If the mercies of God are the reason we respond, what exactly are we being asked to give? In the first part of this passage, Paul grounded the whole Christian life in mercy. Here, he names the offering that mercy calls for, and it costs us everything.

Romans 12:1-2 “I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

A Response of Sacrifice

This response is not only motivated by mercy; it is also a response of sacrifice. “Present your bodies a living sacrifice.” It is a bodily offering. The word present carries us back to the Old Testament priest preparing the lamb. He would slaughter it, catch the blood, arrange the pieces, and lay them on the altar in the prescribed way. The lamb had to be without blemish, and every detail had to follow the law of Moses. Then the fire was lit, the sacrifice was wholly consumed, and the smoke rose to heaven; it is said the aroma was a sweet fragrance in the nostrils of God. That is the picture behind the word: the priest bringing his offering to God. To present your body, then, is a decisive, once-for-all commitment that is afterward lived out every single day. You offer your flesh and blood, your will and your emotions—everything you are and everything you have—and lay it on the altar before a holy God. It is worship, the response of a heart overwhelmed by mercy.

It is a bodily sacrifice, and it is a living one. The animals of the Old Testament died and were burned to ash; this offering is different. It is the giving up of our life to the worship and service of the God who alone is worthy. It is the glad confession that God is free to ask anything of me and to do anything with me. He is completely right, completely just, completely fair, and completely free. He may take my body and do as He pleases. He may send me anywhere. He may require of me whatever delights Him.

It is a living sacrifice, and it is a holy one as well: “Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy.” The word holy here means to take what is common, ordinary, and everyday and set it apart for God.

We can mistake what that means. Some time ago I was in Egypt, worshiping with Grace Baptist Church in Cairo, and one day I visited one of the oldest Coptic churches in the city, called the Hanging Church. I stood in their worship center—built, if I recall rightly, in the second century—and around its edges lay the relics: “Saint So-and-So” displayed in a glass case, supposed splinters of the cross, and much else besides. I watched the faithful come in. They would take the cloth hanging there and rub it on their foreheads. They would lean over the relics—the bones of saints—and kiss them, or kiss their own hand and lay it on the glass, believing these things would bring extra blessing upon their lives. It was regarded as a holy place, filled with holy objects, and money was never far from the transaction; you could pay to light a candle. Holy relics, it was thought, could secure a blessing.

But that is not the holiness Paul has in mind. To be holy is to take what is normal and unremarkable—something with no value of its own—and set it apart for God’s use. Think again of those Old Testament sacrifices. The priests needed a knife to cut the animal’s throat and basins to catch the blood. Imagine the need is announced, and some dear woman who loves the Lord goes to her kitchen and takes out her knife—the one she uses to cut the family’s fish and prepare their meals, a knife the household has owned for years. “They need a knife for the sacrifices,” she says. “I will give mine to the priest.” And she does. She hands over a plain, ordinary knife, and in that moment it becomes holy—common metal set apart for the use of God.

That is what it means to present your body a holy sacrifice. You take your ordinariness, your “nothing special,” and you give it wholly to God for Him to use as He wills.

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