Following the apostle’s example, each of us is also called to be a drink offering for others. We’re called to be poured out as a glorifying accompaniment to their lives of sacrificial service. Like Paul, we labor and run and work and give so that others can be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.

Leviticus is the book where many Bible-reading plans go to die. Those who begin well in Genesis and Exodus find themselves, like the people of Israel, stumbling through the wilderness in Leviticus and Numbers, desperate to find their way to the story of David or the letters of Paul. For many, they stumble because they haven’t been taught the ABCs of the sacrificial system. The instructions about arranging animal parts, sprinkling blood, and bodily emissions are incomprehensible until they learn the basic grammar of the Levitical world.

Once we’ve grasped some of the basics, however, we find that we’re not only able to read Leviticus with more understanding; we’re also able to see depths in the rest of Scripture, including Paul’s letters, that were hidden before. Consider the following sentences, tucked away in his exhortation to the Philippians to do all that they do without grumbling or complaining:

Even if I am to be poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all. Likewise you also should be glad and rejoice with me. (Philippians 2:17–18)

The language here is Levitical and layered. We are invited to consider the Christian life, and ministry to others, through the lens of Leviticus. Paul assumes that his readers would be familiar with the various sacrifices and offerings, and therefore able to comprehend the aim of his ministry and the aim of their lives.

All of Me to All of You

Paul references two offerings — the drink offering and the sacrificial offering (literally, “the sacrifice and service of your faith”). The latter is most likely a reference to the ascension offering, sometimes called “the whole burnt offering.”

“Every Christian is now a living ascension offering, daily presenting ourselves to God through faith in Christ.”

The whole burnt offering is the baseline offering in the Old Testament, in which the worshiper lays hands on the unblemished animal so that the spotless animal now represents the sinful worshiper. The animal is killed, its blood drained and then sprinkled on the altar by the priest. After this, the priest arranges the dismembered body parts on the altar, with a particular focus on the head and the fat portions. Finally, the priest burns up the whole animal so that the animal, as the representative of the worshiper, ascends to God in the smoke as a pleasing aroma.

This offering is a fitting image of total surrender, of our heartfelt desire to draw near to the living and holy God despite our sinfulness. In it, the worshiper confesses, in essence, “All of me to all of you, O God.” Paul draws out this element of the sacrificial system in 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.

In the new covenant, rather than offering an animal through fire and smoke, we offer ourselves — our bodies and our minds — as our spiritual service and worship to God. We present the members of our bodies to God as his instruments, and we submit our minds and hearts to the truth of his word. And as Paul makes clear in Philippians, we do all of this by faith. Every Christian is now a living ascension offering, daily presenting ourselves to God through faith in Christ.

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