You say, How and in what way have we despised Your name? By offering polluted food upon My altar…When you [priests] offer [blind] animals for sacrifice, is it not evil? And when you offer the lame and the sick, is it not evil? …says The Lord of hosts. – Malachi 1:6-8, Amplified Bible

Christ’s atonement on the cross did away with the need for animal sacrifices, yet God still expects His children to offer sacrifices to Him in worship of Him. Those sacrifices, which include sacrifices of righteousness, sacrifices of thanksgiving, and sacrifices of prayer, still require death just like the Old Testament sacrifices did. Yet what must die in these sacrifices is not an animal, but the human will.

As Paul wrote in Romans 12:1, we are to present our bodies as living sacrifices, dying daily (1 Corinthians 15:31) to every thing that would interrupt our devotion to Him. We often offer ourselves to God, however, with strings attached – strings tied to the self that we have not yet crucified with Christ. These strings act like a lifeline, allowing us to rescue our will before we sacrifice it on the altar. When we hold back from God some facet of our will, we are guilty of offering lame, incomplete, polluted sacrifices – just like the priests of Malachi 1:6-8.

As this new year begins, we ought look into the past soberly and repent of the many times we offered ourselves to God incompletely and, thus, in an unholy manner. Then, we ought cry out to God to enable us to offer this year’s sacrifices free of pollution. May our prayer in the new year be that of Christ’s in Matthew 26:39, “…nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt!”