Urgent plea to all believers

 

In this day and age in which we live I wonder how many of us who profess to be believers in Jesus Christ are giving considerable thought to the apostle Paul’s urgent and fervent plea which states; “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (Romans 12:1-2).

Here the apostle Paul is humbly beseeching the brethren to do three things in order to prove what that good and perfect will of God is and they are as follows:

1.  To present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God

Since God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast” (Ephesians 2:4-9).

Nevertheless, we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them and one of the good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in is that of presenting our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God which is termed to be our reasonable service.

What we must first and foremost know, understand and believe is that, our human body is the pinnacle, the most successful point, the culmination of all of God’s creation as alluded to by the Psalmist David who wrote; “When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained, what is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him?

For You have made him a little lower than the angels, and You have crowned him with glory and honor. You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen --- Even the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea that pass through the paths of the seas. O LORD, our Lord, How excellent is Your name in all the earth!” (Psalms 8:3-9).

But not only has God given man such dominion over His creation, He also created man’s physical body as His temple, the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit and so we are to continually reminding ourselves of the apostle Paul’s admonition which says; “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God is holy, which temple you are” (1Corinthians 3: 16-17).

We have been further admonished by the apostle Paul saying; “Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's” (1Corinthians 6:18-20).

And so, in order to present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is our reasonable service, we have to avoid defiling our body which is the temple of the Holy Spirit. And if sexual immorality defiles the temple of God and God will destroy the one who defiles it, what about the one who defiles the temple of the Holy Spirit with aborted fetuses with stem cells from all sorts of unclean creatures? Food for thought, the choice is yours.

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To be continued

With brotherly love

Lucius Joseph