Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. (Romans 12:1)
In this verse, Paul explains to us what we are to do! He urges us in light of gifts of God giving to us in Jesus Christ to “offer our bodies as living sacrifices”. He encourages us to offer back to God what God has given to us. In the verses that follow in Romans, Paul explains that each of us has been given different gifts, and that includes our unique and special interests, desires, abilities and talents. It’s these individual gifts – the totality of who we are – that we are to offer back to Him. The way in which we offer these gifts back is by developing them and then sharing them with – in service to – the Church and all mankind. The Christian Athlete responds to God’s gifts in Christ, their creation/salvation/talents, by offering back to God what God has given to them. S/he makes this offering by developing their athletic gifts/talents – their bodies – to best of their ability and sharing those gifts/talents with the rest of the world.
The Christian Athlete does not merely offer her (or his) performance alone, rather s/he offers the daily sacrifices s/he makes as well as the toil, sweat, long hours of practice, highs and lows, victories and defeats, in other words, her (or his) entire being as an athlete – mind and body – s/he offers to God. We always tell our players being average is easy. This is also true when it comes to our relationship with God; it’s easy for us to offer a portion of ourselves to God rather than our all, but it’s our all, our best, that God desires. And it in giving our all and our best that we experience His best.
In Genesis, we hear about Cain, a farmer that brought some of the fruits of his labor to offer unto the Lord. We also meet his brother, Abel, a shepherd that did the same by bringing some of the “firstlings” of his flock along with some of their fat potions to offer before God. Abel’s offering was accepted while Cain’s was rejected. Why? Because according the author of Hebrews, “by faith Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain. By faith he was commended as a righteous man, when God spoke well of his offerings.” (Hebrews 11:4). Clearly Cain’s offering was not sufficient, it was faithless and lacking, not his best. In contrast we see that Abel offered a portion of the finest of what he had raised; he offered the best portions.
It is easy to slip into the habit of giving to God a token offering of our lives and labor rather than of our best. We have the tendency to give God what is left over, in other words, that which does not really cost us anything. In the Gospels we are told that the Widow only gave a penny, but was commended for the gift because she gave all she had. What God desires is for us to give our all, our best! Giving our all takes risks, so to give our all, our best, takes faith. To say this the other way around is: true faith gives its best – its all – in response to God’s gracious gifts. Let’s call this offering Paul recommends a faith offering. We will get into this in more detail in future posts. For now the premise is as follows: The athlete offers in faith all that it takes to be the best he or she can be at given sport to God as the response of thanksgiving to the gifts (their creation, salvation, talents) that God has given them. I will argue that in midst of this exchanging of gifts Christ shows up in a real way and we become participants in the Divine life. In this faith offering we transform the simplicity of a sporting activity – any activity – into communion with God. How cool is that!!
Something additional to think about: The “offering” is the “what” we should do and “faith” is the “how”. We will unpack this “how” – faith – more fully, but for now we can see that this “how” seeks to make the most of the gifts that God has given. Said another way, faith entails developing our gifts and talents to best of our ability for sake of God and the world. Remember, faith is not merely or simply belief, it’s a way of life – “the righteous shall live by faith”.