Day Twenty-Eight
During Lent we can sometimes get overwhelmed by the invitation to self-reflection, and in doing so we can forget what’s really going on. If we’re not careful it can turn our gaze completely inward, rather than using our self-reflection as a first step to looking upward. In the midst of that danger there’s an important truth we need to hold on to:
Taking up our cross and dying to self is an act of worship.
In our modern church culture, which tends to think of “worship” as only being gatherings we attend or songs we sing, the kind of self-examination we take part in during Lent is often not understood for what it really is. The Apostle Paul understood, though:
“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.”—Romans 12:1 (NIV)
Most scholars agree that while Paul used the word “bodies” (to stay within the image of Old Testament sacrifice), what he is referring to in this verse is an offering of our entire being to God as an act of worship. It is a sacrifice in every real sense of the word, because in the act of sacrifice something dies in order that something else might come to life. Christ died so that we might have new life, his is the perfect and ultimate sacrifice. Our response is in turn: we die to ourselves as an act of sacrifice so that the new life Christ offers might reign in our hearts.
And that is worship. We often forget that the Old Testament sacrifices, as strange to us as they may seem, were conducted in the context of worshiping God. They were “an aroma pleasing to the LORD” (Lev. 1:9), a statement of complete and utter dependence on him. When sacrifice is made, and lives stained by sin bow in submission to the God who makes them clean and transforms them, God is honored and glorified. That is what Paul means by “true and proper worship.”
The gospels give us a beautiful portrait of this kind of worship in the days just before Jesus is arrested. Matthew records it in chapter 26 of his gospel:
“While Jesus was in Bethany in the home of Simon the Leper, a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, which she poured on his head as he was reclining at the table.
When the disciples saw this, they were indignant. “Why this waste?” they asked. “This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor.”
Aware of this, Jesus said to them, “Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me. When she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for burial. Truly I tell you, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”—Matthew 26:6-13 (NIV)
This “beautiful thing” is an act of sacrificial worship. In her extravagant gift we find an echo of David’s pledge to not offer to God that which costs nothing (2 Samuel 24:24). Jesus not only commends her, but says her example will live on in the gospel story…which, of course, it did!
As we, too, prepare for Jesus’ burial, there is a continual call for us to offer all that we are, all that we have, and all that we hope to be to God. We die to self as an act of sacrifice, and that sacrifice becomes worship. Our gaze is not only inward…it is ultimately outward and upward to the only “worthy King of Kings,” who gave himself as a sacrifice for us. How can we respond any other way?
Let it rise like incense
My whole life a fragrance
Every ounce here broken at Your feet
Every breath an offering
My heart cries these lungs sing
Over You, my worthy King of Kings
Read the rest of the lyrics here.
Questions for Reflection:
1) Have you found this intentional season of reflection sometimes causing your gaze to turn exclusively inward? How might you embrace in a new a deeper way the kind of worship to which Paul exhorts us?
2) How do you respond to the idea that our “dying to self” is an act of worship? How does that ring true for you, or if it doesn’t, what kind of questions or points of resistance surface as you consider it?
3) Some translations render “true and proper worship” as “reasonable service.” What can that phrase teach us about offering ourselves as a living sacrifice?
4) Verse 2 of today’s song includes these words:
There’s a lifetime worth of worship
In the nuance of Your names
Prayerfully spend some time pondering that lyric. What names for God most inspire you to worship?
5) Read and reflect on this verse. Let it lead you into prayerful worship and gratitude:
“Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”—Ephesians 5:1-2 (ESV)