Crawling Off the Altar
Read Romans 12:1-8.
"The problem with living sacrifices is that they tend to crawl off the altar" (D. L. Moody). In this first part of Romans 12, Paul asks us to give our lives to God, no holding back. Give everything we are and all that we have over to God. Sacrifice it—and when you do that, the "rule" is that you leave what you sacrificed on the altar. The problem with giving all that we are over to God is that it's too easy to (sometimes slowly) take it back. As Moody said, the problem with living sacrifices is that they tend to crawl off the altar.
There's an episode of The Big Bang Theory that somewhat illustrates what I mean. In this particular episode, the girls decide to downsize and donate some of their clothes to charity. When they go to drop off the clothes, they discover in the donation bin some really "cute" things. They end up taking at least as many things away as they intended to donate. We might laugh—but we do the same thing. We come to God to give our gifts, our talents, our time, and then we think twice about it. What am I doing? Giving those things over to God seemed like a good idea in church, but now, here in the real world, it seems like a waste. I even once had a pastor tell me that only a fool gives away ten percent of their income, despite the Bible's indication that a tithe—10% of what we have—is a good place to start our giving. In the hustle and bustle of daily living, giving what we have over to a God we cannot see seems...well, a little bit on the crazy side.
The problem with living sacrifices is that they tend to crawl off the altar, which is perhaps why Paul also told us, a little earlier in this letter, that we should consider ourselves dead to sin, dead to this world, and only alive as we relate to Christ (Romans 6:11). When we place what we have on the altar, we die in terms of our connection to it. We are raised to new life by virtue of our relationship to Christ. No taking back our old life. We leave the altar only with what Christ has given us. We are alive only because of our relationship to him. Dead to sin, alive in Christ. That is the way to live.
"The problem with living sacrifices is that they tend to crawl off the altar" (D. L. Moody). In this first part of Romans 12, Paul asks us to give our lives to God, no holding back. Give everything we are and all that we have over to God. Sacrifice it—and when you do that, the "rule" is that you leave what you sacrificed on the altar. The problem with giving all that we are over to God is that it's too easy to (sometimes slowly) take it back. As Moody said, the problem with living sacrifices is that they tend to crawl off the altar.
There's an episode of The Big Bang Theory that somewhat illustrates what I mean. In this particular episode, the girls decide to downsize and donate some of their clothes to charity. When they go to drop off the clothes, they discover in the donation bin some really "cute" things. They end up taking at least as many things away as they intended to donate. We might laugh—but we do the same thing. We come to God to give our gifts, our talents, our time, and then we think twice about it. What am I doing? Giving those things over to God seemed like a good idea in church, but now, here in the real world, it seems like a waste. I even once had a pastor tell me that only a fool gives away ten percent of their income, despite the Bible's indication that a tithe—10% of what we have—is a good place to start our giving. In the hustle and bustle of daily living, giving what we have over to a God we cannot see seems...well, a little bit on the crazy side.
The problem with living sacrifices is that they tend to crawl off the altar, which is perhaps why Paul also told us, a little earlier in this letter, that we should consider ourselves dead to sin, dead to this world, and only alive as we relate to Christ (Romans 6:11). When we place what we have on the altar, we die in terms of our connection to it. We are raised to new life by virtue of our relationship to Christ. No taking back our old life. We leave the altar only with what Christ has given us. We are alive only because of our relationship to him. Dead to sin, alive in Christ. That is the way to live.
Great way of describing it. I love the visual of the sacrifices crawling off the altar.
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