“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).
“Altar-building is very common in Africa,” says Ugandan missionary Greg Fisher. He explains, “The Lord’s Resistance Army—operating in the north of Uganda—have five altars. They are places where the LRA makes contact with the supernatural and renews their covenant with the forces of the Dominion of Darkness. These are altars where human sacrifice has been done to seal a dark covenant. This is one of the reasons why we continue to contend that the civil war in the north is, in fact, a spiritual war. Many times,” he says, “as I visit in the villages, I see altars where animals are sacrificed as a way of confirming a covenant with a local god. These covenants are ways of ensuring god’s blessing and protection for the family.”
It is not only Africa where altar-building continues, but all countries of the world, developed or undeveloped. If you doubt that, check with your local police department or civil authorities and ask about the number of animals which are found mutilated or destroyed—apparent sacrifices used in Satanic rituals. No, you won’t find a phone number listed in a directory, but the concept of sacrificing to a supernatural power is still alive and well.
In the days of the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, altars served two major purposes. They were contact points where people had encounters with God. They were also places of sacrifice when men made covenants with God. In fact, the Hebrew word for covenant literally meant to cut something in two, suggestive of the sacrifice which was made at an altar.
Altars, of course, imply the shedding of blood—something which has become repulsive to the modern mind. Jesus Christ shed His blood and gave His life as a sacrifice for the sins of the world, thereby allowing God to accept the price He paid in place of the one our sins demanded.
After the destruction of the temple in 70 AD, sacrifices and altars disappeared. Eventually churches placed altars in the front as pieces of furniture holding candles, crosses, and Bibles. A generation ago many churches had an altar where people came and prayed, but even that has gone out of style.
Hearing a speaker talk about a “family altar,” a woman engaged the speaker after the service saying, “Now about that family altar. Can you buy them in Christian book stores?” Altars are places where you meet God and do business with Him.
Paul wrote to believers in Rome and told them that their bodies should be living sacrifices given to God at the altar of commitment. He wrote, “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 12:1,2).
A friend of mine, a filmmaker who specializes in producing Christian films in a part of the world where a great deal of hostility towards Christians exists, has the idea. When he was challenged about the dangers involved in doing what he feels called to accomplish, he said, “A true believer has already died.” In other words, he considers himself to be Jesus Christ’s alone, considering himself to be a living sacrifice.
A closing thought: Giving yourself in commitment to Jesus Christ and His cause isn’t something that you do in a passionate act of surrender, it’s something you have to do every day as you say, “OK, Lord. I’m yours! Whatever you order today is fine with me!” As the late Bible teacher J. Vernon McGee used to say, “The problem with living sacrifices is that they keep crawling off the altar.”
Resource reading: 1 Corinthians 6:12-20
