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Colossians 3:1-17
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If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.
Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. (ESV)
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Life of Sacrifice
Thursday of Easter 4
3 May 2012
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In the freedom of the gospel we are emancipated to offer ourselves in sacrifice to God for the benefit of other persons. Every sacrifice, although oriented to God and sanctified by Him, benefits other persons and not God. God has no need of our offerings to Him. Our fellow humans do. When we are freed unto good works by our reorientation to God through the verdict of not guilty in the proclamation of the gospel, our freedom becomes harnessed to the need of the other. Our works are no longer offered to satisfy God.
When we no longer offer good works to impress God, we are freed from using others as a means to an end, as the stage upon which the drama of our piety is shown off to God. We now are of service to others for their own sakes, as persons, redeemed by the blood of Christ Himself. Showy good works are the opposite of sacrificial offering of the self to the other in need. True good works are hidden under the cross because their value is no longer gauged by their ability to catch God's attention. Spectacle is blinded by hiddenness.
The church's life is hidden with Christ (Col 3:3). At no time is the sacrificial life of the church more completely hidden and fully disclosed than at the gathering of the body of Christ around the altar where He feeds His body to His body. The signs of His presence under the bread and wine hide Him. His Word, "this is my body," discloses Him to those who listen in faith. In this sacrament we are incorporated into His sacrifice. The life of sacrifice then radiates from the altar, rooted as sacrifice must be in the once for all sacrificed body of Christ. A life of service begins in the freedom of the gospel and moves forth from the altar where the church is incorporated into the sacrifice of Christ. A life of sacrifice, then, remains truly corporate. It can never be lived behind the wall of a personal or private piety but only in the public sphere in which God places us, because it is for people. While it is never anything but hidden under the shadow of the cross, still it is lived out in our daily vocations in lives connected to the world through service and connected to Christ at the altar.
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Augustine of Hippo
"The mercy we show to men, if it is not shown for God's sake, is not a sacrifice. For, though made or offered by man, sacrifice is a divine thing, as those who called it a holy action meant to indicate. Thus man himself, consecrated in the name of God, and vowed to God, is a sacrifice in so far as he dies to the world that he may live to God.
"Our body, too, as a sacrifice when we chasten it by temperance, if we do so as we ought, for God's sake, that we may not yield our members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, but instruments of righteousness unto God (Rm 6:13). Exhorting to this sacrifice, the apostle says, "I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship." (Rm 12:1). If, then, the body, which, being inferior, the soul uses as a servant or instrument, is a sacrifice when it is used rightly, and with reference to God, how much more does the soul itself become a sacrifice when it offers itself to God, in order that, being inflamed by the fire of His love, it may receive of His beauty and become pleasing to Him, losing the shape of earthly desire, and being remolded in the image of permanent loveliness? And this, indeed, the apostle subjoins, saying, "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect" (Rm 12:2).
"Since, therefore, true sacrifices are works of mercy to ourselves or others, done with reference to God, and since works of mercy have no other object than the relief of distress or the conferring of happiness, and since there is no happiness apart from that good of which it is said, "For me it is good to be near God" (Ps 73:28), it follows that the whole redeemed city, that is to say, the congregation or community of the saints, is offered to God as our sacrifice through the great High Priest, who offered Himself to God in His passion for us, that we might be members of this glorious head, according to the form of a servant. For it was this form He offered, in this He was offered, because it is according to it He is Mediator, in this He is our Priest, in this the Sacrifice. Accordingly, when the apostle had exhorted us to present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, our reasonable service, and not to be conformed to the world, but to be transformed in the renewing of our mind, that we might prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God, that is to say, the true sacrifice of ourselves, he says, "For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to the faith"(Rm 12:3-6).This is the sacrifice of Christians: we, being many, are one body in Christ. And this also is the sacrifice which the Church continually celebrates in the sacrament of the altar, known to the faithful, in which she teaches that she herself is offered in the offering she makes to God."
Augustine, The City of God, 10.6
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Prayer
Almighty God through receiving in my body the Body of Your Son, grant that I might live my life in the freedom of the gospel so that I might provide service to those who are in need of my sacrifice. Help me to disdain self-glorification. Give me strength to serve where I am needed. Let the offering of myself redound only to Your glory that You might be glorified by men. Amen.
For all officers of the law, that they would be kept safe in their calling and that they would impartially apply the law to all persons that we might live quiet and peaceable lives in this age
For Sarah Elliott, who was placed at Village Lutheran Church, Ladue, MO as a deaconess intern, that the Lord would bless her service to the people of Village
For all the candidates for the holy ministry who were placed from the seminaries in Fort Wayne and St. Louis yesterday, that they would sacrificially serve the church militant until the Lord calls them to the church triumphant
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Art: DUBOIS, Thomas Lamb of God
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 © Scott R. Murray, 2012
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