Sacrificial Living
Romans 12 talks about becoming a " living sacrifice " but do we really live that way? First let's define terms and figure out what they mean. First off, a sacrifice meant something dying! In Judaism it meant an animal getting killed to atone for someone's sin. In Greek culture the sacrifice was often given to achieve favor. In some pagan cultures the sacrifice was a child or sex given to receive fertility. By any means, the readers of the day knew that this was a permanent idea, generically involving loss (thus the saying, "no pain, no gain" is about as close to the idea as we often get!) of something important to us. Second, the readers would know that a living sacrifice was impossible, because the animal would not sit there and be burned alive! The idea is something very alien, yet very familiar to the readers then. Today, we cannot fathom what it really meant. Especially the fact that Paul is asking US to be that living sacrifice. At its mos...