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| I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God— this is your spiritual act of worship. |
| —Romans 12:1 |
As a teenager, probably no other verse of Scripture was quoted as much in our youth group meetings than the verse at the beginning of this blog post. I imagine that the timing of my young life—growing up in the late 1950s and early 1960s—played quite well into the reasons why our leaders chose to emphasize this verse.
I grew up in the time just before the great sexual revolution of the mid to late 1960s. Though they existed, birth control measures were not readily available to young people. Sexual experimentation that took place in those days was far more limited than it has become today. Church-going teenagers were constantly being urged to maintain sexual purety until they were married. So, you can see how this verse might play well into the strategy of youth group leaders who were trying to help teens avoid the shame of premarital sexual relations and the possibility of pregnancy outside the boundaries of marriage.
Of course, this verse means a great deal more than simply urging people to remain sexually pure. The Apostle Paul lived at a time where many sins of the flesh were quite commonplace. Here, Paul urges “Christ’s-ones” to willingly give the physical modality of their beings, represented by their bodies, over to God as living sacrifices.
Since certain religions required actual physical sacrifice unto death, Paul contrasts those horrible religions with the Christian faith that wants its believers to give themselves alive to God as a spiritual act of worship. How much more pleasing it would be to give oneself to God while still alive and able to obediently serve Him.
As we begin each new day, this urging of the Apostle should become a watchword for us. We should daily determine to give God our human physical modality as a symbol that we have subjected to His perfect will all of our four human modalities. In giving God the stength of our bodies, we also give Him our hearts, minds, and souls.
When we turn every aspect of our humanity over to the supernatural control of the Holy Spirit, only then can we begin to experience the maximum joy of full obedience to God. With God in control of our lives, we can go forward serving Him with the totality of who we are as human beings.
