Dying, We Live
BY JAMES M. BOICE
I do not like the word "paradox" used in reference to Christian teachings, because to most people the word refers to something that is self-contradictory or false. Christianity is not false. But the dictionary also defines "paradox" as any statement that seems to be contradictory, yet may be true in fact, and in that sense there are paradoxes in Christianity.Romans 12:1,2 One of the great paradoxes of Christianity concerns the Christian life: the teaching that we must die in order to live. We find this in many places in the Bible, particularly in the New Testament, but the foundational statement is by Jesus, who said, "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it" (Luke 9:23-24).
At the start of Romans 12, the Apostle Paul also sets this paradox down as a first principle for learning to live the Christian life. He says: "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service."
In the cultural climate of Paul's day, a sacrifice was typically an animal presented to a priest to be killed. So Paul is saying by this metaphor that the Christian life begins by our offering ourselves to God for death, but that paradoxically it is in such an offering that enables us to live for Him. Or even stronger: It is by dying that we are enabled to live, period.
The principle of sacrifice is so foundational to the doctrine of the Christian life that we must be very careful to lay it out correctly, and to do that we need to review the foundations for this foundation.
Bought by Christ
The first foundation is that we are not our own; if we are truly Christians, we belong to Jesus. Here is the way Paul puts it in I Corinthians: "What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price" (6:19,20).Regarding that price, the Apostle Peter tells us in the clearest possible language in his first letter: "Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot" (1:18,19).
"Redeemed" or "redemption" is one of the key words that describe what the Lord Jesus Christ accomplished for us by His death on the cross. He paid the price of our redemption. The image is of a slave market in which we sinners are being offered to whomever will bid the highest price for us.
The world is ready to bid, of course, for that which are valuable to itself. It bids wealth. Millions think that making money is the most important thing any person can dothey think that money will buy anything. It bids fame. People sell their souls for fame; they will do anything at all to be well-known. It bids power. Masses of people are on a power-trip. It bids sex. Many have lost nearly everything of value in life for just a moment's indulgence.
But into this vast "vanity fair" of a market place, Jesus comes, and the price he bids to rescue enslaved sinners is His blood. He offers to die for them. God, who controls this "auction", as He controls everything else, says, "Sold to the Lord Jesus Christ for the price of His blood." As a result we become Jesus' purchased possession and must live for Him rather than ourselves, as Paul and Peter indicate.
Dead to Sin
A second doctrine on which the Christian life of self-sacrifice is built is our having died to the past, by having become new creatures in Christ. In Romans 6 Paul argues that because we "are dead to sin" we are unable to "live any longer therein" (v. 2). Therefore, instead of offering the parts of our bodies "as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin", as we used to do, we must offer ourselves "to God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God" (v. 13).This does not mean that we have become unresponsive to sin, that we should die to it, that we are dying to it day by day, or that we have died to sin's guilt. The Greek verb for "die" is an aorist, which refers to something that has been done once for all. It refers to the change that has come about as a result of our being saved. The sentence "we died to sin" means that, having become new creatures in Christ, we can never go back to being
what we were. If we cannot go back, there is no other direction for us to go but forward. What Paul says in Romans 12:1,2, therefore, we need to forget about sinning and instead present our bodies as "living sacrifices" to God.The truth of what it means to live-by-dying is the paradox itself, namely, that it is by dying to our own desires in order to serve Christ that we actually learn to live.
I do not think there is any difficulty in understanding that this means putting personal desires behind us in order to put the desires of God for us and the needs of other people first. And we understand the promise too. The promise is that if we do this, we will experience a full and rewarding life. We will be happy Christians.
A matter of faith. The problem is not with our understanding. The problem is that we do not believe it. Or if we do believe it in a general way, we at least do not believe it in regard to ourselves. We think that if we deny ourselves, we will be miserable. Yet, this is nothing less than disbelieving God. It is a failure of faith.
So I ask, who are you willing to believe? Yourself, reinforced by the world and its way of thinking? Or Jesus Christ? I say "Jesus" specifically, because I want to remind you of his teaching from the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew 5:3-10, He speaks there about how to be happy. Indeed, the word He uses there is even stronger than that. It is the powerful word "blessed," meaning to be favored by God. Jesus said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit Blessed are those who mourn Blessed are the meek Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness Blessed are the merciful Blessed are the pure in heart Blessed are the peacemakers Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness."
We call these statements the Beatitudes, that is, the way to happiness or blessing.
The world's view. But this is not the way the world thinks one finds happiness. If one of today's opinion makers were to rewrite the Beatitudes from a contemporary point of view, I suppose they would go like this: "Blessed are the rich, for they can have all they want. Blessed are the powerful, for they can control others. Blessed are the sexually liberated, for they can fully satisfy themselves. Blessed are the famous, because they are envied."
Isn't that the world's way, the way even Christians instinctively want, rather than the way of sacrifice?
But think it through carefully. The world promises blessings for those who follow these standards. But is this what they find? Does the world's "me first" philosophy lead to happiness? Is personal indulgence the answer? You do not have to be a genius to see through that facade. It is an empty promise. Paul calls it "a lie" (Rom. 1:25).
So wake up, Christian. And listen to Paul listen to Paul when he pleads, "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God."
God does not lie. His word is utterly reliable. You will find his way to be "good, and acceptable, and perfect" if you will bend to it. Paul's words in Romans 12:1,2 are an urgent appeal to us to offer ourselves as living sacrifices to God. This is something we must do.
Obedience from Faith
May I put it in other terms? It is the obedience that comes from faith that Paul writes about early in the letter. "Through him and for his name's sake, we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith" (Rom. 1:5 NIV). So you see, again we are back to one of the great doctrinal teachings offered earlier.What an interesting mental picture Paul creates for us in Romans 12:1. A sacrifice is something offered to God by a priest. A priest would take a sacrifice offered by a worshiper, carry it to the altar, kill it, pour out the blood, and then burn the victim's body. In that procedure the priest and the offering were two separate entities. But in this arresting image of what it is to live a genuinely Christian life, Paul shows us that the priest and the offering are the same. Furthermore, we are the priests who present the offering, and the offering we present is our own bodies.
Supreme model. Is there a model for this in Scripture? Of course, there is. It is the model of Jesus himself, for He was both the sacrifice and the priest who made the sacrifice. I know there is an enormous difference between the sacrifice Jesus made for us and our own sacrifices of ourselves. Jesus' sacrifice was an atoning sacrifice. He died in our place, bearing the punishment of God for our sin so that we might not have to bear it. His death was substitutionary. Our sacrifices are not at all like that. They are not an atonement for sin in any sense. But they are like Christ's sacrifice in this at least, that we are the ones who make them and that the sacrifices we offer are ourselves.
And we remember this distinction too. In the Old Testament the priests made different kinds of sacrifices. There were sacrifices for sin, of course. But there were also what were
called "sacrifices of thanksgiving", which were exactly what they sound likesacrifices by worshipers who simply wanted to thank God for some great blessing or deliverance. It is this kind of a sacrifice that we offer when we offer God ourselves.Self-sacrifice? What an utterly unpleasant word for our day! Today no one wants to be a sacrifice, if anyone ever did. In fact, people do not want to sacrifice even a single little thing. But this is where the Christian life starts. It is God's instruction and desire for us.
So will you trust God that He knows what He is doing? Will you believe Him in this as in other matters? If you will believe Him, you will do exactly what the Apostle Paul urges you to do in Romans 12. You will offer your body as a "living sacrifice" to God and thereby prove that His will for you is indeed utterly "good, and acceptable, and perfect." o
Dr. James M. Boice is the speaker of the Bible Study Hour broadcast, 1716 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103, and pastor of the Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia.