God’s great mercy became a transforming reality through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This mercy is a result of God’s love for us, and this love invites us to live differently in the present. We are to be living sacrifices that no longer conform to the patterns of the world. The world around us is deceptive, selfish, angry, and foolish. These cannot be the patterns we live by today. Rather, we must renew the way we think, and in doing so, we will discover God’s will for us in the present. This is not easy however. A living sacrifice is always tempted to crawl back off the altar.
