“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life — your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life — and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him.” Romans 12:1-2, The Message
I’m returning to this core verse about how we are to view and live our lives. Today Eugene Peterson offers some thoughts on what this means:
“Paul summarizes Christian living in a sentence: ‘Take your ordinary life — your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around-life — and place it before God as an offering.” (Romans 12:1)
God doesn’t throw out the past and tell us to forget about it. He uses all the material, but he rearranges it, and in his hands it becomes new. The vocabulary in Romans 12:1 uses the same words from the sacrificial system of the past: life and offering. But each of these words is given a radically new orientation.
Life. Substitute sacrifices will no longer do. It’s your life God wants, and it’s mine. Cows, birds, goats, and sheep will no longer be acceptable. It must be your life. By using the word life, Paul leaves no room for escape. LIfe includes our whole self, the entire collection of feelings, actions, ideas. Brain, nerves, muscles, drives, instincts, perceptions. Life. It is me that’s offered up — all of me.
Offering. The drama of the blood flowing out of a sacrificial animal was impressive in its symbolism, but the animal was worthless from that time on, except to be eaten. A short-lived usefulness. This new concept is no less a sacrifice, but the blood stays in the veins and continues to nourish the life of the individual. Thus, this new offering becomes an extended one.
This offering of the whole of our lives is a worshipful act that’s pleasing to God.” Eugene Peterson, Conversations
Wow. Typing Peterson’s sentence brought this wild reality back to me in a new way — our life-blood is not shed as we become an offering — BECAUSE the blood of Jesus was shed for us, because Jesus was raised for us, because we are raised to new life in him. It is love incomprehensible. May we soak in the wonder of the offering God has made for us that we might become a living sacrifice for God. To be continued tomorrow…
Well said. Not only is our lifeblood not shed, but we become more fully us as we become that offering. I love something Dallas Willard said in Divine Conspiracy. Something like God’s intention is that each of us become the sort of person God can set free in His universe to do what we want to do.