Why are you called a Christian?

[AI translation] This short Bible verse that I have read out to us presents the practical side of the Christian life. What is the Christian life? In short, a grateful response to accepted grace. You say you believe in God, in Jesus. Last week, by receiving the sign of Holy Communion, you expressed your acceptance of the forgiveness of sins and the gift of eternal life, you accepted the grace offered in Christ. Well, it follows that we must now consecrate ourselves to the Lord from the very beginning! The fruit is the tree's gratitude to the master who planted it and grafted it, and gratitude can only be a sacrifice, a devotion. Calvin, whose 450th anniversary will now be celebrated by the whole Reformed world, had a badge which symbolically represented this Word: a burning heart, like an offering on an altar, is held out to God by a hand. Calvin's motto is a summary of the same Word. It reads, Cor meum velut mactatum Deo in sacrificium offero.It was also on the basis of this Word that the writers of the Heidelberg Catechism formulated their answer to the question "Why are you called a Christian?", thus: "So that I may offer myself as a burnt offering to Him". This expresses the truth that the Christian life is something in which one's whole life is one hundred per cent involved, in which one must give oneself to everything. Let us look at this more closely. Our Word says: offer your bodies as a sacrifice. And the answer of our old KJV says: "I will present myself a living sacrifice to Him." The two expressions mean essentially the same thing: your whole life. That is, my life, inside and out. My life backwards and forwards. My life with its dark depths and its glorious heights. With its successes and failures. Everything I used to say "mine". Well, everything really: my health, my strength, my work, my time, my plans, my abilities, my thoughts, my will, my feelings, my rights, my duties, my house, my money, my family... And also my sickness, and my worries, my sorrows, my sins, my transgressions, my death, my judgment, my eternity, my whole destiny on this earth and in the hereafter.
As you sit here before me, I imagine to myself: what a precious life, what immeasurable riches! What is still before the young, what has been accumulated in the lives of the old! It is as if everyone now held his own life in his hands. And in a little way they do. There are some who clutch it convulsively, fear it, hide it, as if to say: Don't touch it, it's mine! I'm the only one who has anything to do with it. There are also those who don't know what to do with their life, with themselves, who are completely unaware of the incredible mass of value that they can say is mine, and who waste themselves all over the place. Well, the Christian man does not do that. He is not afraid, nor does he divide his life between different interests. The Christian man knows what to do with himself, with his body and his soul, with his whole life on earth, with whatever his destiny may be, because he is called a Christian in order to offer himself to God as a living sacrifice of thanksgiving. The Christian way of life is nothing more than an ever-renewed offering.
This offering, this sacrifice, I must make myself. No one else can do it for me, not my parents, not my pastor, not even God Himself. I must do it personally. "Myself", as the Catechism says, only I can offer myself as a sacrifice to God. At our baptism, our parents spoke for us, they received for us the sign and seal of the Christian life. But here it is precisely a question of each person having to take on the Christian life on his or her own responsibility. True Christian life must always be based on personal choice. It is a private matter for each one. It is something like when Joshua called the people, "Choose for yourselves today whom you will serve." (Josh 24:15)
You, too, must decide what you want to do with your life, what you want to commit yourself to for good. It is not easy, because the offer comes from so many directions. There are so many different demands on our lives. Greedy hands reach out to us, a variety of voices call out: give me your body, give me your soul, give me your thoughts, your love, give me your time, your strength, your hands, your heart, your present or your future. It is not an easy thing to decide here. It is much easier to limp in two directions, or in many more, to let go a little here and a little there, to divide ourselves. But you can't do that for long. You cannot serve two masters at once! Only one. Dare you dare to entrust yourself to the hand of the many hands that reach out to you, to the hand of the bloody one, to the hand of the bloody one, to lay down your life? "Sacrifice yourselves to God". Why are we called Christians? What does the Bible say: to offer ourselves as a living sacrifice of thanksgiving to Him. To Him. That is, to God. That is the most important thing of all. In all this sacrifice that this Word speaks of, the emphasis is not on me, and not on my sacrifice, but on Him. It's not that I'm offering a sacrifice or presenting a sacrifice, but that I'm offering a sacrifice of thanksgiving to Him that is most important. Let us stop here for a moment and think, who is this Him to Whom we want to offer ourselves as a sacrifice of thanksgiving?
The almighty, glorious, but invisible God who created heaven and earth, who, in the person of Jesus, entered this miserable world in human flesh, defenseless, so that anyone could punch Him in the face and mock Him if they wanted to. The mighty God, Who not only acted like the prince in the fairy tale, when He mingled incognito, dressed as a poor man, but Who became a real pauper, Who truly emptied Himself and took upon Himself a slave way of life. That merciful God, who became so compassionate, so one with us, with all of us, that He transferred the condemnation of our sins entirely from us to Himself, and in return He gave us His divine life entirely. The God, then, who has made the supreme sacrifice for us, who gave His own heart on Calvary as a bloody offering for us, whose divine glory, grace and love shine out to us through the open tomb of Easter... To this God offer yourselves in thanksgiving! Not only because he deserves it, not only because he has a right to you, but because it is the only way of life for you. It is to offer yourselves to Him! We think that we are exercising such great grace if we are worthy to sacrifice ourselves to Jesus, but we are not. Would it be a great favor to the electrician if he had free will and for once finally took the courage to step on the rails, to take the "binding" of the rails and the electric wire! And is it such a great favour to surrender to a conquering general who is triumphantly approaching, while the amnesty is still in force?! Oh, it is not a favour to give ourselves as a sacrifice to Him, but it is our interest, it is the only way of escape, of life for us. So: to the Lord. To Christ crucified and risen. the Judge of the last judgment. Dedicate yourselves to him.
And our Word also specifically emphasizes "sacrifice". Here, then, we are talking about sacrifice. The Christian life is more than escape from condemnation, it is atonement through the blood of Jesus. The Christian life is living for Jesus, for Jesus. So it is not only about something happening to me, through me, for me, but also about something happening through me. Here it is a question of action, of deeds, namely the act of sacrifice. But the sacrifice is worthless if it has to be forced. Sacrifice can only be made out of love. I can only sacrifice myself for the one I love. That's how Jesus wants us to sacrifice. Out of love. So that you bring yourself, you put your life, willingly, sacrificially into His hands. That's the only way it's worth anything. "A living sacrifice," says the Word. It says: everything! Either we give everything or nothing as a sacrifice. If not everything, it is no longer a sacrifice. So everything I used to say "mine", I now write "His" on it. It's about not having a single moment of our time, a single shred of our strength, a single sigh of our soul, a single thought of our intellect that is not His.
The Christian life is a sacrifice. And that includes the fact that it is not something easy. Sacrifice is blood. To sacrifice myself is sometimes also to sacrifice perhaps my own will, my own thought, my own plan, my own intention, to sacrifice my own righteousness, my own rest, my own right, my own happiness, my own glory, my own dear self. It may be that I must sacrifice that which I wish to keep, to show off, to increase, to assert.
A family war was raging somewhere. The wife was right. I told her: Sacrifice your own right if peace depends on it. She sacrificed it. It was worth it. Paul had the right to accept financial support from the Corinthian believers for his apostolic work. He gave up that right, he made a terrible sacrifice to make the gospel freely available in Corinth. He was not sorry. It was worth it. Without sacrifice there is no Christian life. But any sacrifice is worth the Christian life. That is why we are called Christians. So offer yourselves as a living sacrifice to God. Do not be sorry, do not be afraid to give yourselves.
And now, just for a moment, imagine what would happen if we really did that? What if we were to live in this world as those who have given themselves as a living sacrifice to God? If we walked around in this world - a world that suffers from nothing so much as human selfishness, a world that is ruined and suffocated by self-interest of many kinds. What if, for once, we really began to live like this in our families and where God has placed us in our everyday work? Oh, how everything would change! What an unspeakable blessing would come if the 500 people who were here in church today, all calling themselves Christians, would really be what they call themselves and really do what they are called to do as Christians! Out of a great, grateful love for Jesus, who offered Himself up as an atoning sacrifice for us, they would offer themselves as a sacrifice of thanksgiving to Him.
But what does this mean in practice? How does it happen that I offer myself as a sacrifice to Christ? Where is there an altar here on earth on which I can offer my time, or my money, or my rest, or my work, to God? Where? Well: look not far! It is right next to you, right where a person in your environment needs it. The needs of the people next to you and around you: that is the altar of Christ. Whatever you want to sacrifice to Jesus, Jesus refers you to it. He says: give your time for Me to your family, your love for Me to your partner who you have neglected, your money for Me to the person who has borrowed from you because they are in a tight spot, your strength for Me to your colleague at work who needs your help. Don't look far for Jesus, He is right there beside you in all the lack, pain, need, misery that cries out to you from the life of another, that you see in the lives and hearts of others. There is the altar of Christ, there you can place what you can and want to offer to Christ. He said.
In Paul's words, now I also "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye offer your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, as a reverence to your reason." Yes: in this way, and only in this way, does our worship become "clever", meaningful, righteous, blessed, and useful to the world, worship of God.
Amen
Date: 1 March 1959.