“Zeal
for Your house will consume Me.”
Paul writes in Romans 12 that we are to
be living sacrifices; is he serious? Surely there must be a more reasonable way
of life. And yet in the same breath that Paul admonishes us to be living
sacrifices he anticipates our objection and writes, “…which is your reasonable
service.” That is, considering whom Christ is and what Christ has done and that
Christ Jesus has called us to be His, then it is reasonable, it is logical, it
therefore follows…that we should present our bodies, our whole selves, to be
living sacrifices – this is a reasonable response to God.
The passage in Romans 12 goes on to
speak of the renewing of our minds, such renewal leading to knowing the will of
God. We offer ourselves and in offering ourselves we are transformed by the
renewing of our minds and in the renewing of our minds we discern the will of
God. We can’t think correctly without offering ourselves to God as living
sacrifices – surely there must be a more reasonable way.
The call of Christ is one of taking up
our cross and following Him; it is a call to abandon self-preservation as we
know it, and in abandoning self-preservation we find ourselves preserved by the
only One who can save us. Jesus says, “He who seeks to save his life will lose
it, he who loses his life for my sake and the Gospel’s will save it.”
“The Gospel”, the “Good News”, implicit
in this term is proclaiming the Word of Jesus to the world – we lose ourselves
for the sake of proclaiming the Gospel; we don’t just lose our lives for Jesus,
we lose our lives for others, for the sake of sharing the Gospel with others.
Naturally when we lose our lives so that others may hear of Jesus we lose our
lives for Jesus – we cannot separate the two – we cannot separate Christ and
others. As John writes in his first letter, we have a problem if we say we love
God and hate others; by the same token there is a problem if we think we belong
to Christ and yet do not lose ourselves for the sake of sharing the Gospel with
others.
We tend to negotiate this proposition
with Christ, we like to bargain. Often we bargain with the argument, “Lord, if
I share about You I’ll offend others, surely You don’t want me to offend
others.” Is it really others we’re concerned about?
Jesus was consumed with zeal for His
Father’s house, for His Father’s work. That is a bit much to ask of us, isn’t
it? To be consumed with zeal is to put oneself on the altar as a living
sacrifice, that does seem a bit unreasonable.
Part of our negotiation can be, “Well,
Jesus came to die so that I can have life. He came to take my place on the
Cross. He came to be my substitute. I think I’ll extend that reasoning to the
proposition that He came to be consumed with zeal for God so that I can live a
reasonable life. He came to be consumed by zeal so that I won’t have to pay
that kind of price in this life.”
I’m pretty sure that I’ve used every
argument imaginable with Jesus to avoid obedience.
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