We Must Present Ourselves Before the Lord Every Day
For you are a holy people to the Lord your God, and the Lord has chosen you to be a people for his own possession, above all peoples who are on the face of the earth. — Deuteronomy 14:2
Therefore I urge you, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service. — Romans 12:1
Author
Dr. Roberto Miranda
Summary: By the mercies of God, we must present our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to Him. To present ourselves means deliberately placing our lives before the Lord with the aim of living in holiness. We bring not only what is good; we also bring our struggles, contradictions, sinful tendencies, and bad habits, asking God to cleanse and heal us and fill us with His Spirit. This surrender may begin with a solemn commitment, but we must renew it every day. As we place ourselves in His hands, we allow Him to continue working in us, transforming and purifying us according to His will.
Because of God’s mercies, we must present our bodies as a holy sacrifice, pleasing to God. It is a very specific and very graphic way of making that call the Bible makes again and again to Christians to live a life of holiness.
If we want to please God, if we want to live a life that corresponds to the greatness, the plan of salvation, and the holy character of God, what must we do? How can we ensure that kind of behavior? Well, Paul says here: by presenting our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This idea of presenting our bodies is full of meaning, and we are going to unpack it a little.
The word Paul uses, translated into Spanish as “presentéis,” is parastesai, parastesai in the original Greek, and it means to take something—as though taking it in your hands—and carry it and place it before someone, in this case God. It refers, for example, to when priests took the sacrificial animals and presented them before the Lord. It could also refer to when Hebrew children were taken and presented before the Lord, or we could think of a wave offering waved before the Presence of the Lord and presented with full deliberation, with great care, before God so that He would look at it.
It is like—let’s say, this comes to mind right now—in a restaurant. Have you seen those scenes in movies where the waiter comes and presents a very expensive bottle of wine to the diners, the customers at the table? The waiter, with his towel over his arm, comes and presents this bottle of wine to the customer so that he can examine it and determine whether it is what he ordered and exactly what he is going to pay for, because it is expensive and he has to confirm that it is exactly what he wants and that they are not, in fact, deceiving him or anything like that. So the customer looks at the bottle, reads the label, then nods his head and says, “Yes, go ahead.”
It is this idea that we must take our life and, as something very serious and of great value, present it before the Lord so that He can do something with it, right? So we see here that Paul continues with this idea that the Christian life requires deliberation; things must be done with great intentionality if they are truly to have meaning. What I was saying earlier is that, to live a holy life, we must make a holy resolve to live as God calls us to live.
So what we, as children of God, must do is present ourselves before the Lord every day. Present our life, our struggles, our contradictions, our sinful tendencies, the bonds that hold us, the bad habits we have; present ourselves before the Lord and say: “Father, here I am. I need You to touch me, to receive me, to deal with me, to cleanse me, to heal me. I recognize who I am, and therefore I am here. Lord, touch my life and do with me whatever You want. Fill me with Your Holy Spirit.”
We must do this at some point in our life, and on every occasion in our life as well, because it is something we do once, perhaps as a solemn act, a resolve and a promise before the Lord. But then, day by day, we must continue making these same resolutions: that today I will once again present my life before the Lord so that the Lord may continue working on me and doing with me what He wants.
There must be that surrender; there must be that letting go and yielding ourselves to the Lord and saying: “Father, here I am. Deal with me, transform me, and make me a new person in Christ Jesus.” If there is no such commitment, it will not happen.
So, just as the great prophets on other occasions presented sacrifices or children or even kings to be anointed by God, we must present our lives before the Father so that He may do what He wants. Parestesai is a very beautiful word, and it is what we must do: present ourselves before the Lord every day and say to the Holy Spirit: “Today, Lord, deal with me and do whatever You want with me. I present my life to You, and please continue working on it, perfecting me and purifying me.”
May that be the sense and the desire and the feeling of every one of us. May the Lord bless you, and we will continue exploring this wonderful passage in our coming meditations.