Displaying Due Honor to Our Creator and Savior

Glorify God in your body and in your spirit, these belonging to God

God is creator of our souls and bodies; he not only made them but also freed them from the devil's lordship.  It behooves us, therefore, to praise him both through the body and through the soul, doing and saying what prompts the tongues of everyone to benediction.… Mindful of the exhortation, let us present our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, and sanctify our soul with the remembrance of his manifold kindnesses, so that in the present life we may truly be styled temples of God and enjoy the promised blessings, thanks to the grace and lovingkindness of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom with the Father and the all-holy Spirit belong glory and majesty, now and forever, for ages and ages.  Amen.

Theodoret of Cyrus, "The First Letter to the Corinthians" on 1 Corinthians 6:20

Living Sacrifices Are Dead to Sin

[Paul] begins this way: I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God.  He lays down laws, keeps authority under cover, proposes teaching along with entreaty, and calls to mind the divine lovingkindness on which he had spoken at length in the preceding section.  Now, to what does he urge them?  To present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.  He had already recommended them to turn their members into instruments of righteousness and to present themselves like those raised from the dead.  But here he urges the bodies to become also a sacrifice, and calls it the living sacrifice.  He does not bid the bodies to be slaughtered, but to be dead to sin and not to accept any of its operation.  He named this sacrifice, holy, reasonable, pleasing, comparing it to the sacrifice of unreasoning animals and showing the Lord God pleased with it.  In all the prophets, so to say, remember that God finds fault with the sacrifices of unreasoning animals and lays down this single requirement, "Offer to God the sacrifice of praise," and "A sacrifice of praise will glorify me."  And you can find countless such statements in the divine scripture.

Theodoret of Cyrus, "The Letter to the Romans" on Romans 12:1