After eleven chapters of teaching about the Gospel and God’s plans, Paul now starts to give practical instructions as to how Christians should live. The incentive for obeying these commands is all that has just been taught on the mercy of God (v1).

The Christian is to offer up his or her life to the Lord as a sacrifice of service We worship God daily by giving ourselves to do God’s will. Someone has said that the problem with a living sacrifice, is that it keeps wanting to crawl off the altar. We must give ourselves to the Lord with a determination not to think, talk or act as the world does (v2). We must allow our minds to be changed by the Spirit through the scriptures. This will lead to working for the Lord in the church’s life (v3).

We are to watch against pride realising that anything we can do including believing, is all down to God’s gift to us. Some are given different measures of gifts from others and we are all given different types of gifts so as to serve the body of Christ (v4-5). All we have has come from God not for us to indulge ourselves but rather to serve others no matter what our gift may be (v6-8). Are you daily giving yourself as a living sacrifice, serving the needs of others?