What Is a Living Sacrifice?

 •  2 min. read  •  grade level: 10
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Q. What is “a living sacrifice,” the reasonable service spoken of in Romans 12:11I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. (Romans 12:1)? Sacrifices require the death of the animal in the Old Testament.
A. I believe it refers to the meat offering (more than to sacrifices where death came in), as far as such can be applied to us. It should more correctly be termed the “meal offering,” or “mincha.” The fine flour mingled with oil was Christ’s human nature as conceived of the Holy Spirit by the Virgin Mary (Luke 1). Unleavened cakes anointed with oil point to his being anointed with the Holy Spirit at His baptism (Luke 3); the frankincense to those graces which God alone appreciated truly and fully, and all of it was consumed — all was tried by fire and only emitted a fragrant odor to God. No honey — the sweetness of nature, and no leaven — that which is sour and inflated. Salt always added, as the holy grace which binds the soul to God and enables the heart to refuse all that is presented to it which is not of Him. In short, a sinless man was before God’s eye in Christ, and was what none else ever was in itself offered to God.
In Romans 8:2,32For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. 3For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: (Romans 8:2‑3), we are consecrated to God and presented to Him, as in Christ. In Romans 12 as priests for whom the mercies of God have opened our temple door, we have come out of all man’s corruption, and now present our bodies, hitherto slaves of sin, to God, a “living sacrifice” as the meat offering, and as in Christ and His life in us, “holy,” to which the salt pointed (compare Mark 9:49,5049For every one shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt. 50Salt is good: but if the salt have lost his saltness, wherewith will ye season it? Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another. (Mark 9:49‑50)), and “acceptable,” the grace of Christ seen in us (the frankincense) — all presented to God as an “intelligent priestly service,” or “worship,” as it might be; in contrast to the ceremonial which might be under the law without intelligence of heart and conscience.