Sacrifices of righteousness

Offer the sacrifices of righteousness, And put your trust in the LORD.- Psalm 4v5

I am somewhat intrigued by the concept of a ‘sacrifice of righteousness.’ It seems that righteousness something that we should desire and that it should not be something to be seen as a sacrifice. Surely we as Christians should not have to consider righteousness a sacrifice.

When I thought about my mind was drawn to the book of Romans and things started to make sense.

The first thing to come to mind is Romans 12v1-2 where Paul begs Christians to ‘present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.’ This is called our ‘reasonable service.’ We go on to read that this involves not be conformed to this world, but to be ‘transformed by the renewing of our minds.’

I think this ties in with the teaching in Romans 6 where we are told to stop yielding our lives to unrighteousness. Before salvation we had no problem giving ourselves over to wickedness. After salvation we still must live in the flesh and that flesh cries out for attention. Paul calls us to pursue righteousness with the same intensity that we used to pursue unrighteousness.

Our ‘sacrifice of righteousness’ seems to be what is often called ‘laying your all on the altar.’ It is offering our bodies as a living sacrifice. It means that we sacrifice our own wills, plans, desires, and our ambitions to submit ourselves to God perfectly righteous will.

The only question is whether or not we will offer that sacrifice of righteousness.