(1) You give God your body (v. 1). Before we trusted Christ, we used our bodies for sinful pleasures and purposes, but now that we belong to Him, we want to use our bodies for His glory. The Christian’s body is God’s temple (1 Cor. 6:19-20) because the Spirit of God dwells within him (Rom. 8:9). It is our privilege to glorify Christ in our bodies and magnify Christ in our bodies (Phil. 1:20-21).

Just as Jesus Christ had to take on Himself a body in order to accomplish God’s will on earth, so we must yield our bodies to Christ that He might continue God’s work through us. We must yield the members of the body as “instruments of righteousness” (Rom. 6:13) for the Holy Spirit to use in the doing of God’s work. The Old Testament sacrifices were dead sacrifices, but we are to be living sacrifices.

There are two “living sacrifices” in the Bible, and they help us understand what this really means. The first is Isaac (Gen. 22); the second is our Lord Jesus Christ. Isaac willingly put himself on the altar and would have died in obedience to God’s will, but the Lord sent a ram to take his place. Isaac “died” just the same–he died to self and willingly yielded himself to the will of God. When he got off that altar, Isaac was a living sacrifice to the glory of God.

Of course, our Lord Jesus Christ is the perfect illustration of a living sacrifice, because He actually died as a sacrifice, in obedience to His Father’s will. But He arose again. And today He is in heaven as a living sacrifice, bearing in His body the wounds of Calvary. He is our High Priest (Heb. 4:14-16) and our Advocate (1 John 2:1) before the throne of God.

The verb “present” in this verse means “to present once and for all.” It commands a definite commitment of the body to the Lord, just as a bride and groom in their wedding service commit themselves to each other. It is this once-for-all commitment that determines what they do with their bodies. Paul gives us two reasons for this commitment: (1) it is the right response to all that God has done for us–“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God” (italics mine); and (2) this commitment is our “reasonable service” or our “spiritual act of worship.” This means that every day is a worship experience when your body is yielded to the Lord.