Living as a Sacrfice
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How is it that a man that battled alcoholism and homelessness, employeed as an ice cream factory worker, and janitor, and lived in a 6’ by 8’ Salvation Army hostel room, finds himself honored with a state funeral with official representatives from the Government of Manitoba, Consuls of France, Italy, the United States, and senior officers of the Canadian Army? A man who subsisted on menial jobs, depression, lived estranged from his wife and children due to financial difficulties would have more than 500 people attend his funeral, and be layed to rest by delegates from the Princess Patricia’s Brigade. This man’s story has been told on television, on the big screen, and even had a play written about his life that was published and critically acclaimed in 2016. On October 28, 2022 Canada Post issued a stamp with his image on it, and earlier in the year, Conservative Party of Canada Members of Parliament started a petition to have his face be displayed on the Canadian $5 bill. This man is Canada’s most decorated First Nations Indigenous war hero serving in WWII and the Korean War.
Born of the Brokenhead Ojibwe Nation, Thomas George Prince (Oct 25, 1915 - Nov 25, 1977), was one of only three Canadians to receive both the Canadian Military Medal and the American Silver Star during WWII. Being one of eleven children of Henry and Arabella Prince of the Peguis First Nation, how is it that a man born in Scanterbury, MB, living in poverty, would have such honor at his death? Because he was a living sacrifice.
Tommy Prince gave his life to serve His nation and His people for what was right and good. Among his many acts of sacrifice, not just in the military where he was a member of the First Special Services Force (The Devil’s Brigade) in WWII, which battled the Axis powers in Italy and France. Tommy Prince sacrificed his life to give a better life to First Nations people serving as vice-president of the Manitoba Indian Association (currently the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs). He was then appointed chairman of the national delegation representing the First Nations of Canada at the 1946 joint Senate and House of Commons Parliamentary Committees in Ottawa to review the Indian Act and suggest ways to improve conditions for the First Nations people. Prince advocated for the abolition of the Indian Act. Through his sacrifice, First Nations people obtained their right to vote, without having to renounce their Native status.
Tommy Prince left Ottawa frustrated with the red tape. He did not achieve the goal of freeing the First Nations people from being “wards of the government”. He had sought the ability for First Nations people to be able to manage their own lands and resources and to have the Crown treaties form the basis of a new system for the First Nations people. Today though, the Canadian Government has come to accept the policy of phasing out the Indian Act, while affirming the First Nations peoples treaty rights, through Supreme Court Rulings, as envisioned and championed by Tommy Prince.
Tommy Prince on the battle field and at home, was a living sacrifice. He faced and absorbed discrimination even though he was a hero on so many levels as a human being and as a soldier. Because of being Indigenous, he encountered hostility because of public generalization of a people group. Even though a war veteran, he was discriminated against by the Canadian Armed Forces for veterans benefits for being First Nations. Now he is immortalized on the main floor of the Manitoba Legislature, and in the Manitoba Museum, because of who he was, a living sacrifice. His family was able to purchase back his war medals, which Tommy has sold in order to simply live.
Tommy Prince was no saint, he definately had his warts, but yet we all do. But he was a living sacrifice. In June 1955, Tommy Prince made the news again for his sacrificial perspective on living life, by saving a man from drowning in the Red River at the Alexander Docks in Winnipeg. Why did Prince intervene? He explained to the interviewer, after being identified and tracked down, after having wanted to quietly disappear, “I knew how I’d have felt if I were in the water unable to swim and someone just stood looking at me, not doing a thing”.
A living sacrifice does what is needed, they intervene, they do something that saves. A living sacrifice loves without condition. Are you, am I Christian, a living sacrifice?
“I give you a new command: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you must also love one another. By this all people will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
The identifying mark of a God community is one that loves one another. If one is united with Christ, one will love like Christ. This is the distinctive element of a community of saints. A church is not the church of Christ unless it loves God, loves people, and teaches others to do likewise.
The Apostle Paul, addressing the divided church of Corinth, made this appeal ‘be united with the same mind and purpose.’ (1 Cor. 1:10). The distinctive mark of the bride of Christ is to be one in mind and purpose, and that mind and purpose is to have the same mind and purpose as Christ.
For who has known the Lord’s mind, that he may instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ.
If then there is any encouragement in Christ, if any consolation of love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any affection and mercy,
fulfill my joy by thinking the same way, having the same love, sharing the same feelings, focusing on one goal.
Do nothing out of rivalry or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves.
Everyone should look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
If the body of Christ is going to push back the darkness in this world, we need to love well. Proverbs 25:21-22 says,
If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat, and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink;
for you will heap burning coals on his head, and the Lord will reward you.
It is the same truth that Paul quotes to the Romans in Rom 12:20 as he instructs the Gentile believers in what a new life in Christ looks like, and what the marks of a true believer in Christ are.
Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord.
Do we fit the discription? There is a call upon the communion of the Saints to be active, not passive. If we are being washed in the Word, and bearing the Word of Christ, we will be united in Christ with one mind, one purpose, and one love, because the Holy Spirit in us, will prompt us to live in communion with all the saints, from time past, to present, and to the future.
Am I living in communion with the Saints? Am I living in communion with the Saved?
Authentic Christianity Chapter 5: Mind, Heart, and Will
One can say of Christians that they have been saved, that they are being saved, and that they are going to be saved.
In Chapter 12 of Romans, the Apostle Paul speaks of the saved persons new challenge in life, the Challenge of the Believer.
Therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your spiritual worship.
The word ‘therefore’ is a word of result. As a result of an action taken. To what is action is Paul refering? Salvation (Romans 10-11). The earthly citizen declaring faith in Christ, confessing that Jesus is Lord, calling upon the Lord Jesus to be free, the earthly citizen is saved and ownership is transfered from the Kingdom of Darkness to the Kingdom of Light.
If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
One believes with the heart, resulting in righteousness, and one confesses with the mouth, resulting in salvation.
For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
All who confess, call upon, and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ are saved, and as a result come to reside in the communion of saints or the saved. As a result of now residing in their new Kingdom of Saints, believers are challanged to present their persons as a living sacrifice to their new LORD Jesus. This is an act of heart, mind, and will in response to being saved from the penalty and power of sin and death. Having been “raised with Christ”, how truly grateful is the saved person? How truly grateful are you and I, having been saved from eternal torment and the wrath of God? What is our response to God’s unmerited favor - His grace upon us?
Since by the one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive the overflow of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.
For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift— not from works, so that no one can boast.
The Believer is saved by the grace of God, the unmerited favor of God. Not by work, but by faith in Jesus, a response to God’s grace and a call to Christ to save you, for you believe in Him, put your trust in Him, have faith in Him as to who He is, what He has done, and where He is.
What is your response to the compassion of God? This is what the word “mercies” means (Rom 12:1). God is a God of compassion, a God of pity towards you and me. Tommy Prince was a man of compassion, a man of pity towards the plight of the world and the First Nations people, even a stranger. Webster’s American Dictionary of 1828 defines compassion as “suffering with another; a mixed passion compounded with love and sorrow”. To be compassionate is “to have a temper or disposition towards mercy or pity.” What is our response to the mercy of God? Toward not getting what we deserve, death, instead of life?
I have heard this statement made numerous times, but I do not think people really know what they are saying, “I don’t want or I don’t need your pity”. If people really knew the truth of what God’s compassion, His pity meant, would we refuse it? If they really believed or knew hell was real, would we refuse God’s mercy? That’s why God needs people of living sacrifice, being the communion of the saved, the saints, so that people know the mercy, the compassion of God. They need His pity! We need His pity! Do you and I not have situations where we need sympathy with our grief and misery? Where we need someone to act with compassion, with pity; to be a living sacrifice for God? Would you let a man drown? This is the challenge put before the believer and follower of Christ: be a living sacrfice of mercy, compassion, and pity!
By the compasson of God, towards you, present your own selves as His instruments of compassion, mercy, and pity towards others. This is the challenge of every believer and follower of Christ who is walking the road of being saved (sanctified), and takes residence in the Communion of the Saved, the Saints.
The Challange of the Saved
Be a living sacrifice by...
Being compassionate because God is compassionate towards you.
Secondly,
2. Being an instrument of righteousness.
Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.
You know YouTube is great for learning. I have learned so many things on YouTube: tricks on the guitar, how to change brakes, fix a power window in a car, even to program my phone and make kamboucha! It’s good for even the more simple things, tying a knot, learning to throw a ball properly, and even telling time. YouTube is a blessing to learn the things you never have and want to, maybe never had a chance to. I find it so valuable because it teaches when you have not had the opportunity to be taught.
I did not grow up with a dad, as a result there were and are many things that I have had to figure out, or source out, on my own, in order to learn. Like how to drive a car, tie a tie, shave my face, hunt, or even change brakes on my truck. But there are others things as well: how to treat a woman, the importance of your word, ethics, morals, and what love is. Some of those things you cannot or should not learn from YouTube. Some of those things should be taught by your parents, some not, depending on their upbringing. Where do you learn to be righteous? How do you be an instrument of righteousness? That’s where a person needs Jesus, where you need His Word for instruction, but also to indwell you. Having been made righteous in Christ, one needs to walk in righteousness, be trained in righteousness. This is by living a Jesus lived, walking as Jesus walked, a living sacrifice.
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,
And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption,
For in it God’s righteousness is revealed from faith to faith, just as it is written: The righteous will live by faith.
The one who says he remains in Him should walk just as He walked.
One can only be an instrument of righteousness if one walks as Jesus walked, by faith in the Father, by obedience to His will and His commands. This is a mark of the communion of the saved. Do you Christian exercise your faith in God? Do you train in the Word? Do you put feet to your faith? Are you an instument of doing the right things of God? This is your spiritual worship as the Apostle Paul speaks of. Believe the things of God, belong to God, in the ways of God, and bless in the name and ways of God.
The Challange of the Saved
Be a living sacrifice by...
Being compassionate because God is compassionate towards you.
Secondly,
2. Being an instrument of righteousness.
3. Be unbiased in your sacrifice.
Who did Christ live for? Who did He die for? Who did Tommy Prince dive into the water for? Who did Tommy Prince go to war for?
And He died for all so that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for the One who died for them and was raised.
We should do and live likewise. The marks of one communing with the saved is one who no longer lives for themselves but for another. Living saved is one that lives compassionately, is an instrument of rightness for God toward men and oneself, and is unbiased in their practical love of sacrfice toward others. Amen.