Offerings

"Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness." 

Romans 6:12-13 ESV

I want you to imagine with me for a moment that you are in church. The sermon is over and the invitation time has passed. The pastor calls for the ushers to come forward and take up this Sunday's tithes and offerings. When the plate finally makes it to your row, you reach deep into your hip pocket and pull out a paper clip and place it in the offering plate, along with a few sticks of chewing gum. After a little more searching, you find an ink pen from work and put that too in the offering plate. 

I find two things that stand out to me in this story: one is that you gave an offering that was absolutely worthless to you because it cost you nothing to give it. And second, the things you just gave were absurdly out of place. 

The passage I referenced above speak of the exact same irregularity. They speak of a Christ follower who all too willingly give themselves as an offering to sin. 

I have learned in my thirty eight years on earth that when a person is without Christ, they try to live life under their own authority, and that drives their every move. The ways in which they choose to sin, whether it is drinking to excess, sex out of wedlock, overeating, or simply being greedy, are completely irrelevant. When a person demands their own freedom from God's power they will get just that, God's power, and all the dangers that come with it. 

It should be a completely different story with a follower of Christ. 

When a believer in Christ willfully sins, they violate the basic nature of what it means to be a renewed creature in Christ, transformed by His sacrifice and resurrection. Personally, as a man that is blessed beyond anything I deserve, I could never think of giving God a paper clip and a few sticks of chewing gum as my act of worship. It isn't worthy of who God is. It bears no reflection on what He has done in my life to ensure my eternal place with Him. It shows a complete disregard for the power He has sent to help me navigate life. 

When Paul speaks in Romans 6, he tells us that we are no longer an offering to sin and he is speaking of the simple fact that we are no longer obligated to obey the man or woman we were. So take heart and don't give in to the old self. Christ paid a high price for each one of us and we don't have to give property that is already bought and paid for back to our enemy.