1 Therefore, 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. 2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will.
11 In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. 13 Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness.
1 As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. 2 Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. 3 Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.
11 Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. 12 Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.
14 “Sacrifice thank offerings to God, fulfill your vows to the Most High, 15 and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will honor me.”
15 O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. 16 You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. 17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
3 To do what is right and just is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice.
16 Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey--whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?
19 I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness. 20 When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. 21 What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death!
19 Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.
4 As you come to him, the living Stone--rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him-- 5 you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
20 He sent forth his word and healed them; he rescued them from the grave. 21 Let them give thanks to the LORD for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for men. 22 Let them sacrifice thank offerings and tell of his works with songs of joy.
“We must remember that God will never drag us along the path of true-hearted discipleship. This would greatly lack the moral excellency which characterizes all the ways of God. He does not drag, but draws us along the path which leads to ineffable blessedness in Himself; and if we do see that it is for our real advantage to break through all the barriers of nature, in order to respond to Gods’ call, we forsake our own mercies. But alas! Our hearts little enter into this. We begin to calculate about the sacrifices, the hindrances, and the difficulties, instead of bounding along the path, in eagerness of soul, as knowing and loving the One whose call has sounded in our ears”. C H Macintosh
“If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him.” C. T. Studd
“Nothing is really lost by a life of sacrifice; everything is lost by failure to obey God’s call.” Henry P. Liddon
“The essential fact of Christianity is that God thought all men worth the sacrifice of His Son.” William Barclay
“The principle of sacrifice is that we choose to do or to suffer what apart from our love we should not choose to do or suffer.” William Temple
“To sacrifice something is to make it holy by giving it away for love.” Frederick Buechner
“Remember that when you leave this earth, you can take with you nothing that you have received -- only what you have given: a full heart enriched by honest service, love, sacrifice and courage.” St. Francis of Assisi
“Come, let us offer Him the great, universal sacrifice of our love, and pour out before Him our richest hymns and prayers.” Ephrem the Syrian
“Sacrifice stuns in all its costly loveliness, all its love.” Ann Voskamp
“Humility is that holy place in which God bids us make the sacrifice of ourselves.” Anonymous
“God will be our compensation for every sacrifice we have made.” F. B. Meyer
“God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son at a place three days distant. The word ‘love’ appears for the first time in the Bible in that command. Of course He didn’t allow him to go through with it. On the third day Abraham retained his son alive. Two thousand years later on the day Israel celebrated the sparing of sons Jesus of Nazareth was executed by slow torture. Maybe God wanted Abraham to exhibit a pattern. Maybe He wanted to teach a principle. Or maybe God wanted Abraham to know what it felt like to be God. Instead of slaying his son Abraham sacrificed a ram. He was able to catch the animal because his horns were entangled in the thicket. CAUGHT BY A CROWN OF THORNS. There were lots of startling coincidences like that. It's almost as if the thing were planned...” Ronnie Stevens
“We sometimes seem to forget that what God takes He takes in fire; and that the only way to the resurrection life and the ascension mount is the way of the garden, the cross, and the grave. Think not, O soul of man, that Abraham’s was a unique and solitary experience. It is simply a specimen and pattern of God’s dealings with all souls who are prepared to obey Him at whatever cost. After thou hast patiently endured, thou shalt receive the promise. The moment of supreme sacrifice shall be the moment of supreme and rapturous blessing. God’s river, which is full of water, shall burst its banks, and pour upon thee a tide of wealth and grace. There is nothing, indeed, which God will not do for a man who dares to step out upon what seems to be the mist; though as he puts down his foot he finds a rock beneath him.” F. B. Meyer
“All along the Christian course, there must be set up altars to God on which you sacrifice yourself.” Alexander Maclaren
“To a man who lives unto God nothing is secular, everything is sacred. He puts on his workday garment and it is a vestment to him. He sits down to his meal and it is a sacrament. He goes forth to his labor, and therein exercises the office of the priesthood. His breath is incense and his life a sacrifice. He sleeps on the bosom of God, and lives and moves in the divine presence. To draw a hard and fast line and say, ‘This is sacred and this is secular,’ is, to my mind, diametrically opposed to the teaching of Christ and the spirit of the gospel...Peter saw a sheet let down from heaven in which were all manner of beasts and four-footed creatures, which he was bidden to kill and eat, and when he refused because they were unclean, he was rebuked by a voice from heaven, saying, ‘What God hath cleansed that call not thou common’ [Acts 10:15; 11:9]. The Lord hath cleansed your houses, he has cleansed your bed chambers, your tables... He has made the common pots and pans of your kitchens to be as the bowls before the altar –if you know what you are and live according to your high calling. You housemaids, you cooks, you nurses, you ploughmen, you housewives, you traders, you sailors, your labor is holy if you serve the Lord Christ in it, by living unto Him as you ought to live. The sacred has absorbed the secular.” Charles H. Spurgeon
“Cut out that which seems good to invest in the best. It is the law of life: Early sacrifice for later bounty. It can be hard to prune good things that are blooming. It can be hard to remember why you are pruning. Because there’s a counter-intuitiveness to it, this plucking off certain life activities that will yield good fruit. Some might even think it foolish to pare back, when the bloom and gifting apparent; a good harvest inevitable. Yet it’s the pruning of seemingly good leaves that can grow a better life. To allow later seasons to yield the longed-for abundant crop. It takes courage to crop a life back — but it’s exactly the way to have the best crop of all. What seems like hard work that’s taking an eternity today — is exactly what may make the most difference in eternity.” Ann Voskamp
“As believers, we are never more like our Savior as when we walk the path of suffering and sacrifice. And whether we are discerners of this or not the more like Christ we are the more satisfied we will be. Remember, too, God’s grace is always sufficient to meet every need. Every. Need.” BHY