A LIVING SACRIFICE

The Lord Jesus was the living sacrifice in divine purpose, and unique in that He yielded Himself to the divine will before He became a man, saying “Lo, I come in the volume of the book it is written of me, to do thy will, O God” (Heb.10:7). He offered Himself freely to fulfil the will of God contained in the book of eternal counsels before He became in a position of obedience (JND). He declared His intention to come in absolute submission to the divine will and took a position of obedience by accepting the body prepared for Him.

In Manhood He confirmed that commitment, saying “My food is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work” (John 4:34). In His days of service He continually manifested obedience and submission to the will of His God as One in total surrender to it; He said it and He did it. He who was in the form of God became in the form of a servant, the Word assuming a body in order to offer Himself a living sacrificeto divine service; in this also He was unique. Henceforth divine service would feature believers yielding themselves corporately in the context of the local assembly (Rom.12:1).

Despite the evident assembly context of Romans 12:1 – the epistle is addressed to saints in Rome, gathered in one or more assemblies – it is commonly taught that the one living sacrifice refers to the individual believer. However, this is incorrect as the apostle is clearly not addressing individuals but saints in assembly fellowship and exhorting them to offer themselves together as one living assembly sacrifice. Also, the individual interpretation fails to recognise that it is the assembly, the local gathering of believers, that is the divine servant of testimony, one new man (Eph. 2:15) progressing unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ (Eph. 4:13). The Lord was unique as an individual living sacrifice. It would be contrary to the corporate nature of N.T. church testimony to suggest that the saints at Rome were exhorted by the apostle to be individual living sacrifices; in the circumstances hardly “intelligent religious service”.

Christianity is enshrined in the local assembly, not the individual believer and so Paul’s exhortation was that they should yield their bodies in a once-for-all collective offering to the will of God, a priestly act of service and worship that is only meaningful in the House of God: it expresses a unity of purpose and a single corporate mind on the part of the saints that culminates in one living sacrifice, fulfilling God’s intention that the assembly should be His corporate bondslave.

Advocates of individualism advance the argument that the context is individual in the first three verses of the chapter but overlook the fact that the individuals are saints in assembly fellowship.  Further, it is not without significance that only in this context in the whole epistle is the assembly referred to as a body (verse 5).

The believer is viewed as a living stone in a (local) spiritual building (1 Pet.2:5), not as a living stone on his own. The call of the Spirit through the Word is to yield ourselves to the divine will as part and parcel of the corporate living sacrifice, which in the present age of the church and the churches is God’s assembly. Without the local assembly there is no Christianity and therefore no meaningful living sacrifice. N.T. Scripture, in its spiritual application, does not promote individualism and neither should we in our interpretation of it.