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 in a so called vaccine? Food for thought, the choice is yours.
Apart from avoiding the defilement of our bodies in order to present it a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, there is also a practical way by which our bodies can be presented as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God by applying the principle God ordained and instructed Moses saying; “Then Aaron and his sons shall eat the flesh of the ram, and the bread that is in the basket, by the door of the tabernacle of meeting. They shall eat those things with which the atonement was made, to consecrate and to sanctify them; but an outsider shall not eat them, because they are holy” (Exodus 29:32-33).
Please note carefully that, it is by eating those things with which the atonement was made that one becomes consecrated and sanctified and remember that, the Old Testament temple rituals were a copy and shadow of the reality, they were serving the copy and shadow of the heavenly things, as Moses was divinely instructed when he was about to make the tabernacle. For He said, "See that you make all things according to the pattern shown you on the mountain" (Hebrews 8:5).
To be continued.
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With brotherly love
Lucius Joseph
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