p. 50 | A Living Sacrifice

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 31, 1871

A Living Sacrifice.

TELL me, my dear friend, are you an earnest, growing, blessed Christian?

“That is more than I dare say. I hope I am a Christian. Sometimes I am conscious of some degree of earnestness. I am afraid I don’t grow much. I don’t know about being a blessed Christian.”

But you should know; for Christ has stated who the blessed Christians are. He says, Blessed are the poor in spirit; they that mourn; the meek; they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness; the merciful; the pure in heart; the peace-makers; they who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake. Does this describe you?

“I am afraid not. The question is always coming up, Am I meek? Do I hunger and thirst? Am I pure in heart? Am I a faithful Christian? I can’t pretend that I am persecuted for righteousness’ sake.”

And so the whole matter is left in uncertainty. This is far from being satisfactory to you; you have hoped that it would not always be so; that something more favorable might turn up. My dear friend, you are indulging a delusive expectation. This state of uncertainty is most criminal; it is by no means a mere misfortune. The way out of it stands wide open. Here is God’s message to you by the mouth of his apostles:—

“I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.”

It is simply through failing to comply with this invitation that you are so uncertain about yourself. You wait for something to turn up, but here is something to be done.

“I am sure I would do anything in the world to be sure.”

Then you will not remain uncertain. Now let us look carefully at what is required. It is not often that princes stoop to entreat what they might command; but here the King of kings utters a most courteous and tender appeal to you; and I beg you to notice what is asked:—

It is the total gift of yourself to God; a living sacrifice.

It is indeed a peculiar gift; one altogether unique; it has no parallel. You may give a ring, a dollar, or a fortune, and dismiss it from your mind. “I have done with it,” you might say; “henceforth it is nothing to me.” Not so with this gift; it is the devoting and consecrating of yourself to God for any and every service in your power to render; it is the gift of a hearty will for every such service. Such a gift is never made of one’s own motion or one’s own strength,—the impulse is from God; the strength is his. He moves the heart, awakens and invigorates love, and produces an insatiable desire to do all we can for Him who so loved us. In ancient times, God required of the Jewish people sacrifices, sufferings, burnt-offerings, and sin-offerings, without number; not because of any inherent worth in them; not because he was in any way dependent upon them; for when he called the Jews to account for their unfaithfulness, he said he would not reprove them for any deficiency in their sacrifices: “For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountains, and the wild beasts of the field are mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof. . . . Offer unto God thanksgiving, and pay thy vows unto the Most High.” And so David, when brought to a right understanding of God’s will, exclaims, “Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire; mine ears hast thou opened; . . . I delight to do thy will, O my God; yea, thy law is within my heart.” You see it is a heart matter, and God’s demand is for your heart, and your whole heart. It is no new demand, but the same which he has urged from the beginning; namely, this: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, mind, and strength.” So when God calls you to present your body a living sacrifice, he calls for the surrender and consecration of the entire man—for body, mind, and heart—not only for what you now have and are, but for all that you may acquire, for all that you may become. And you are not only to do, but also to be, and to suffer, for him. You are to undertake a hundred things of which the natural man will say, That I can never do; and not merely submissively, as one yields to an inexorable necessity, but cheerfully, heartily, like the first disciples, who “rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name.”

All this you are entreated to do by the mercies of God. Let us see if the motive is equal to the demand. What are the mercies of God? It is in vain to attempt to answer this question to any careless or superficial mind. True, it may be said, even to such a one, that he owes all that he is and has to God; that as a sinner, he has forfeited every claim on God that, if innocent, would belong to him as a creature of God, and that therefore all that he is and all that he has is of God’s mercy. This statement, though quite true, can carry to the careless man but a vague and misty impression of some few of God’s mercies. The heart of man, like the photographer’s plate, must be prepared before it can take a just impression of all that is offered to it. Listen to David’s testimony: “Many, O Lord my God, are thy wonderful works which thou hast done, and thy thoughts which are to us-ward; they cannot be reckoned up in order unto thee; if I would declare and speak of them they are more than can be numbered;” and yet he does not refrain from the frequent mention of God’s works and thoughts of mercy. In the very psalm from which we have quoted, he commences thus: “I waited patiently for the Lord, and he inclined unto me and heard my cry. He brought me up also out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God.” These are the mercies of God upon which the apostle rests his appeal.

Consider his mercies to you. Once you were without God and without hope. There was for you only the fearful looking for of judgment. Through fear of death, you were all your life subject to bondage. God often called; but you refused. He stretched out his hands; but you disregarded. You did not believe on the Son of God; you were condemned already. Now behold the goodness and mercy of God. He sent his only-begotten and well-beloved Son, by his life and precepts to instruct you; by his sufferings and death to ransom and ennoble you; to raise you from the condition of a condemned criminal to that of a son and heir. He gave you the indwelling Comforter to guide you into all truth, to take of the things of Christ and of God, and show them unto you, to witness with your spirit that you are a child of God, to help your infirmities, to make intercession for you with a sublime and unutterable earnestness, to follow you in all your innumerable departures from the narrow way, from the commencement of your pilgrimage up to the celestial city, to warn, to entreat, to persuade, and finally to secure for you an abundant entrance into the everlasting kingdom of God’s dear Son.

This is in truth but a feeble outline of the mercies of God. Only a loving heart can fill up the picture. And such a heart is ever struggling so to do, but always under the conviction that his mercies can neither be numbered nor measured. It seeks relief in the ever-repeated and never-exhausted tribute, “How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand; when I awake I am still with thee.”

Vain is the attempt to make a record of the mercies of daily life. Added to the thousand delights incident to mere existence, with its ever-opening vistas into the boundless realms of knowledge, are the ten thousand minute providences, which, like a starry firmament, both over-arch and canopy the whole; while they are forever speaking of the hand and heart which made and controls the whole. And what language can express the mercy which permits a redeemed sinner, walking in the footsteps of his Saviour, to be a messenger of mercy and a son of consolation to all within his reach! Remember how intolerable life often is to him who is ignorant of that wonderful specific, “It is more blessed to give than to receive;” remember how your own happiness has been ransomed from the grave by your reception of it; remember, too, that God thrust this grace upon you when you were reluctant, or indifferent; and tell me, are not the mercies of God such as to make your giving yourself a living sacrifice to God your most reasonable service?

But you are saying, What need to beseech? I am sure I recognize the justice and reasonableness of the demand. I did so when I became a Christian. It was my endeavor then to give myself wholly away to God. Certainly, if I had held back anything which I knew God to require of me, I could have no reason to regard myself as his child.

And from this you infer that you must have “presented your body a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto him.” It is the common estimate of the first step in the new life; but how commonly it is a mistaken estimate, appears in the history of the great majority of all those who call themselves the disciples of Christ. Admit that in the beginning of the new life they gave to God all that they knew to be required; what estimate shall we put upon their knowledge? Shall we reckon it the true and reliable standard of what God does require? Do not the young convert’s notions of God’s requirements vary endlessly? Do they not vary with the temperament they have inherited, with the social advantages they have enjoyed, with the religious instruction they have received? Do any two of them agree in their estimate of God’s requirements? And is it not recorded of many such, “Ye did run well; who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth?” “I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love.” It is plain that many of them, failing to comprehend God’s requirements, do stop very far short of that living sacrifice which is here demanded. And if you would avoid a like failure, see to it that you are not found in either of the following classes of mistaken men:—

1. Those who in the very beginning of the new life suppose that they have a full knowledge of all that God requires of them.

2. Those who make the claims of God upon us to consist mainly in a just intellectual belief.

3. Those who make obedience to God to lie mostly in emotion.

4. Those who make this obedience equivalent to outward activities.

5. Those who esteem the highest heart-service as a species of fanaticism; though it has ample warrant in such scriptures as these: “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.” “Whom have I in Heaven but Thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee.” “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.”

6. There is yet another class, those who believe that the highest heart-service is no fanaticism, but say, or think, This is not for me; I can’t persuade myself that God will admit me to such fellowship.

The simple, sufficient answer to all such views may be found in two or three sentences spoken by our Lord himself: “Believest thou that I am able to do this?” “Are ye able to drink of my cup, and to be baptized with my baptism?” Then “ask and ye shall receive.” “Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.”

My friend, be not conformed to this world, but transformed by the renewing of your mind; then shall you prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God, and the fellowship which is with the Father and the Son.—Sel.