Sacrifice and rebirth

 This week's verses are Romans 12:1-2:

 Therefore I exhort you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a sacrifice—alive, holy, and pleasing to God—which is your reasonable service. Do not be conformed to this present world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may test and approve what is the will of God—what is good and well-pleasing and perfect.

 Paul is talking here about saying no to comfort and complacency. He and his audience lived in a difficult time in the Roman empire. The church was only beginning, and it was receiving heavy persecution.

It would have been easy to understand why the pagan Romans would persecute them. They believed in a completely different set of gods. The new thing people were coming to terms with was that their own Jewish brothers and sisters were also persecuting them. There was a temptation to soften their position to fit in, to tone down their life of faith to not draw attention.

We all do that to some extent. We keep our mouths shut when we should speak out. We play along in agreeing with the moral fashions of our time and the humanist pseudo-religion that goes with them. Imagine how much more you would try to play it safe if men would come in the night, break down your door, and drag you and your family off to be tortured to death, just for coming out as a Christian.

It's rational to want to optimize for the world of "now." We are trained from a young age to make our decisions based on what will bring us the most pleasure and the longest life and to avoid those things that could put us and our dreams in jeopardy. If you were living in a world where your economic success and safety were directly tied to not rocking the boat, you would be tempted to cut all kinds of corners.

But Paul turns that attitude on its head. He reminds us we're not here to play the same game everyone else is playing, the one that is bounded by the physical world around us and is meant to end at death. Our game runs to eternity and it includes even things we can't see and measure. In that context, our success and well-being in this world of "now" are not necessarily going to be top priority.

So he's basically saying "look, if what is unfolding now takes a turn for the worse, and you get beaten or killed, is that really the most important thing? If you have to endure hardship in order to be generous and godly, is that too much to bear? Instead of seeing it as defeat and failure, look at it as a sacrifice, an investment in your eternal relationship with God."

He urges us to renew our minds and be transformed instead of just trying to fit in. He encourages a kind of holy experimentation, testing and seeing God's reaction to our attempts to use what we have for God's glory.

We're lucky not to be the targets of state-sponsored genocide and religious persecution today. But that doesn't mean these verses are not also for us. Is your faith all it can be, or do you tone it down to make your life in the world of "now" as pleasant as it can be? In looking at your credit card statements and the way you spend your time, does the word "sacrifice" describe anything you see there? How often do you go out on a limb and take faith risks?

Go to God and meditate on his word. Let it transform you and renew your mind. Decide to be a living sacrifice rather than sell your soul for a long gentle journey to nowhere.