Answering the call is voluntary and is made to Jesus Himself

It's Voluntary

The fact that Paul calls us to be a "living sacrifice" also implies a choice we must make. YOU and I must make it. You must choose to surrender, to give your life.

Dead sacrifices are killed by another and placed on the altar. You are a living sacrifice. You choose.

I really believe this is what God wants. He wants YOU, out of love for Him, motivated by his love for you, to choose to lay down your life for Him even as he laid down his life for you.

Isn’t that what we all want in love? We want to know that someone out there loves us enough to give of themselves for us?

God gave himself for us—and is still giving to us promising that a life lived in his love will begin in glory—and now he longs for us to respond to His love with the same kind of sacrifice. He began it. He started. He went first. Now he urges us out of love to respond in kind.

But here’s the deal—he’s not going to make you. Loving God is a choice that comes from your heart. God works there but you must respond. This call to give your life in sacrifice to Him is a voluntary call.

It's to the person of Jesus, not a cause.

Paul urges us to present ourselves as a holy sacrifice. The word holy means set apart but we are not sacrificing our lives for a cause but rather for a person. We are called to give our lives, to set apart our lives, as a sacrifice to Jesus, to God.

When we sacrifice, give our lives, we are doing so to Jesus in response to His giving of HIMSELF to us.

You might think this is just semantics, a play on words, but it’s not. This isn’t a worldview to which to give ourselves, a code of ethic, an altruistic goal—though Jesus gave us all of those. We are giving ourselves to Him as a person. He’s for real. He’s alive. We lay our lives down for Him- it’s a sacrifice acceptable to God.

This is personal—this is relationship. The Muslims give themselves to this idea of God—not to a person who loves them and first gave his life for them.