The Body for God

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.—Romans 12:1.

1. What St. Paul says to us here is no single or partial lesson dropped by the way. Standing where it does in his writings, it carries an exceptional weight of authority and breadth of meaning. It forms a kind of midpoint in the greatest and most comprehensive of his early Epistles. The two divisions of the Epistle are joined together by this text, itself St. Paul’s own text and foundation for the moral teaching which follows it, as it is at the same time the immediate conclusion from the doctrinal teaching which has gone before. The doctrine of the Epistle to the Romans is justification by faith; the practical lesson of the Epistle to the Romans is self-consecration to God.

2. “I beseech you therefore”—take the words separately in order to understand the mind of the Apostle.

(1) Notice, to begin with, the word “therefore”; it connects this great appeal with what had gone before. St. Paul had been laying before his Roman readers the marvellous provision of grace, the sovereign love of God in adopting us into sonship; he had been picturing the wondrous wealth and resource of the Father’s love: “Of him, and through him, and to him are all things: I beseech you therefore.” That is always St. Paul’s way: first the doctrine, then the duty; first the creed, then the character: because of what God has done, live in accordance with His will; first the principle of redemption, then the individual life that follows. It is so in the Epistle to the Ephesians; for the first three chapters he shows the marvellous light and life and heavenly possibility in Christ, then he adds in striking suddenness, “I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy.”1 [Note: A. E. Joscelyne.]

(2) “I beseech you.” This is the entreaty of a man who was himself living the life of bodily consecration to God. St. Paul had given himself up altogether to God, body, soul, and spirit. And now he was filled with the conscious strength and triumph of this sublime unity. His life was full-orbed and rounded perfectly. Every thought, every aim, every desire had in it the might of God; of God, and through God, and to God was the beat of every pulse, the throb of every thought, the life of every desire, and the strength of every work. There was of necessity in this man a constant sense of triumph. He moved about with a calm untroubled confidence, quite sure that all things were working together for the glory of the Lord, and for his good. There sang ever in his soul the music of those who serve God day and night in His holy temple. And then, in all the consciousness of this blessed life, he thinks of the half-hearted, of those who come far enough out of the far country to lose the husks of the swine, but not far enough to get the bread of the Father’s house. These are the miserable people of the world, who admit the claims of God, and yet do not give themselves up to them; who pull for heaven, and yet do not cast off the rope that holds them to the shore. The Apostle’s soul is stirred within him, and at once with a demand and an entreaty he cries: “I beseech you, by the mercies of God, that ye give yourselves right up and wholly to God!” If this religion is worth anything it is worth all the mind and heart and strength that we can put into it.

(3) “I beseech you.” Note the tenderness and winsomeness of St. Paul’s language. “I beseech you.” He struck the keynote there. It was his favourite word—he loved to play on the gentler notes in presenting Christ to men. His preaching was predominantly persuasive, pleading, and tender. Predominantly—it did not leave out the severities. Sometimes there was the voice of God’s wrath in it, there were visions of the terrors of the Lord and of a judgment throne. But he was always most at home when he assumed the gentleness of a mother. “I beseech you.” There is the sweet ring of that appeal in all his Epistles: “I beseech you by the gentleness of Christ”; “I beseech you by the compassions of Christ”; “We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be ye reconciled to God”; “I might be bold to enjoin thee, yet for love’s sake I rather beseech thee.” We are told that in preaching he lifted up his hand. We can almost see that raised hand. It is never a clenched fist; it is never shaken in the face of a congregation; it is stretched out as if it would lay hold of people and sweetly constrain them. It quivers with emotion, and there is the sound of tears in his voice. “By the space of three years,” he says, “I ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears.”

(4) “I beseech you.” Paul is speaking to Jews and Gentiles alike, united in the one Church, all taught by their own several histories that a Christless world is a world on the way downwards into darkness and death, all now raised to a new and endless and fruitful life in the crucified and risen Lord, all receivers of this gift by no claim of wages earned but by the mercy of the God who loved them. It is the sons of purity that he calls to suffer pain. It is to the souls captivated by love that he appeals for an exercise of self-denial. “Ye,” he says, “who have yourselves been made white, ye who have received the mercy of your God, ye who by Divine grace have already reached the inner shrine of the sanctuary, I appeal to you to bear the burdens of humanity. I ask not those in the outer court. I ask not those who are one with the degraded multitude. I ask not those who are partners in the same sin as that of their guilty brother, and who, therefore, might be expected to bear his infirmities. I ask the white-robed. I appeal to the spotless. I call upon the pure in heart who see God. I cry, “If a man be overtaken in a fault, ye who are spiritual, restore!” “I beseech you by the mercies of God that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice.”

When vaccination was introduced in Aberdeen, there existed a strong popular prejudice against it and a corresponding reluctance on the part of parents to allow their children to undergo that operation. It “went over” the medical men of Aberdeen to disabuse people’s minds of the fear that it “would do more harm than good.” This having come to Dr. Kidd’s knowledge, he was determined that it should not go over him. He accordingly took up the subject with characteristic energy, and at once set himself to acquire as much knowledge and information regarding it as he could from the local medical men and other available sources. In this way he soon mastered the theory of vaccination, but would not rest content until he had mastered the practice also; and having found a willing coadjutor in the person of a medical friend, he was soon able to perform the operation himself. Thus equipped, he frequently from the pulpit enforced on parents the duty of having their children vaccinated, and of giving them the benefit of that invaluable discovery. On one of these occasions he said, “If you mothers have any scruple about taking your children to a doctor, bring them to me, at my house, any week-day morning, between nine and ten o’clock, and I’ll vaccinate them for you myself. You don’t seem afraid to entrust the souls of your children to my care, and surely you won’t have any fear to entrust me with their bodies.” This appeal had a wonderful effect, and many mothers came to his house with their children at the daily appointed time. The result came to be that the prejudice against vaccination gradually subsided, and Dr. Kidd was soon able to discontinue his own amateur labours in favour of the medical men of the city, who, ere long, had as much work of that kind on their hands as they were well able to overtake. His personal ascendancy once more asserted itself, though even he had a stiff fight before he overcame the stubbornness and fears of the people. They had such faith in the man that they at last submitted, when their own judgment was unconvinced, and their own inclination was decidedly hostile.1 [Note: J. Stark, Dr. Kidd of Aberdeen, 173.]

I

The Motive Force

“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God.”

It was not a little step that St. Paul was urging these Roman Christians to take: “I beseech you to present your bodies a living sacrifice.” This act of consecration must have a motive adequate to produce it. The life of consecration must have a dynamic equal to sustaining it. Where is the motive power of the Christian life to be found?

1. It was in the “mercies of God” that the Apostle found his motive power. That plural does not mean that he is extending his view over the whole wide field of the Divine beneficence, but rather that he is contemplating the one all-inclusive mercy about which the former part of his letter has been so eloquent—viz. the gift of Christ—and contemplating it in the manifoldness of the blessings which flow from it. The mercies of God which move a man to yield himself as a sacrifice are not the diffused beneficences of His providence, but the concentrated love that lies in the person and work of His Son.

2. The emotionless moralist will tell you to do right for right’s sake, because goodness is beautiful in itself and brings its own reward. And the stern moralist will advise you to pursue the clean and righteous course because the other way ends in a harvest of shame and sorrow. And, of course, both these voices are heard in the Bible; they are both used by the Christian preacher. But they are low down in the Christian scale; they have little force in the Christian conscience. There is no ring of persuasiveness in them, because there is no emotion and no fire. We never feel the kindling and the inspiration until we get to the very furnace, the power-producing furnace of the Christian life, and that is the soul-enthralling, love-creating mercies of God in Christ.

“The Well is deep.”

Thy saying is most true:

Salvation’s well is deep,

Only Christ’s hand can reach the waters blue.

And even He must stoop to draw it up,

Ere He can fill thy cup.

3. It is impossible to be too careful in observing the connexion between consecration and mercy, for in the very vague theology of the present day there is a great deal which certainly has the appearance of teaching that the blessed peace of a union with Christ is to be the result of entire consecration. But we are here taught, not that we are to reach mercy as the result of the completeness of our consecration, but that, having realized mercy, we should yield ourselves in consecration to God. That union with the Lord Jesus must be given through the personal appropriation of the mercy of God in Him.

One ship turns east, and another west

With the selfsame winds that blow;

’Tis the set of the sails, and not the gales,

Which tells us the way to go.

Like the winds of the sea are the waves of fate,

As we voyage along through life;

’Tis the set of the soul which decides the goal,

And not the calm or the strife.

II

The Consecration

“I beseech you therefore, brethren, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God.”

It is not often that the idea of sacrifice is associated with the thought of mercy. We commonly view it as one of the obstacles to our belief in God’s mercy. In all religions but one, men sacrifice to God when they think His mercy turned away; they sacrifice to avert His anger, to restore His smile. But there is one religion which inverts the order—the religion of Christ. All other faiths say, “Sacrifice that ye may win God’s favour”; Christianity says, “Win God’s favour that ye may sacrifice.” All other faiths make sacrifice the root; Christianity makes sacrifice the flower.

It is the sacrifice of the body that St. Paul calls for. Let us look first at sacrifice, and secondly at the sacrifice of the body.

i. Sacrifice

1. “Making sacrifices.”—We often speak of making sacrifices for Christ. That expression is not in the Bible. On the contrary, it rather runs against the true view of the subject—for it seems to limit sacrifice to particular acts, whereas the whole life is the sacrifice.

Was there ever a time when there were so many home-made Christians as there are to-day, man-made, church-made Christians? Who does not know the recipe? Tie up the hands and say: “Sir, you must not do that.” Tie up the feet and say: “You must not go to such and such places—at least, when you are at home.” Gag the mouth, blind the eyes, stop the ears, and there is your Christian: a creature with his heart hungering for the world as fiercely as ever, and whose only evidence of any earnestness is in a constant discussion as to whether there is any harm in a score of questionable or unquestionable things that he desires, and in the sincerity of his complaint that they are forbidden.1 [Note: M. G. Pearse.]

Dr. Stewart of Lovedale, his biographer tells us, could not endure the idea that missionaries were to be pitied for the sacrifices they made. A member of his staff says: “One incident will live in my memory for all time. It occurred in the course of a brief address he gave once at the weekly staff prayer-meeting in the large hall at Lovedale. Something that he had heard or read moved him to speak of the so-called sacrifices which men made when entering the mission-field. He flamed up at the idea, and spoke with a burning torrent of words which showed us—just for the moment—the liquid fires of devotion which he hid behind his reserve. As I write I can see, as though it were yesterday, that tall form swaying with noble passion: Sacrifice! What man or woman could speak of sacrifice in the face of Calvary? What happiness or ambition or refinement had any one ‘given up’ in the service of humanity to compare with the great sacrifice of Him who ‘emptied himself and … took upon himself the form of a servant’? It made some of us feel rather ashamed of our heroics, for we knew that if ever a man since Livingstone had a right to speak like that it was Dr. Stewart.”2 [Note: Stewart of Lovedale, 176.]

Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with the word in such a view, and with such a thought! it is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, with a forgoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver and the soul to sink, but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall hereafter be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice.3 [Note: David Livingstone.]

People who make real sacrifices are never able to calculate self-complacently the good the said sacrifices are doing them; just as people who really grieve are unable at the time to philosophize about the good effects of grief.4 [Note: F. W. Robertson, Life and Letters, 435.]

2. True sacrifice.—Have you ever seen a forester cutting down a great tree? It falls to earth, never to rise again; there will be no more shade or beauty, no more glory of summer green or autumn gold. Is the tree wasted? No, it is sacrificed. One day a brave ship sails the seas; to build it the tree was sacrificed. One day God’s church rises towards heaven; to form the roof the tree was sacrificed. Have you ever seen men quarrying stone? It is torn out of the quarry, and split and shattered, and carved and cut, and chiselled and hammered; one day we see the walls of a stately cathedral, and there is the stone which was sacrificed. You watch a sculptor carving the marble; the white fragments fall thickly, the marble wastes, but the beautiful image grows; it is not waste, but sacrifice. Was Mary’s ointment wasted? No, the world has been sweeter for it ever since. Was Gordon’s life wasted when he died at Khartoum, or Nelson’s when he fell at Trafalgar? Many a devoted missionary, many brave men and delicate women have died of fever and savage torture, and the world says, To what purpose was this waste? But theirs was a sacrifice to win souls. To some people the crucifixion of our Master seems a waste of life; to the Church it is the great sacrifice, which taketh away the sins of the world. “He that loseth his life shall find it.”

Listen to the parable of the earth, as it lies far down beneath the blue heaven, or as in the cold night it looks up at the silver stars. “Here am I,” it mutters, “so far away from Him who made me. The grass blades and the flowers lift up their heads and whisper to the breeze, the trees go far up into the golden sunshine, the birds fly up against the very heaven, the clouds are touched sometimes with glory as if they caught the splendour of the King, the stars are bright as if they shone with the light of His presence. And I am down here! How can I ever climb up to Him who made me?” And then the poor earth sighs again: “And that is not all—not even the worst of it. I am only dull soil, without any beauty of form, or richness of colour, or sweetness of smell! All things seem full of loveliness but me. How can I ever be turned into worth and blessedness?”

And now there comes the seed, and it is hidden in the earth. “Earth,” whispers the seed, “wilt thou give me thy strength?”

“No, indeed,” replies the earth; “why should I give thee my strength? It is all I have got, and I will keep it for myself.”

“Then,” saith the seed, “thou shalt be earth, and only earth, for ever and ever. But if thou wilt give me thy strength thou shalt be lifted into another life.”

So the earth yields and gives up its strength to the seed. And the seed takes hold of it and lifts it up and begins to turn it into a hundred forms of beauty; it rises with wondrous stem; it drinks in sunshine and rain and air, mingling them with the earth’s strength and changing all to toughened branch or dainty leaf, to rich flower or ripened fruit. Then its work is done as it ends in the seed. And it cries to the earth: “Spake I not truly? Thou art not lost, but by sacrifice transformed to higher life, to worth and beauty.”1 [Note: M. G. Pearse.]

All the winter-time the wine gives joy

To those who else were dismal in the cold;

But the vine standeth out amid the frost;

And after all, hath only this grace left,

That it endures in long, lone steadfastness

The winter through:—and next year blooms again;

Not bitter for the torment undergone,

Not barren for the fulness yielded up;

As fair and fruitful towards the sacrifice

As if no touch had ever come to it

But the soft airs of heaven and dews of earth;—

And so fulfils itself in love once more.2 [Note: Harriet E. H. King.]

3. The permanent value of sacrifice.—Here lies the test by which we may try the fabric of our own actions. We have—have now and for ever—only that which we have offered to others and to God. Wherever the thought of self dominates in our schemes; wherever we identify the success of a cause, however noble, with our own success; wherever we determine for our own pleasure, as far as we can, the course of events great or small—there is the seed of ultimate corruption and decay and failure. The fatal harvest may be early or it may be late, but it is prolific and it is certain. That which is marked with the Cross has the pledge of permanence; that which bears the impress of self must perish.

Sacrifice hallows what it touches. And under its hallowing touch values increase by long leaps and big bounds. Here is a fine opportunity for those who would increase the value of gifts that seem small in amount. Without stopping now for the philosophy of it, this is the tremendous fact. Perhaps the annual foreign missionary offering is being taken up in your church. The pastor has preached a special sermon, and it has caught fire within you. You find yourself thinking as he preaches, and during the prayer following, “I believe I can easily make it fifty dollars this year. I gave thirty-five last time.” You want to be careful not to make it fifty dollars, because you can do that easily. If you are shrewd to have your money count the most, you will pinch a bit somewhere and make it sixty-two fifty. For the extra amount that you pinch to give will hallow the original sum and increase its practical value enormously. Sacrifice hallows what it touches, and the hallowing touch acts in geometrical proportion upon the value of the gift.1 [Note: S. D. Gordon.]

ii. The Sacrifice of the Body

“Present your bodies,” says the Apostle. He does not say your “souls.” We are very ready at times to say that we serve God in the spirit, though our deeds are somewhat mixed; and sometimes a man will do a wrong thing and admit that it is not quite right, but “my heart is right,” he will say, “and God looks upon the heart.” That is a kind of service that has no part or lot in Christ. A man who is trying to sever his body from his spirit, a man who thinks religion is merely a thing of the spirit and not of the outward life, a thing of the soul and not a thing of the body, is misreading the Gospel.

It is a matter of great interest, and even awe, to me, to observe how the nobler feelings can exist in their intensity only where the whole nature, the lower too, is intense also; and how that which is in itself low and mean becomes sublimated into something that is celestial. Hence, in the highest natures I suppose goodness will be the result of tremendous struggle; just as the “bore,” which is nothing in the Thames, becomes a convulsion on the Ganges, where the waters of a thousand miles roll like a sea to meet the incoming tide of the ocean.2 [Note: F. W. Robertson, Life and Letters, 215.]

1. What was St. Paul’s attitude to the body?

(1) It was not the pagan attitude of worship.—This attitude is perhaps best illustrated by the ancient Greeks. Their worship of the body took two forms—the worship of beauty and the worship of physical strength. Their worship of beauty is a commonplace to every one who knows anything whatever about the nation whose sculpture is the admiration and despair of later artists. With them the artistic feeling was not a luxury of the wealthy, but was interwoven with the life of the whole people. The most beautiful women of Greece were as famous as its greatest men. Their worship of physical strength was shown especially by the place given to athletics in the great national festivals, such as the Olympian Games. These games were not a mere sporting meeting, but a sacred celebration. The winner was considered to reflect immortal glory upon the city which bare him. He returned home in triumphal procession; he received a distinction which might be compared to our conferring of the “freedom” of a city; a statue was erected in his honour; and sometimes his exploits were celebrated in the loftiest poetry. So essential a part of Greek life were these games that chronology was based upon them, the years being reckoned by Olympiads.

To-day there is among us much of this old pagan worship. Witness the “religion of the ballet,” the portraits of professional beauties in the shop windows, and the extolling of sensuous charms in much popular modern poetry. Witness, too, the exaggerated language that is used about the elevating influence of art; as though the salvation of society from sin and misery were in mere picture-galleries; as though the criminal classes would cease to be criminal if presented with season tickets for the Royal Academy. Nor can we deny the existence of a widespread worship of physical strength. In recent years we have seen the revival of the prize-fight and the canonization of St. Slavin. These be thy gods, O Israel. These are the heroes whose names stand first on the modern bead-roll of fame. And even health and innocent sports have been degraded by excessive admiration. Games which used to be played for amusement have now become partly a science and partly a trade.1 [Note: H. W. Horwill.]

(2) It was not the pseudo-Christian attitude—that the body is the seat of all evil.—Heresy at Colosse took the form of hostility to the body as a physical organism. Some members of the Church there hated the body instead of the evil heart of unbelief, and so became ascetics, injuring the body and starving it. Hence St. Paul’s rebuke of those things which “have a show of wisdom in will-worship, and humility, and severity to the body; but are not of any value against the indulgence of the flesh.” This tendency was developed still further under the monastic system. One man lived for fifty years in a subterranean cave, which was his way of hiding his light under a bushel. Some buried themselves up to the neck in the burning sands of the desert. Some slept on bundles of thorns. Some bound themselves to jump about on one leg. Another forced his body into the hoop of a cart wheel, and remained in that position for ten years. Another, Saint Simeon Stylites—the most conspicuous example of a man’s making himself a fool for Christ’s sake—is said to have kept himself alive for thirty years on the top of a column, and, when too weak to stand any longer upright, to have had a post erected on it to which he was fastened by chains. The monks of later days did not go to such extremes, though they wore hair clothes, and in many other ways developed considerable ingenuity in the manufacture of discomfort. In the Middle Ages there might have been seen on the Continent long processions of “Flagellants” travelling from country to country, weeping as they went, singing penitential hymns, and applying the scourge to their naked backs. And they found that all this did not destroy sin.

This contempt for the body which St. Paul rebuked among the Colossians has not yet died out of the Church. We are constantly speaking about the value of souls, and forget sometimes that these souls are in bodies. How often we sneer at the body as though it were not worth attention! But great indeed is the mistake of those who think they glorify God by sneering at or maltreating the body, which is one of the noblest products of His skill. Would you compliment an inventor by destroying his machine, by pulling it to pieces either literally or metaphorically?1 [Note: H. W. Horwill.]

After dinner to the San Gregorio to Bee the frescoes, the “Martyrdom of St. Andrew,” the rival frescoes of Guido and Domenichino, and afterwards drove about till dark, when we went to a most extraordinary performance—that of the Flagellants. I had heard of it, and had long been curious to assist at it. The church was dimly lit by a few candles on the altar, the congregation not numerous. There was a service, the people making responses, after which a priest, or one of the attendants of the church, went round with a bundle of whips of knotted cord, and gave one to each person who chose to take it. I took mine, but my companion laughed so at seeing me gravely accept the whip, that he was obliged to hide his face in his hands, and was passed over. In a few minutes the candles were extinguished, and we were left in total darkness. Then an invisible preacher began exhorting his hearers to whip themselves severely, and as he went on his vehemence and passion increased. Presently a loud smacking was heard all round the church, which continued a few minutes; then the preacher urged us to fresh exertions, and crack went the whips again louder and faster than before, as he exhorted. The faithful flogged till a bell rang; the whips stopped, in a few minutes the candles were lit again, and the priest came round and collected his cords. I had squeezed mine in my hands, so that he did not see it, and I brought it away with me. As soon as the candles were extinguished the doors were locked, so that nobody could go out or come in till the discipline was over. I was rather nervous when we were locked up in total darkness, but nobody whipped me, and I certainly did not whip myself. A more extraordinary thing (for sight it can’t be called) I never witnessed. I don’t think the people stripped, nor, if they did, that the cords could have hurt them much.1 [Note: The Greville Memoirs, i. 396.]

In regard to those atrocious scenes which formed the favourite Huron recreation of a summer night, the Jesuits, it must be confessed, did not quite come up to the requirements of modern sensibility. They were offended at them, it is true, and prevented them when they could; but they were wholly given to the saving of souls, and held the body in scorn, as the vile source of incalculable mischief, worthy the worst inflictions that could be put upon it. What were a few hours of suffering to an eternity of bliss or woe? If the victim were heathen, these brief pangs were but the faint prelude of an undying flame; and if a Christian, they were the fiery portal of Heaven. They might, indeed, be a blessing; since, accepted in atonement for sin, they would shorten the torments of Purgatory. Yet, while schooling themselves to despise the body, and all the pain or pleasure that pertained to it, the Fathers were emphatic on one point—it must not be eaten. In the matter of cannibalism, they were loud and vehement in invective.2 [Note: Francis Parkman, The Jesuits in North America, ii. 173.]

The ideals of different races and centuries have no doubt been very different. With us cleanliness is next to godliness. With our ancestors it was the very reverse, and dearly they paid for their error, in plagues and black death. According to the Venerable Bede, St. Etheldreda was so holy that she rarely washed, except perhaps before some great festival of the Church; and Dean Stanley tells us in his Memorials of Canterbury that after the assassination of Becket the bystanders were much impressed, for “the austerity of hair drawers, close fitted as they were to the bare flesh, had hitherto been unknown to English saints, and the marvel was increased by the sight—to our notions so revolting—of the innumerable vermin with which the haircloth abounded—boiling over with them, as one account describes it, like water in a simmering cauldron. At the dreadful sight all the enthusiasm of the previous night revived with double ardour. They looked at each other in silent wonder, then exclaimed, ‘See! see what a true monk he was, and we knew it not,’ and burst into alternate fits of weeping and laughter, between the sorrow of having lost such a head, and the joy of having found such a saint.”1 [Note: Lord Avebury, Peace and Happiness, 41.]

When Archbishop Whately was dying, his chaplain read to him the eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, and then quoted the words from the Epistle to the Philippians (Romans 3:20-21): “We look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body,” etc. The dying man was pained, and asked for “the right thing” to be read to him. The chaplain then repeated it again, with the rendering, with which we are now familiar in the Revised Version: “Who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation.” “That is right,” said the Archbishop; “there is nothing vile which God has made.”

(3) It was the attitude of Christ.—One of the greatest lessons of the Incarnation was the honour put by Christ upon the body by His living in it. Throughout His life He emphasized this regard for the body by such parables as that of the Good Samaritan, and by such miracles as that of the Feeding of the Multitudes. By the Apostles the figure of the body was used to show the connexion between Christ and His Church. “We are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.” In reading the Epistles of St. Paul, we are especially startled by the constant references to the importance of the body. “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey the lusts thereof; neither present your members unto sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves unto God, as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.” “The body is for the Lord; and the Lord for the body.” “Glorify God therefore in your body”—“and in your spirits” seems to have been added by some copyist, quite unnecessarily. The reason why we should glorify God in our bodies is that we were bought with a price. “Know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you?” What a marvellous thought, that God is living in the world to-day in the bodies of Christians! But of all passages there is none more striking than our text. St. Paul has been devoting eleven chapters to the exposition of the story of the sin of man, the atonement of Christ, and all the blessings that follow. These eleven chapters are perhaps the noblest theological argument ever written. He then Bums them all up, coming out of theory into practice, by saying. “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present,” not, as we should probably have expected, “your souls,” or “your intellects,” but “your bodies a living sacrifice.”

In 1899 a very important addition was made to our store of early liturgical documents by the publication of the Sacramentary of Bishop Serapion, which dates from 350 a.d. The work consists of thirty prayers such as a Bishop would be likely to use. Of these the first six and the last twelve have to do with the celebration of the Eucharist; the remainder relate to Baptism, Confirmation, Ordination, and Burial. “Life is a remarkable note of the collection,” and it is life in the fullest sense of the word. In the opening Offertory prayer we find the words, “We beseech thee, make us living men.” At the invocation of the Word upon the elements, “Make all who communicate to receive a medicine of life for the healing of any sickness.” In “the prayer for those who have suffered,” “Grant health and soundness, and cheerfulness and all advancement of soul and body.” And in the final Benediction, “Let the communion of the Body and Blood go with this people. Let their bodies be living bodies, and their souls be clean souls.” Provision is also made for special prayer for the sick, and for the blessing of oils and waters for their benefit, and in these connexions we find such expressions as the following: “Be propitious, Master; assist and heal all that are sick. Rebuke the sicknesses.” “Grant them to be counted worthy of health.” “Make them to have perfect health of body and soul.” “Grant healing power upon these creatures that every power and every evil spirit and every sickness may depart.” It need scarcely be said that all these references to bodily wants are set in a context which is marked by the simplest and most ardent spiritual devotion. The physical is never allowed to usurp the first place. But it is never forgotten. The early Christians believed that the Life which was offered to them in fellowship with their Lord was to extend to every part of their constitution, to “spirit and soul and body.”1 [Note: A. W. Robinson, The Voice of Joy and Health, 220.]

Let us not always say,

“Spite of this flesh to-day,

I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole.”

As the bird wings and sings,

Let us cry, “All good things

Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul.”2 [Note: Browning, Rabbi ben Ezra.]

2. What, now, is to be the manner of the offering? The name that used to be applied to the burnt-offering was a very significant one. It meant the thing that went up—“that which ascends”; it never came down. So our offering is to be offered to God, and never taken back. This is brought out by the word used for “present.” It really means that the thing is to be done once for all.

(1) To “present” or to “yield” is to cease to resist. That there may be a resistance, even in those who have been quickened by the Spirit, to the will of God, no believer who knows anything of his own heart can deny. This resistance is one of the main hindrances to the exercise of faith. It was so with Jacob at Peniel. “And there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day.” This passage in Jacob’s history has a parallel in the life of many a child of God. How many can trace a similar crisis in God’s dealings with them!

It is the law in public and political life. A man entering the President’s cabinet, as a secretary of some department, surrenders any divergent views he may have to those of his chief. With the largest freedom of thought that must always be where there are strong men, there must of necessity be one dominant will if the administration is to be a powerful one. It is the law of commercial life. The man entering the employ of a bank, a manufacturing concern, a corporation of any sort, in whatever capacity, enters to do the will of somebody else. Always there must be one dominant will if there is to be power and success.3 [Note: S. D. Gordon.]

(2) But yielding means also ceasing to withhold. “My son, give me thine heart.” In other words, let God have full possession, not only of the spirit and the soul, but of all your physical powers. Yield every member up to Him.

All misuse of the body is not of vulgar vice, the kind of thing which is soul-murder, and which declares its character openly and visibly. There is a subtler misuse. There is a way of living which gives increasing concern to the incidentals of life, which spends itself for comfort; for comfort which may be quite of a refined kind, but which, because it is raised into an essential, instead of relegated to an inconsequent and incidental matter, is unutterably vicious. It is keen on luxuries and pleasures that are not sin in themselves, but, unless they are kept in minor place, are utterly and fatally deadening. “Pride, fulness of bread, and prosperous ease,” these deaden the spirit; they make the ears deaf too, and the hands unready for the needs of the world and the claims of God. Be on your guard. What is ailing with many of us is that we are too fatally comfortable. It is sucking out the better life of us. “How could I fail to win?” said Frederick the Great, after the battle of Rosbach. “Soubrise had seven cooks and one spy; I had seven spies and one cook.” The remark has a wide application. Watch the proportion of things. Life is a battle which has a way of hanging on to the proportions a man preserves between the commissariat and the intelligence departments; between his cooks and his sentries. “What I say unto one, I say unto you all—Watch.”1 [Note: T. Yates, Sculptors of Life, 108.]

(3) And again, yielding also means ceasing to struggle. It means no longer trying to keep oneself up—putting forth vigorous efforts to keep oneself from sinking—but casting all upon Him who is able to keep us from falling.

It is indeed a life of self-denial this, and I feel as if now for the first time I had even a dim view of what it is to be not one’s own, to me a heart-rending lesson, a long and bitter lesson, one I would gladly exchange for fasting, or scourging, or what asceticism you will. Let me keep my own will, let me be my own, aim at my own idea of holiness, aid myself with my own props, and I would do most things. But this is the hard thing to learn, that in everything, from this moment for ever, I am not only not to get my own will, but I am to desire not to get my own will, to will to be controlled by another wholly and unceasingly. This has to me at times all the pain of dissolution. It is indeed a dying to this world.

Death ends indeed the cares of life,

Yet shudders life when death comes near,

And such the fond heart’s death-like strife

When first the loved one does appear.

For, where true love is wakened, dies

The tyrant self, that despot dark.

Rejoice then that in death he lies,

And breathe morn’s free air, with the lark.1 [Note: Early Letters of Marcus Dods, 103.]

3. And what is the nature of the offering? In the old time the bodies offered in sacrifice were those of bulls and goats—not men, but possessions of men. That order of sacrifice had now passed away, since One had come who had borne our sins in His own body on the fatal tree; and in His doing of the will of God we had been hallowed by the offering of His body once for all. But sacrifice itself had not therefore passed away from among mankind. A riper and more complete form of sacrifice had succeeded, no longer of our possessions only, but of our very selves. But it is a living sacrifice. In this there is no contradiction. We sometimes fancy that sacrifice must needs involve death, or at least suppression. But it is not so. True sacrifice involves that utter offering of which death is the complete fulfilment. But this sacrifice of the will is not always executed in act. The sacrifice of Abraham was a true sacrifice, though Isaac was given back to him in life. The presenting, as St. Paul calls it, of Isaac was already complete; faith had already done its work. But when we present our very selves to God as a living sacrifice, alive with a new life, displacing the old sinful semblance of life which works only destruction, then by that same act we present our members to God as ready instruments of His righteousness. But this could not be if in sacrificing ourselves we always slew ourselves. The surrender of life to God is complete, but His will most commonly is to give us back the surrendered life as life from the dead.

(1) The sacrifice is to be a living sacrifice.—And since our sacrifice is to be a “living sacrifice”—something that has life in it, and not a thing which has lost its life or had its life taken away—we are not to wait till we are dead or nearly dead, we are not to wait till the infirmities of old age come upon us, or till the withering hand of sickness or of disease lays hold of us, before we give ourselves to God. Our life, the best of our life—the health, strength, and vigour of manhood—are to be given to Him. Why cannot there be a holy alliance between the athlete and the Christian? an alliance against the common enemies of both—against intemperance, and indolence, and dissipation, and effeminacy, and æsthetic voluptuousness, and heartless cynicism, and all the unnatural and demoralizing elements in our modern life? Why will some take so narrow a view of the true aims of physical training that they bound their horizon by the vision of prizes and athletic honours, not seeing that in themselves and by themselves these things are as worldly and as worthless as unsanctified wealth, or knowledge, or literature, or art? Why will others, again, who would not willingly break any of God’s commandments, who would not pass a day without prayer, who believe and trust in a risen Saviour—why will they not regard sedentary habits, and softness of living, and feebleness which might have been strength, and delicacy which might have been hardihood, as physical sins? Why will they not devote to the service of the Kingdom of heaven blood as pure, limbs as supple, condition as fit, energies as buoyant as if they were aspirants for a championship, and thus help to refute the slander that religion is a feeble emasculated thing, good enough for sick-beds, and minor tones, and solemn functions, and gentle counsel, but out of place amid the strong rough work and the more manly joys of life?

Quintin Hogg, the founder of the Polytechnic Institute of London, put a large fortune into the accomplishment of his work, but laid down something besides that was worth more than a fortune. “Mr. Hogg,” some one said to him once, “how much does it cost to build up an institute like yours?” “Only one man’s life-blood,” was his reply.1 [Note: R. E. Speer.]

(2) The sacrifice is holy.—The original, the first, the primary significance of that word “holy” is devoted. The consecrated life is a life of utter devotion. That means many things. It means separation from the world, for one thing. But the positive point is that it means God first, God last, God everywhere, God as the spring of thought and word and deed, God as the ruling power of our whole being; we are devoted utterly to God, every bit of our life is stamped with the hallmark of devotion to Christ.

A few years ago I crossed from Fife to Hamburg in a coal-cargo steamer, English-built, but trading under the Swedish flag, the s.s. Zelos. My wife and I were given the Captain’s room—a long commodious cabin. One night I chanced to notice certain words cut in one of the iron beams overhead. These were: “Certified for the accommodation of the master.”1 [Note: W. Christie.]

(3) The sacrifice is acceptable.—This condition embraces both the others, but goes beyond them. All men who ever offered sacrifice, unless it were in hypocrisy or by mere custom, offered it as well-pleasing to the god of their worship. But why they wished to please their god was another matter; their wish might come from this or that of a whole range of paltry, or indifferent, or lofty motives. Accordingly St. Paul, knowing well the false thoughts of sacrifice which spring up naturally in men’s hearts, has left no room for them in his exhortation. Against one false thought of sacrifice he has set the need that it be living; against another he has provided by refusing to recognize a sacrifice which, though living, is not kept holy. But the universal thought of pleasing God has a truth of its own which may not without peril be forgotten. The livingness, the holiness are in themselves well-pleasing to God; yet it is possible, strange and contradictory as it may seem, for men to make the sacrifices, and to be careful about them in both these respects, to speak much and act much on the belief that sacrifice and life and holiness are truly great things, and yet to forget God Himself. But when this happens, the whole meaning of sacrifice is lost. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and strength “remains the first and great commandment. The Christian desire of well-pleasing has nothing to do with the hope of gain or the fear of suffering, but is that desire of well-pleasing which belongs to love and love alone. The supreme value of sacrifice springs from the yearning of God’s children on earth for their Father in heaven.

I cannot get out of my mind, when I read these words, the figure of a consecrated knighthood. Christians are to be the chosen knights of the Lord’s table, the representatives and embodiments of true Christian chivalry. This, with higher and more glorious relationships, is the true conception of the Church. Every member of the Christian Church is a knight of King Jesu’s table, a member of an elect company, elected to special devotion and unceasing service. This is not always the ideal conception which prevails in the Christian Church. There are unworthy conceptions of membership. There is what I may call the book conception. It is thought sufficient to have the name on the roll. I know that the Scriptures mention with great honour those “whose names are written in the Book of Life.” Ay, but these are the names of the alive, and they are enrolled because of the surrender of their life to the service of their King. The one is a mere label, and might mean anything. This name is written with one’s own blood. And there is what I may call the couch conception. It is not openly expressed, but tacitly implied. The member who embodies this conception sits and reclines, and thinks it enough to feel happy! The wind that roars outside the house constrains him to draw his couch nearer the fire. He does not regard the tempest as a call to service, but as an incitement to more coddling ease. Sometimes the couch conception deteriorates into the stretcher conception! And by this I mean that the member of the Church not only reclines, but expects to be carried by the more faithful few. And there is the leech conception. This type of membership reveals itself in constant grasping. The hand is opened only to take, and never to give. It is greedy for comfort, for attention, for visitation. It never opens its veins and lets out blood; it knows nothing about sacrifice. And because all these conceptions are so prevalent the Church is the victim of perilous weakness. “Some are sickly, and not a few asleep.” And therefore the Church is sometimes like an infirmary, and sometimes like a sleeping compartment—anything rather than a gathering-place of armed knights, pledged to be true unto death, and ready to go forth in living sacrifice to serve the King in fighting the gathered hosts of the devil.1 [Note: J. H. Jowett.]

In the guest book of a friend I saw recently a few lines written by Dr. John Willis Baer, in which he said, quoting from another—

God gave Himself for us,

God gave Himself to us,

God wants to give Himself through us.2 [Note: J. W. Chapman.]

III

The Part which Reason Plays

“Which is your reasonable service.”

1. It is natural to suppose, at first sight, and indeed the explanation is given by many expositors, that the word “reasonable” here means that it is not an unreasonable thing, but on the contrary proper and becoming, that we should present our bodies unto God. That is true, but it is not the meaning of the word in this verse. The word rendered “reasonable” here occurs only once besides in the New Testament, and there it is translated “spiritual.” It means what belongs to the reason, and appertains to the mind, to the intellect and thought, not to any external or ceremonial law. Hence reasonable service means the service of reason, the service of mind. The reason of man is the priest that lays the body on the altar. The mind or will expresses its devotion by surrendering the body to God.

The powers of reason are required to determine what acts would be acts of rightful sacrifice and worship. Simple obedience to the precepts of the ceremonial law or tradition had once been a sufficient guide, but henceforth sacrifice was to be bound up with the new and glorious responsibilities which belong to knowledge.1 [Note: F. J. A. Hort.]

2. The word “service,” too, is somewhat ambiguous. It does not here mean service in the sense of ministering to the wants and obeying the commands of a master, but service in the sense in which we use the word when we speak of “Divine service.” When the word service is used in a Scriptural sense, it means the service of worship; and reasonable service will therefore mean the worship of mind—the worship of thought, intellect, a worshipping mind approaching God. “I beseech you to present your bodies a living sacrifice, which is the worship of your minds.” If that is the meaning, and there cannot be much doubt that it is, the expression “reasonable service” seems to stand in contrast to the word “body” in the middle of the verse—“to present your bodies.” What you present is the body, but it is the worship of your mind. It is as much as to say, on the one hand, that no act done by the body is worship, is service, is acceptable unto the Lord, unless accompanied by an act of mind—an act of thought. God cannot be pleased with an external act, unless that external act represents an internal resolve, an internal desire, an internal act. There must be presentation of the body to perfect the worship of the mind. “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.”

The Body for God

Literature

Ainger (A.), The Gospel and Human Life, 14.

Aitken (W. H. M. H.), Newness of Life, 98.

Almond (H. H.), Christ the Protestant, 145.

Brown (J. B.), The Divine Life in Man, 145.

Buxton (W. H. J.), Day by Day Duty, 10.

Chapman (J. W.), And Judas Iscariot, 375.

Church (R. W.), Human Life, 31.

Dewhurst (E. M.), The King and His Servants, 35.

Greenhough (J. G.), The Mind of Christ in St. Paul, 217.

Hackett (B.), Memorials of a Ministry, 51.

Hoare (E.), Sanctification, 116.

Hopkins (E. H.), The Law of Liberty, 97.

Hort (F. J. A.), Cambridge Sermons, 119.

Horwill (H. W.), The Old Gospel in the New Era, 79.

Hutchings (W. H.), Sermon Sketches, ii. 88.

Joscelyne (A. E.), The Voices of God, 44.

Jowett (J. H.), in British Congregationalist (January–June 1907), 564.

Leach (C), Sermons to Working Men, 136.

Lucas (H.), At the Parting of the Ways, 238.

Maclaren (A.), A Year’s Ministry, i. 315.

Matheson (G.), Rests by the River, 130.

Newbolt (W. C. E.), Counsels of Faith and Practice, 135.

Page-Roberts (W.), Reasonable Service, 41.

Pearse (M. G.), Some Aspects of the Blessed Life, 169.

Pipe (H. E.), Reminders of Old Truths, 64.

Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), xii. No. 890.

Westcott (B. F), Peterborough Sermons, 326.

Christian World Pulpit, xxv. 33 (Duckworth); xxix. 372 (Dallinger); xxxviii. 88 (Robertson); xlii. 210 (Hocking).