Romans 11:32-12:2

Sacrifice.  It’s a hard word to swallow for 21st Century Americans.   It is something that few of us have done.  Yet God calls us to do it.

I remember a story I once heard in a sermon about a seminary student working as a bus driver on the Southside of Chicago.  The only place I’ve been in Chicago is O’Hare Airport so I don’t know a lot about the city.  Jim Croce said that the south side was the “baddest” part of town.  Each day this seminary student would stop at his usual stops and at one particular stop, there was a gang that would get on the bus and wouldn’t pay the fare.  One day, if I remember the story correctly, the bus driver refused to let them get on the bus because of their previous commitment to not paying.  At the end of his bus route, the gang was waiting for him and beat him within an inch of his life.  The gang was arrested, tried and found guilty. At their sentencing, the bus driver asked if he could speak.  The judge granted his request.  He told the judge that, whatever their sentence was, to add it all together and he would serve the combined sentence.  That’s right.  The bus driver.  The victim of the crime. He offered to serve the sentence of his perpetrators.  The entire courtroom was shocked.  The judge said that he could not do that because there was no precedent for it.  The student disagreed and began to share the Gospel with the court.  After the gang was sentenced, the bus driver visited the gang members in prison and they all gave their lives to Christ.

One of my Explorers (Pioneer Club) responded to that request of the bus driver with an “I don’t think so.”  Otherwise saying, “I wouldn’t do that.”   Would that be your response to the story?   It would be very easy for me to take a step back and think.  I don’t know if I would have even thought to offer that.  This student/bus driver was offering to sacrifice his life for these young men that nearly took his life.  That’s what Jesus did for us.  At Adam’s fall, our sentence was cast.  It was a death sentence.  And what’s worse?  Dying in our sin.  Not a pretty picture.  But Jesus’ response to that sentencing is:  Father, I’ll take their punishment.  Because of his great love and mercy for us, Christ took our punishment.  He received our death sentence.

As Christians, God wants us, in view of His mercy, to offer our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to him.  Are our lives pleasing to him?  Are our lives holy?  Are our bodies living sacrifices?  Do we gossip?  Are we selfish?  How do we spend our time?  How do we spend our money? To what are we committed?  Take time each day to offer your body as a living sacrifice.  Sacrifice what you want for what you know is holy and pleasing to God.  Was the offer from the student/bus driver to serve the combined sentence of this gang holy and pleasing to God?  I don’t know the mind of God but, from what I have read in scripture, it was.  

God may never ask you to do what that man did.  But he does want to you to “go the extra mile.”  In view of God’s mercy, in view of His sacrifice, in view of his great love for us, live a life that is holy and pleasing to him.  This is your spiritual act of worship.

--Melissa Vincent