Word studies · Greek · Strong's G2378
θυσία · thysía · appears 29 times in the New Testament
In one line: Something given up to God, in response to what He gave.
Therefore I urge you, brothers, on account of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.
Romans 12:1
Thysia is a sacrifice — the offering itself and the act of offering, given up to God rather than merely given away.
Thysia covers the Old Testament offerings, Christ's self-offering “once for all,” and the Christian's response — bodies presented as “a living sacrifice,” praise and generosity described as sacrifices pleasing to God. The vocabulary moves from altar to life without changing words.
Thysia comes from thyō, “to sacrifice or slay,” and named both the victim and the ritual in Greek religion as in Israel's. The Septuagint's steady use of it for the Levitical offerings is what gives the New Testament a ready-made vocabulary for the cross.
Ancient sacrifice was ordinary and public — smoke, animals, cost — not a metaphor. Keeping that in view sharpens Paul's phrase “living sacrifice,” which is deliberately paradoxical: the offering that stays alive on the altar, and therefore must keep choosing to stay there.
Thysia (G2378) appears 29 times in the New Testament, and Hebrews uses it repeatedly to argue that repeated sacrifices could never do what one sacrifice did.
Christ's single sacrifice ends the sacrificial system and reframes what remains: nothing is offered to secure God's favor, and everything is offered in response to it. That turns worship, generosity and obedience into sacrifice in the New Testament's own vocabulary.
Offer God something this week that costs you — time, money, or comfort — as response rather than as payment. The difference between the two is what makes it worship.
sacrifice (the act or the victim, literally or figuratively)
But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.
Matthew 9:13and to love Him with all your heart and with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. This is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.
Mark 12:33and to offer the sacrifice specified in the Law of the Lord: “A pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.”
Luke 2:24At that time they made a calf and offered a sacrifice to the idol, rejoicing in the works of their hands.
Acts 7:41Consider the people of Israel: Are not those who eat the sacrifices fellow partakers in the altar?
1 Corinthians 10:18Press and hold sacrifice in any chapter and this study opens on the verse you are reading, with the lexicons, every occurrence and the commentaries beside it. The Bible is free to read.
Scripture quoted from the Berean Standard Bible, public domain. Strong's definitions are public domain. Counts come from The Pillar's own tagged text.