Paul uses a metaphor for the Christian life in this verse: the “in Christ” people are to be like “living sacrifices” to God. This is a metaphor that a Roman, Greek, or Jew would fully understand. Typically a sacrifice is killed on the altar, but here Paul says that the sacrifice acceptable to God in the present age is to remain alive.
Nobuyoshi Kiuchi suggested that the background for this living sacrifice that is holy and acceptable to the Lord is the Hebrew Bible, specifically the Azazel-goat in Leviticus 16:10-22. As a part of the Day of Atonement ritual, two goats were selected. One would be sacrificed, the other was “presented alive.”
As the high Priest laid his hands on the goat he confessed the sins of the people and the goat was released “into the wilderness” or “for Azazel.” The Mishnah reports he would say to the goat: “Bear our sins and be gone!” (Yoma 6.4). As Kiuchi points out, this is the only sacrifice for sin in the Hebrew Bible that is a “living sacrifice.” The tradition that the goat was pushed over a cliff and killed comes from the Mishnah and is not found in Leviticus.
A potential problem for Kiuchi is that the Azazel-goat is never called a living sacrifice in Second Temple literature. In the Mishnah and other texts it is the “sent-away goat” since it represents the sin of the people being carried away into the wilderness. While Kiuchi suggests that Paul’s allusion to the Azazel-goat is intended to draw attention to Leviticus rather that contemporary practice (p. 259), it is hard to see how this is helpful for unpacking the metaphor since it is Jesus that bears away the sin of the believers. Jesus is the “living sacrifice” who solved the problem of sin and human estrangement from God. In this view of the metaphor, the sacrificed goat would be Jesus and the believer is the “living sacrifice.”
Perhaps I am forcing the metaphor more than Paul intended,
The solution is to see the sacrifice in Romans 12:1 as a reference to the new life of the believer in Christ. From a Gentile perspective, living a morally virtuous life is of more value than the worthless dead sacrifices happening in the temples. Even if the Jewish sacrifices are in mind, a life that is lived as a “spiritual form of worship” is better than the daily sacrifice in the Temple.
One aspect of this metaphor of a living sacrifice that is rarely mentioned is the fact that the early Church had virtually no ritual elements compared to other ancient religious movements. Christians did not go to a temple to sacrifice to their god like virtually everyone else in the world at that time. Paul says here that the acceptable sacrifices are not animals, but the worshipers themselves.
How would person living in the first generation of the Church actually go about being a “living sacrifice”? How radical is this calling that Paul describes here?
Bibliography: Kiuchi, Nobuyoshi. “Living like the Azazel-goat in Romans 12:1B,” Tyndale Bulletin 57 (2006): 251-61.
Reblogged this on Talmidimblogging.
The people o f this time, in order to be a ‘living sacrifice’ would have to abandon the rituals they had always known. Paul had established a basis of living that was contrary to the quest for honor in the ancient world (TTP 188). Not only that, but they would have to change the way they thought about salvation. Their faith was no longer based on a series of works, but on faith in Jesus Christ. They would have to understand what it meant to be that ‘living sacrifice’ themselves, rather than an animal being that sacrifice (TTP 188). Paul had to give them an overview of what it looked like to live in God’s mercy instead of his wrath. This would be very radical for them to do because it was the complete opposite of what they were used to doing, and they were all for the rituals they had done in the ancient world. They had a lot of learning to do to understand what it meant for them to be the living sacrifice.
A person living in the first generation of the Church might go about being a “living sacrifice” by changing their lifestyle to doing things for God. They could stop doing all of the old rituals that they have been doing and do things in order to honor God.