some kind, or on being part of the exclusive “in-crowd” of God, we are missing the point here and actually, according to this, not really worshipping Him in a holy or acceptable way. True, it sounds unpleasant to realize that worshipping God has to do with crawling onto an altar and not getting off, but that is what is said here. Christ-followers are to stay there and live there, belonging no longer to ourselves, but to God.

If we find that we have been thinking of the Christian life mostly as something to benefit from, a way to answer our prayers, provide health or financial favor, or just basically to keep us out of hell when we die, then we need to come back to this verse. And the good news about presenting yourself as a living sacrifice is that you can start now to do it. Present yourself to God right now and always. Take the next verse seriously: “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.”

How do we test this? By seeking our the answers in the Bible, by becoming more and more familiar with the teachings of the New Testament, particularly, the things that Jesus said and did in the four gospels, and by asking God to help us become more and more open to hearing correction and repentance, as shown through the Word and Holy Spirit.