Offer yourselves as a sacrifice: be a good, faithful person

A concept that helps show that a believer is one who acts the right way as well as says he/she believes is in Romans 12 as well as in Omni 1 in the Book of Mormon.

There Paul talks about the need to offer oneself as a sacrifice. What is sacrificed? The bad things someone may be inclined to do:

1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your ^abodies a living ^bsacrifice, holy, ^cacceptable unto God, which is your reasonable ^dservice.

Offer yourselves as an offering to God. Become the person he wants you to become. This is a reasonable ask from God who gives so much and sacrificed his Son to allow us to become like Him eternally. Omni 1 gives a similar message:

26 And now, my beloved brethren, I would that ye should ^acomeunto Christ, who is the Holy One of Israel, and partake of his salvation, and the power of his redemption. Yea, come unto him, and ^boffer your whole souls as an ^coffering unto him, and continue in ^dfasting and praying, and endure to the end; and as the Lord liveth ye will be saved.

Once again, offer your souls to Christ, continuing in fasting and praying to keep the faith, and if you keep faithful to the end, you're guaranteed salvation. Once again, a great tradeoff for being faithful.

Returning to Paul's message - he then spends the rest of Romans 12 giving examples of what it is to offer yourself as a sacrifice to God. It's doing what he asks: weeping with those that weep (see also Mosiah 18:8-9), showing mercy happily, not being evil to those who are evil to you, having faith, cleave to that which is good, love truly, etc.

Being good to people, and believing in the Lord's efforts on our behalf, and following his messages through prophets is the way to happiness and offering as a sacrifice.

Sacrifice and Offering - Temple work

My wife and I had temple recommend interviews on Sunday. One thing the Bishop said to me is that those who do have temple recommends have a tough time going as often as they should in their busy lives. That's definitely been true for me.

So, this verse really hit home while reading today. From D.C. 84:

31Therefore, as I said ^aconcerning the sons of Moses—for the sons of Moses and also the sons of Aaron shall offer an acceptable^boffering and sacrifice in the house of the Lord, which house shall be built unto the Lord in this generation, upon the consecrated^cspot as I have appointed—

It's pretty clear from other verses that the offering made by the sons of Aaron (i.e., those with the Aaronic Priesthood) will be a book with the records of those who have had their baptismal ordinances performed.

D.C. 128 says the following:

24Behold, the great ^aday of the Lord is at hand; and who can^babide the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appeareth? For he is like a ^crefiner’s ^dfire, and like fuller’s soap; and he shall sit as a ^erefiner and purifier of silver, and he shall purify the sons of ^fLevi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an ^goffering in righteousness. Let us, therefore, as a church and a people, and as Latter-day Saints, offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness; and let us present in his holy temple, when it is finished, a book containing the ^hrecords of our dead, which shall be worthy of all acceptation.

The offering of the sons of Levi (remember Levites were those who held the priesthood in the Old Testament) is a book with the records of the dead. The great offering at the end of the Millennium is going to be the records of the temple work done. In this case, it's the baptismal work (and D.C. 128 is about baptism for the dead). I think it's safe to presume that the offering the by Melchizedek Priesthood holders mentioned in D.C. 84 refers to all other temple ordinances.

In our busy times, it's fitting that this work is termed an offering and a sacrifice. In this time of relative abundance, sacrificing money is not as hard for most people as sacrificing time. Certainly that's true for me. As priesthood holders, one of our great duties is to do the work in the house of the Lord. (Don't get me wrong, there are many other great things to do and some of them take precedence over this at times - for instance, the two most important groups in the church are the youth and the young single adults; further, getting families activated who aren't is beyond valuable.)

Interesting how the Lord changes the modes of worship in different times to more effectively help his people come unto Him and accomplish His work. That could be a whole other discussion. :)

I look forward to doing more temple work in the near future.

Enjoy the temple. It's a great blessing.

LaDon