Sacrifices Aren’t Always What We Think

What does the term “sacrifice” mean to you? Sacrifices come in varied sizes, large and small. We might feel led to give a dollar or two to a “homeless” person standing along the roadside with a sign asking for help. We might pause to help the proverbial little old lady across the street or take in a stray puppy that seems lost and starving.

 

Then there are accounts of people making great, noble sacrifices: A single mom working two or more jobs to pay the bills and provide food and clothing for her children. A father filling the roles of both dad and mom while his wife recovers from serious illness. Parents scrimping and saving so a son or daughter can get the college education that wasn’t available to them. A young man or woman surrendering a kidney for an ailing sibling.

 

In the work world I’ve heard of business owners choosing to forgo their own paychecks so employees can get paid. Staff members working late into the night to ensure important deadlines are met or projects completed. Teachers spending their own money to provide needed supplies for their classes. 

 

Obviously, some sacrifices are more costly than others. We’ve heard stories of servicemen and women making “the ultimate sacrifice,” surrendering their lives on battlefields to save their comrades. These selfless acts affirm Jesus Christ’s teaching that it’s “more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). Somehow, when we give to others – especially when it’s sacrificial – we can feel rewarded for doing the right thing.

 

The greatest sacrifice of all, many of us would agree, is what Jesus Christ did on our behalf. Romans 5:8 reminds us that, “God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” In 2 Corinthians 5:21 we read a similar affirmation: “God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” 

 

I don’t know about you, but the sacrifice He willingly made to reconcile broken men, women and children to the Father still challenges my full comprehension.

 

Sacrifice is a recurring theme in the Bible. The Old Testament reveals an elaborate system of sacrifices God prescribed for the people of Israel – bulls, sheep, goats and grain – all intended to enhance their worship of the Lord and offer symbolic atonement for sins. Many of these sacrifices served as harbingers of Jesus’ ultimate sacrifice. But we find a somewhat different perspective on sacrifices in Psalm 50 that fits the season of thanksgiving and celebration we’re now entering. 

 

Speaking to the Israelites, the Lord said, “I do not rebuke you for your sacrifices or your burnt offerings, which are ever before Me. I have no need of a bull from your stall or of goats from your pens, for every animal of the forest is Mine and the cattle on a thousand hills….” In other words, their sacrifices weren’t giving anything to God that He didn’t already own.

 

Then the passage makes a shift , telling about a very different form of sacrifice, one the Lord says He prefers: “Sacrifice thank offerings to God; fulfill your vows to the Most High…. He who sacrifices thank offerings honors Me and he prepares the way so that I may show him the salvation of God” (Psalm 50:7-14,23).

 

We find a similar perspective in Psalm 51:17, which declares, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.” This isn’t to say the Lord doesn’t appreciate gifts we offer of our time, our talents and our treasures, especially those that require some level of sacrifice. But what He wants most is our hearts – sincere hearts of gratitude, reverence and worship.

 

Over the next weeks we’ll be bombarded with requests from ministries and charitable organizations for special year-end gifts to support and sustain their work, as well as to express our thankfulness to the Lord for what He is doing. Those are important and should be prayerfully and carefully considered. But as the passages above inform us, the greatest gift we can offer – the greatest sacrifice – is our unwavering, sincere thankfulness for all He has done and all that He is doing.

It Requires Sacrifice, Not Just a Contribution

The story is told about the pig and the hen who were out for a walk and happened to pass a restaurant advertising a sumptuous breakfast of ham and eggs. The hen looked at the sign and proudly said, “I’m helping to make that breakfast possible!” To which the pig soberly replied, “Yeah, for you it’s a contribution, for me it’s a total sacrifice.”

 

We live in an age where people seem increasingly reluctant to make sacrifices. People enter into marriage – also known as holy wedlock – only to deny their vows and bail out when they decide the union is no longer meeting their needs. 

 

We used to hear about climbing the corporate ladder, investing many years of hard work to earn promotions. Today, many young people graduate from college with degrees in hand, intending to start at the top and work up from there.

 

Couples used to scrimp and save for many months, even years, before making major purchases. These days they simply pull out the plastic, swipe or scan it, and happily leave with their desired items, ignoring the fact they’ll soon be singing, “I owe, I owe, it’s off to work I go….”

 

But if the word SUCCESS were an acronym, one of the S’s would have to be Sacrifice. 

* An athlete, for instance, rising hours before his or her peers, working out, running, lifting weights and doing whatever is necessary to excel at their chosen sport. 

* A parent deferring hobbies, excursions and other favorite things to focus on the important mission of raising a child.

* A dedicated teacher not only arriving at school early and staying long after her students have left, but sometimes even spending her own money to provide needed classroom supplies.

* A physician going beyond the call to track the progress of a patient and make sure the recovery process goes as smoothly as possible.

 

The list could go on. But nowhere is the necessity for sacrifice more pronounced than in the pursuit we call “the Christian life.” It starts with our perfect example, Jesus Christ, “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness…He humbled Himself and became obedient to death – even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:6-8).

 

We often talk about someone making the “ultimate sacrifice” – a soldier, law enforcement officer, firefighter who died in the line of duty. But neither before nor after has there been a greater, more profound ultimate sacrifice than the one offered by Jesus, dying to pay the price for sins that we could never atone for ourselves.

 

This idea of sacrifice did not end with Christ’s singular, once-and-for-all crucifixion to achieve victory over sin and death. The apostle Peter pointed out, “To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in His steps” (1 Peter 2:21).

 

To be a follower of Christ means to accept the mantle of sacrifice whenever it’s extended. It may not mean asceticism, living in complete self-denial, but it does mean taking “self” off the throne of our lives. As the apostle Paul wrote to believers in Rome, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship” (Romans 12:1).

 

We have been set free, as Paul asserted in Galatians 5:1, but in the greatest sense this means being free to become everything God desires for us to be, unshackled by sin and self-absorption. As Jesus said, “Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for My sake will find it” Matthew 10:39).

 

In our humanness, it’s tempting to want to straddle the fence, living with one foot in Jesus’ kingdom and the other in the material world in which we live. But that’s not what the Lord expects of us. “Then He said to them all, ‘If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me” (Luke 9:23). 

This isn’t easy. In fact, writing to believers in ancient Corinth, Paul stated,“I die daily” (1 Corinthians 15:31), referring to the self-sacrificing ministry to which God had called him, as well as recommitting day after day to deny the desires of the flesh and resist temptation.

For some this hardly sounds like the “abundant life” Jesus described in John 10:10, but as many people have painfully discovered, the secret to happiness is not self-indulgence. As author Philip Yancey observes in his book, Grace Notes, “true fulfillment comes not through ego satisfaction, but through service to others.” 

It truly is “more blessed to give than to receive,” as Jesus declared in Acts 20:35, because in the giving – especially sacrificially – we receive many times over. 

Sacrifice: The Hardest Gift to Give

Do you remember the classic O. Henry short story, “The Gift of the Magi”? It’s typically read around the Christmas season, because it’s centered around Christmas Eve. But the lesson it teaches fits any day of the year.

To refresh, it’s about a young couple with little money wanting to buy a very special gift for each other. Della secretly resolves to cut and sell much of her lovely, long hair to buy a chain for husband Jim’s prized pocket watch; Jim, unaware of her plan, sells his watch to buy beautiful combs for Della’s hair.

Readers of the story, as well as those who have seen any of its many dramatic adaptations, are struck by the irony of their selfless gestures. Honestly, the first time I saw it, I think my reaction was something like, “Well, that was dumb! Now what are they going to do with the watch chain and combs?” But as you ponder the message, it presents a tangible example of what personal sacrifice looks like.

Sometimes life calls for a sacrifice
for which there is no turning back.

I like how preacher James MacDonald recently expressed it: “Sacrifice is giving up something you love for something you love even more.” The question is, how many of us would be willing to do something like that?

Sacrifice is a word – and an act – that seems increasingly out of fashion these days. We might be willing to give, or lend a helping hand, but only as long as it doesn’t require too much from us. For years, society has been convincing us, “it’s all about me” and “you gotta look out for No. 1.” If it’s all about me, then why should I be all that concerned about you?

At the same time, we’re often fascinated by accounts of great sacrifice. We talk about “the ultimate sacrifice” – a soldier giving up his or her life thousands of miles away on a field of battle, or a firefighter dying in the attempt to save someone else. Even though many people can’t give the biblical reference, they appreciate the kindness of a “good Samaritan” (the story is found in Luke 10:25-37), someone going to extreme lengths to help another person, often a total stranger.

It was Jesus Christ who said, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends” (John 15:13). He then proceeded to demonstrate that truth, giving His life on the cross to become the atoning sacrifice to pay for mankind’s rebellion against its Creator. “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

The Trinity remains an unfathomable mystery to the human mind, but the Scriptures make it clear Christ’s sacrifice was hardly happenstance. We told, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (John 3:16-17).

Later the apostle Paul writes that long before you or I were even a gleam in our parents’ eyes, the penalty for our sins had been paid. “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). As I sometimes ask men I have the privilege of mentoring, “How many sins had we personally committed when Jesus went to the cross for us?” Since that was about 2,000 years ago, the obvious answer is, “None.”

What kind of sacrifice would you be willing to make for another person, whether a loved one – or a complete stranger? If you’re thinking that’s a tough question, I don’t blame you. It’s a difficult one for me, too. But ultimately, the so-called “Christian life” is one of sacrifice, being willing to give up something we love if necessary to serve and worship the One we love even more.

As Jesus told His followers, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). That is, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer phrased it, “the cost of discipleship.” Which is why Paul wrote, “I die daily” (1 Corinthians 15:31). Every day I find it necessary to ask – and remind – myself, “am I willing to make that sacrifice?”