Spiritual sacrifices

At the time of the Old Testament, the Hebrews made sacrifices for everything. Different occasions and different circumstances demanded a sacrifice, such as A burnt offering, a meal offering, a peace sacrifice, a sin offering, or a guilt offering. Each victim had certain rules and regulations. Sacrifices were also made on feast days, new moon, full moon, etc.

Christ, the Lamb of God, was the perfect sacrifice, offered once and for all (Hebrews 10), which made the sacrifices of the Old Testament unnecessary. Just as Jesus came to fulfill the law, to make it greater, so that even the intention of the heart could be sin, even if it is not carried out, so he also fulfilled and increased the sacrificial system. Now we are to make spiritual sacrifices.

In the past, when I read the first verse of Romans 12 and verse 17 of Psalm 51, I would nod my head and say, yes, of course, spiritual sacrifices. But I would never have admitted that I had absolutely no idea what this meant. What is a Spiritual Sacrifice? And how do I sacrifice one? Should I find a spiritual lamb, put it on a spiritual altar, and cut its throat with a spiritual knife? Or did Paul mean something else? (This is a rhetorical question!)

The dictionary defines a victim as "the act of sacrificing something of value to Deity." What do we have that might be valuable to God? He does not need anything from us. But he wants a broken mind, prayer, praise and our body.

These may not seem like great sacrifices, but let us consider what all these mean for human carnal nature. Pride is the natural state of humanity. To bring a victim of a broken mind is to give up our pride and our arrogance for something unnatural: humility.

Prayer - talking to God, listening to Him, thinking about His Word, fellowship and communion, Spirit from Spirit - requires that we give up other things we may desire so that we can spend time with God.

Praise happens when we turn our thoughts away from ourselves and put the great God of the Universe at the center. Again, the natural state of a human being is to think only of himself. Praise brings us to the throne room of the Lord, where we sacrifice knees before His dominion.

Romans 12,1 instructs us to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, in which our spiritual worship consists. Instead of sacrificing our body to the God of this world, we put our body at the disposal of God and worship him in our daily activities. There is no separation between time in worship and time outside of worship - our whole life becomes worship when we put our bodies on God's altar.

If we can offer these sacrifices daily to God, we are not in danger of adapting to this world. Instead, we are transformed by putting our pride, our will, and our desire for worldly things, our preoccupation with the ego, and our egoism, to number one.

We can not offer more precious or valuable sacrifices than these.

by Tammy Tkach


Spiritual sacrifices