A Living Sacrifice by Charles L. Taylor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Feb 14, 1911

A Living Sacrifice

By Charles L. Taylor

WONDERFUL indeed is the call to die for Christ, but more wonderful is the call to live for Him.

Thousands, yes, millions of precious ones have died for the Gospel's sake, and the world has been blessed by their offering; but after all, God's greatest work has been accomplished by the life of His children.

The death of our Lord Jesus has spoken volumes of the love and goodness of God, and yet His death was not the greatest accomplishment in the work of saving men.

The Bible tells us (Rom. 5:10) that "we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life."

Jesus was first a living sacrifice, just as truly as He afterward was a dying one. Every day He made His offering, giving that which made men better, stronger, nobler, holier. From Him there emanated, constantly, the "virtue" which healed all the maladies of a sin-afflicted world. His whole being was a pure and open channel through which the stream of divine life flowed to the dying world.

To be all that Heaven designed Him to be in His life-saving work, the Son of God kept Himself from all that could in any wise defile. His physical being was kept in perfect consecration and sanctification. As a Son of Man He was "a Lamb without blemish and without spot." "His physical structure," says one, "was not marred by any defect; His body was strong and healthy. And throughout His lifetime He lived in conformity to nature's laws. Physically as well as spiritually, He was an example of what God designed all humanity to be through obedience to His laws."

It is, indeed, very plainly revealed that the Saviour of mankind presented Himself a living sacrifice to God, that He kept His body holy, and that He did this in order to fulfil His divine mission. And certainly this fact reveals the great truth that had He failed thus to preserve His physical person, He could not have been to the world a true Sin-Bearer.

Question: If the followers of Jesus Christ have been sent into the world even as He was sent—and they have been (John 20:21); if they have been made His ambassadors, called to stand in His stead in the mighty task of reconciling the world—and they have been (2 Cor. 5:20); then how can they escape the conclusion that to be able at all to occupy the position of under-saviors and to succeed in helping men to be free from sin, they, too, must be, physically, all that God can help them to be?

The apostle beseeches us "by the mercies of God" to present our bodies as living sacrifices. Does he not do so because God would have us enter most fully and successfully into the service of saving our fellows? Does not Heaven want our physical lives to be, pure and strong and open, so that the divine stream of Spirit life may flow unobstructed through us? God's healing "virtue," that wonderful essence of invisible force, should find free outlet in every believer; and it does when the body has truly become "a living sacrifice unto God."

Every molecule of strength, every atom of energy, every ion of life, should be intelligently consecrated and faithfully directed to the removal of sin from our lost fellows. A life thus devoted and sacrificed is a living sacrifice wonderfully acceptable to God. It fulfils the word, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself."