What Is Our Job Description as a Believer?

I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
Romans 12: 1 (RSV)
Scripture: Romans 12

Each person has their own plan that God wants them to fulfill. We do have broad duties that God calls us to perform. This devotion, the first in the What It Means to Be a Believer series, begins the discussion of what it means to be a living sacrifice.

Nuggets

While we each have our plan that God wants us to fulfill, we are all called to perform the same duties.
A sacrifice is something that is given up for the sake of someone else, in our case, God.
Our living sacrifice should be to sacrifice the way we live.

Sometimes, we think Peter and Paul were polar opposites from each other. We think they were from two different denominations.

There was at least one thing they agreed on — besides Jesus being our Savior. They agreed that each person has their own plan to fulfill.

Paul said, “Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him …” (I Cor. 7: 17 ESV). Peter said, “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace …” (I Pet. 4: 10 ESV).

We each have different lives and different gifts, but there are things we are called to do that make us believers. We have similar job descriptions. Now, we’ve talked about our job description before.

To read devotions in the What Does It Mean series, click the appropriate button below.

I decided to rethink that. (You know, that is what we do when we learn. We take past knowledge and evaluate it through the lens of the new material. I am a work in progress.)

No, we aren’t throwing it out altogether. I think our past discussions work better as a mission statement than a job description. I think that was why I was feeling like I was a broken record, saying the same things all the time. It has the connections of a mission statement rather than the specificity of different tasks of a job description.

So, let’s look at it this way.

Mission Statement

“… If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mt. 16: 24 ESV).

Job Description

Be a Living Sacrifice (Romans 12: 1-2)
Work Out Our Salvation (Philippians 2: 12)
Bring Him Glory (Matthew 5: 16)
Proclaim the Gospel (Mark 16: 15)
Love People (John 15: 12)
Make Disciples (Matthew 28: 19-20)
Other Duties as Assigned (Ecclesiastes 3: 1)

We are going to take a couple of weeks to really dive into that. So, grab your coffee, tea, soda, water, or other beverage of your choice, and let’s see where this takes us.

What Are We Supposed to Sacrifice?

Job duty #1 says we are to be a living sacrifice. That may be a hard concept some of us to understand.

This devotion and the next 7 devotions will take a look at Romans 12: 1-2. It talks about the living sacrifice, but it goes into a whole lot of other things.

Yes, we’ll be chasing a little rabbit, but I think it will be a good foundation for the rest of the job duties.

I have always loved those verses. I think it is some of Paul’s best writing. It is so poetical.

But it is also very difficult to understand. Living sacrifice. Patterns of the world. Renewing our minds. What does all that mean?

We usually don’t want to give up anything. Sometimes, it gets really dicey when we are asked to willingly give up something. We are going to start with looking at what it means to sacrifice and be a living sacrifice.

What Is a Sacrifice?

If we look at sacrifice as a verb, it means to give up something. This may be through injuring it or giving it a disadvantage in some way. Either way, there is a reason for giving it up — usually for the sake of something else. In our case, it is for Someone else.

For a lot of us, the first thing we think of when we hear the word “sacrifice” is a lot of dead animals. That was the way that the Israelites could show their devotion and thanksgiving to God. More importantly, it was a way that they could receive atonement for their sins.

The laws regarding the sacrifices weren’t given until after the Israelites left Egypt. Head over to Leviticus 1-7 to get the full description. Before that, while there were altars and offerings, they weren’t organized.

The first example that we read of in the Bible was the offerings brought by Cain and Abel. It was not listed as a sacrifice, but Abel’s offering was more on the line of the sacrifices. That didn’t end well.

Many of the cultures in the Ancient Middle East sacrificed their own children to their gods. The Israelites were instructed not to do that: “The Lord hates the disgusting way those nations worship their gods, because they even burn their sons and daughters as sacrifices” (Deut. 12: 31 CEV).

At first glance, we may think this is contradicted in Genesis 22. This is where God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. This was, however, just an ask, not a kill and cook.

There were a couple of instances where some misguided kings did offer their kids as sacrifice. King Ahaz “… sacrificed his own son, which was a disgusting custom of the nations that the Lord had forced out of Israel (2 Kgs. 16: 3 CEV). This was not, however, a sacrifice to God.

The other one was a little more dicey. Jephthah “… promised the Lord, ‘If you will let me defeat the Ammonites and come home safely, I will sacrifice to you whoever comes out to meet me first’” (Judges 11: 30-31).

To me, that was Jephthah’s first mistake. His “if” was probably okay. Jephthah’s “then” was altogether wrong.

Most of us would think that, because Jephthah wasn’t following God’s laws with this promise, the Ammonites would have defeated him. Nope. Jephthah won.

The first person out the door was Jephthah’s only daughter (her name wasn’t even recorded). Jephthah did carry through with his promise.

But you know, I wonder. Did God count it a sacrifice or a consequence of Jephthah’s sin? We have to be really careful and offer God what He wants. Cain found that out. He suffered the consequence of giving a wrong offering, just like Jephthah did.

After Jesus accomplished the plan of salvation, sacrifices were no longer needed. Believers were called to make living sacrifices. What does God want?

What Is a Living Sacrifice?

Romans 1-11 gives us the foundation of life as a believer. Romans 12: 1-2 shows us how to make the transition from non-believer to believer.

We’ve previously talked about, “… if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (II Cor. 5: 17 ESV). We are a new creation trapped in our old body.

To read Why Do Christians Sin?, click the button below.

Our spiritual nature, that we are given at conversion, battles with our sinful nature. We aren’t automatically given a spiritual body. We must daily work to become the people God wants us to be.

Because Jesus gave His life for us, we should give our lives to Him. Luckily, this doesn’t call for murder/suicide. What we are sacrificing is our worldly focus to worship God.

Our sacrifice is to be the way that we live. Romans 6: 12-13 says, “Do not let sin control the way you live; do not give in to sinful desires. Do not let any part of your body become an instrument of evil to serve sin. Instead, give yourselves completely to God, for you were dead, but now you have new life. So use your whole body as an instrument to do what is right for the glory of God” (NLT). We are called, instead, to a life of worship. This changes our behavior as we make ourselves instruments of worship (the next two devotions).

It is hard to do because our sinful nature is warring with our spiritual nature. “Therefore, dear brothers and sisters, you have no obligation to do what your sinful nature urges you to do. For if you live by its dictates, you will die. But if through the power of the Spirit you put to death the deeds of your sinful nature, you will live” (Rom. 8: 11-13 NLT). With the help of the Holy Spirit, we can overcome temptation.

This is presenting our bodies as living sacrifices. How are we supposed to actually do that? We will get into that in the next devotion.

Gracious Heavenly Father. You know each of us individually. You have called each of us to certain responsibilities in Your kingdom. Still, You have called each of us to be a living sacrifice. Show us individually what that means specifically for us. Help us to understand what we need to know and accept the rest. Amen.

What do you think?

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