The Fire That Never Goes Out

Part of an ongoing devotional series through the book of Romans — Word Unpacked: Devotionals in Romans.

Romans 12:1 (NIV)

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.

Ask most people where worship happens, and they'll point somewhere — a building, a sanctuary, one hour on one particular day. It's a reasonable answer. But Paul, writing to a small group of believers in Rome, is about to stretch it further than most of us expect.

For eleven chapters, he has walked through how a person gets right with God. Then, in chapter 12, everything turns. The very first word is "Therefore" — and what follows is a single, strange command: offer your bodies as a living sacrifice.

Living. It's an odd word to use for a sacrifice, unless there's such a thing as a dead one. There was. For centuries, something died on an altar every single day, because sin had cut people off from God's presence directly. But buried inside those same instructions was one stranger rule: keep the altar fire burning. Day or night, it could never be allowed to go out. The animal died once. The fire was never permitted to.

That's exactly where Christ enters the story — and where the dying finally, actually, stops.

That's the turn. But what happens to the fire once the dying is finished — what it means for a Monday morning at a desk, or a Tuesday evening over a sink full of dishes — is where the rest of this week's devotional goes.

▶ Watch the full devotional — The Fire That Never Goes Out, Word Unpacked: Devotionals in Romans: