In what many regard as the Magnum Opus of the Apostle Paul, the book of Romans contains one case after another as Paul unpacks the devastation of human sin and the grace of God in the gospel of Christ. For 11 chapters, Paul has revealed the nature of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone ending in the last verses of chapter 11 exploding in praise to the acknowledgment that it is all to God’s glory alone. In chapter 12 Paul makes a statement about the life of the believer based on the character of God so explicitly revealed in the gospel he has so intricately explained. The believer is motivated by the mercy of God to live a life of unrelenting worship. In the fuller gospel context of the entire book of Romans, 12:1 seems to succinctly outline the only proper response to the limitless mercies of God – a living sacrifice of holy, acceptable worship.

The moment Paul uses the word, “sacrifice,” we immediately think of the altar of the temple and animals being slain in hope of atonement for sin. Paul can’t mean that we are going to sacrifice our own bodies as an atoning sacrifice because this is what he has spent eleven chapters explaining that Christ has already fully and finally done. The atoning work of Christ as substitution for our sin is the richest and most glorious aspect of God’s mercy toward us. He alone is our atoning sacrifice. What Paul is saying is that because of God’s mercy, most profoundly displayed in the atoning work of the cross, everything we are and have belong to him. He paid for it. Our lives are completely for him. In Christ we have been made alive to worship God. This is the purpose he originally had for us before Genesis 3 took humanity into a devastating tailspin.

As we think of being a sacrifice, we do consider the mediating work of the temple, but for us it is different. For the Old Covenant believer, the temple was where mediating sacrifice was done and where God was present in acceptance. It was through the temple that the Old Covenant believer could worship God and present total adoration and allegiance to our Creator. In the New Covenant, Christ has fulfilled the temple, atoned for sin, and in him we have direct access to the Father. We become a temple of the Holy Spirit. We are a temple of worship, and that worship is to be based on our new life given to him in sacrifice because of Christ’s sacrifice. It is based on God’s mercy.