“now therefore, as soon as i come to your servant my father, and the boy is not with us, then, as his life is bound up in the boy’s life, as soon as he sees that the boy is not with us, he will die, and your servants will bring down the gray hairs of your servant our father with sorrow to sheol. for your servant became a pledge of safety for the boy to my father, saying, ‘if i do not bring him back to you, then i shall bear the blame before my father all my life.’ now therefore, please let your servant remain instead of the boy as a servant to my lord, and let the boy go back with his brothers. for how can i go back to my father if the boy is not with me? i fear to see the evil that would find my father.” [genesis 44:30-34]
what is so important to you that you would willingly be a slave for the rest of your life? we have such a tremendous example here of such a responsibility that judah bears that he gives his entire life to save that of his brother and his father. having seen his father’s reaction to losing his first son of rachel, his favored son, he’ll do anything to prevent it from happening again. and so he offers himself.
for what would you offer yourself?
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. 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. [romans 12:1-2]
scripture tells us that we are to give ourselves wholly as an offering of worship to God. this doesn’t simply mean we show up to wednesday service and sing, and laugh, and maybe even cry. look at verse 2. it is spending our entire lives separate from the thinking of the world. seeking the things of God and not the things of the flesh. with the mind of Christ that we are given, we are changed, and no longer about glorifying ourselves. our new love is the glory of God!
and to the world this looks like drudgery. maybe to you it feels like drudgery. like you have an obligation to fulfill just like judah did, and like your life of slavery to Christ will be filled with missed opportunities for pleasure and fun. but as children of the King, our minds know the mysteries of God. we know and have tasted and seen that the Lord is good. [psalm 34:8] we know that his yoke is easy and his burden is light. [matthew 11:30] and we know that in his presence there is fullness of joy and that at his right hand are pleasures forevermore. [psalm 16:11] to be a slave to Christ is to be free from sin and death. to be a slave to Christ is to be a beloved child of the King!
and as we’ve discussed over and over and over, else we forget. we cannot offer ourselves to God in our own strength. we cannot become his slave by the power of our flesh, but only by the power of the Holy Spirit through the blood of Christ. in his power, we can freely offer ourselves because Jesus so freely offered himself for us, and we have been crucified with him!
i have been crucified with Christ. it is no longer i who live, but Christ who lives in me. and the life i now live in the flesh i live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. [galatians 2:20]
he is worthy of our lives. he is worthy of our sacrifice. because he is worthy of all worship and honor and glory and praise. trust him. don’t hold anything back from him. for in his presence there is fullness of joy!
~ arwen eastman