With chapter 12 of Romans Paul launches, as he did in so many of his letters, into exhortation in which the implications for life of the truth stated are spelled out. Doctrine and ethics are one indivisible whole. The chapter is in three sections:
1. 1 - 2:
Reasonable Response
Worship
2. 3 - 8:
Right Relations
Fellowship
3. 9 - 21
Real Righteousness
Life-Style
The ground of Paul's appeal is stated first.
"I appeal to you therefore ..." he says. We should always ask what a 'therefore' is there for. It is there to gather up in one great armful all that has gone before. Chapter 11 has just ended, "Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen." (8:33) And that in itself was a paean of praise born of the marvellous unfolding of God's mercies which Paul had taken eleven chapters to expound.
The ground of Paul's appeal is the sheer goodness of God to us.
It is a sombre picture Paul had opened Romans with - the picture of a world standing under the wrath and judgment of God. Mankind had turned away from the living God, the source of its life, and turned instead to the world - "worshipping and serving the creature rather than the Creator" (1:12). He aspired to be as God, taking over the world as his own domain and reckoning to choose his own good out of it by his own endeavour, with the result that he fell victim to his own passions, corrupting all of life. God in righteousness had no option but to withdraw his support and deliver him up to the power over him of the evil he chose. The result of both mankind's sin and God's judgments is that the whole scene grew worse.
Then God acted to remedy our human situation. In the person of His Son, not waiting for our repentance, while we were still hostile to Him in heart and mind, He entered the arena of this world where His righteous judgments were all abroad, suffering them Himself without protection, and bore in His own Person the wounding of all our sin, reaching out His hands in loving appeal all the while that we shot the arrows of our rebellion into Him.
And in the same flesh we had corrupted He wrestled with the power of sin and death that held dominion over us, and vanquished them ... and so released into our human life His own spirit of righteousness and love. Where sin abounded, there did grace much more abound. All He requires of us is that we repent of our sin and trust Him to receive us with forgiveness and the gift of His own Spirit, and we are lifted out of the domain where sin and death hold sway and reinstated in the realm of righteousness and life where Christ is Lord and the Spirit is our life.
The centrepoint of God's whole action to redeem us is the Cross and the Resurrection of His Son, where the burden of the world's sin was borne in His human person and put away, and through whom the renewing gift of the Spirit is conveyed.
On that basis Paul's appeal is launched.
It echoes Rom 6:13: "Don't offer your body-parts to sin as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life."
Paul often uses the word 'body' in a way slightly different from the way we use it: we almost always mean by it our physical body; but Paul would use it the way the Scots folk do to refer to our whole personality, "She's a sweet wee body." That is the way he uses it here. He means our whole person; so we should read, "Offer yourselves to God ..." Paul used the word 'body' this way when he wanted to emphasise the note of behaviour - 'the you that you are in the way you behave,' for it is in our bodies that we behave.
In other words, he is saying, "Let's get down to the nitty-gritty. We have spent a long time pondering the marvellous grace God shows us in Christ Jesus. Now let me ask you, 'What sort of person should it make you in real life?' We are under a compulsion to offer ourselves to God in every area of daily life."
When a Hebrew worshipper offered a sacrificial animal as a Thank Offering he 'devoted' it to God.
Lev. 27:28 - "Nothing that a man owns and devotes to the Lord ... may be sold or redeemed; everything so devoted is most holy." By the phrase 'it is most holy' is meant: 'it belongs altogether to God.'
Calvin: "By this Paul implies that we are no longer in our own power, but have passed entirely into the power of God."
So we pass into God's possession and protection by our own free surrender of ourself to Him in love and gratitude.
And we to do it, note, in a positive, once-for-all way! Parastesai is an aorist infinitive, and the aorist tense in Greek always denotes sharp, incisive action. When he comes to speak of the 'renewing of our minds' in v. 2 Paul will use, not an aorist infinitive, but a present imperfect passive, metamorphousthe - 'be being transformed.' But not here. Paul wants us to understand that we adopt a once-for-all, no-nonsense stance in our attitude to God - and then back it up repeatedly ... the way a lass said it whom I married at one time: in a marriage preparation evening she said, "I intend to get married again every day." The marriage ceremony was to be a once-for-all commitment, but she was going to make her vows 'new every morning.'
1. living,
2. holy, and
3. cceptable to God
First, it is a living sacrifice
The Hebrew term 'offered' or 'devoted' referred to the irrevocable giving over of things or persons to the Lord, as we have seen. The way the worshipper did that was totally to destroy it. The animal brought as an offering to God was first slain on the altar, and then burned ... "an offering made by fire; it is most holy." The very word for 'offering' meant 'that which goes up.' It went up in smoke to God! Strange it may seem to us, but there is no doubt that is how the Hebrew mind thought. That way, you really surrendered possession of it - it was no longer yours in any way at all; you so gave it to God that you could not take it back.
Paul, of course, is careful to say that we do not 'devote' ourselves to God that way - by committing suicide, so to speak; we offer ourselves to Him as a living sacrifice. But because he feels the need to qualify what he says here the way he does, it is clear that this background of Old Testament sacrificial thought is in Paul's mind - "I'm not asking you to burn your body as a way of giving yourself to God, the way the body of a sacrificial animal was burned. But I am asking you to offer yourself as completely as if you had."
He is saying the same thing that he had said in Rom. 6:13, "Do not offer your body-members to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer your body-members to him as instruments of righteousness."
Second, it is "holy"
By 'holy' he means 'set apart for God's exclusive use.' That is the first meaning the word 'holy' has in the Bible - 'set apart to God.'
The idea of purity was secondary. It was there, of course, because when you put a thing that close to God, something happened to it - it was either destroyed, like a flea in the fire, or it was purified, like gold in a furnace. So whatever was 'holy' was pure, but it became so because first you put it next to God.
So Paul does not mean we have to be sinlessly perfect to offer ourself to God - we do it just the way we are; but when we do, the way we are will change!
Third, such a sacrifice is "acceptable to God"
That means - one which God is pleased to receive.
The word is used in other places: Phil. 4:18 e.g., "I am amply supplied, now that I have received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent. They are a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God." It was money they had sent - grubby money! So it was not the nature of the gift that mattered but the spirit in which it was given.
So here. It is not our personal perfection that makes the offering of ourselves to God acceptable to Him, but the spirit of gratitude and love in which we offer it.
Ps. 51:22 - "He who brings thanksgiving as
his sacrifice honours Me."
Ps. 51:17 - "The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a
broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise."
Ps. 141:2 - "Let my prayer be counted as incense before you, and the
lifting up of my hands as an evening sacrifice."
The worship God desires embraces the whole of the Christian's life from day to day. If our formal worship in church is not supported by a real offering of our daily life to God, it is empty; it is not acceptable.
Fourth, this is what Paul means by "reasonable worship"
The word rendered 'worship' or 'service' is an interesting word - latreia.
At first it meant work you did for wages - not slavery, but voluntary work. Then it broadened to mean service of all kinds. Then it sharpened to mean the kind of service to which you give your whole life, especially the service of the Greek gods ... if you were a priest in a Temple of Zeus, for example; it was your whole life. That is the flavour the word had in the minds of Paul's first readers.
What it means for us is that worship is not so much the offering of prayers or hymns in the formal setting of a sanctuary, as the offering of our everyday life to God. Real worship is not confined to a church building; rather the whole world is seen as a temple, and our everyday life as the worship we offer in it. We should not only say, "I'm going to Church to worship God; we should also say, "I'm going to work to worship God." Fra Angelico, the great Renaissance fresco artist, used to hold up his palette and brushes to God at the beginning of every day's painting, offering them to Him to be used in His service.
The word rendered 'reasonable' is logikos (logical). A line by Epictetus supplies an example of the way it was used: "If I were a nightingale I would do what is proper to a nightingale; if I were a swan, I would do what is proper to a swan."
So 'reasonable worship' is the sort that is 'proper' to a man when the God he is worshipping is the God revealed in Christ Jesus. It is what is 'fitting.' And what makes it fitting that we should present our body a living sacrifice to Him is that He has presented His body a living sacrifice for us.
"A body Thou hast prepared for me." (Heb. 10:5) He not only offered His body at the Cross, He took it again in resurrection and ascension so as always to serve us in it, for "He ever lives to make intercession for us." (Heb. 7:25)
Paul now expands on that. If you are offering worship that is fitting, it will be because you have a mind to it that is right. Your 'mindset' will be such that you are preoccupied with God, not with this world (or this age, as it would better be rendered). "It's all in the mind." What we do in the body is decided by what occupies our mind. If profit, pleasure or power engage our waking thoughts, we shall be 'conformed to this age' - our lifestyle will betray our preoccupation. But if the riches that are ours in Christ Jesus, and the pleasures that are at God's right hand, and the power of Christ's resurrection engage our waking thoughts, we shall be "transformed by the renewing of our mind." "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." (Prov. 23:7)
To put it simply, "You become like what you look at." What do we look at?
Campbell Morgan tells of a dream a little lady had. She was down a well, and unable to climb out. Then she noticed that when she looked steadfastly at a star above, she found herself rising; but when she looked at the walls around her and the mud beneath, she sank back. Where we look is where we shall go.
I remember hearing a candidate for ordination, Greg Smith, say: "From the time of my commitment, God has been growing me in spiritual experience. I read the New Testament in three weeks because of my insatiable desire to know God's Word." How long is it since we were 'seized' like that? When did the meaning of a Scripture so exercise us in heart and mind that we could hardly bear to tear ourself away even to attend to daily chores? When did the need to wrestle with it consume us?
The word 'conformed' has a root, 'schema', which means the outward shape or appearance of a thing. Our outward shape and appearance change as we grow older. But the word 'transformed' has a root, 'morphe', which means the essence of a thing, which does not change under the changing outward appearance it may present; you are still the same 'you' inside, whether you grow fat or thin. So Paul means, "Don't be like a chameleon, which takes its colour from its surroundings; don't let the values and fashions of the godless world decide the sort of person you are. Let the 'mind of Christ' be such a living principle within that no outside influence can change the sort of person you are." J. B. Phillips' translation caught the flavour of what Paul said here better than any other: "Don't let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God remould your minds from within."
Note that this is to be a continuing process.
i. As we observed earlier, the phrase 'be transformed' is present imperfect passive - 'be being transformed.'
John Murray: "It is not the beggarly notion of a 'second blessing' the apostle propounds, but that of constant renewal, of metamorphosis in the seat of consciousness." It is what Paul meant in II Cor. 3:18, "We, who with unveiled faces reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord who is the Spirit."
ii. And the fact that it is passive means that you do not make it happen yourself ... you let it happen to you. It is the Spirit Who does it. All He asks is our attention - give Him that, and He will see to the rest. As Paul has expressed it in 9:16, "It does not depend on man's will or exertion, but on God's mercy."
God has "translated us from the Kingdom of Darkness to the Kingdom of His beloved Son." It is a real Kingdom - it has its own air which we breathe, it has its own fruits on which we feed, it has its own climate which lightens our days, it has its own spirit which motivates us, shaping our vision and our desire.
"You were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers; now that your obedience to the truth has purified you so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart." (1 Peter 1:18)
To summarise:
1. It is a commitment (the presentation of our bodies - so II Cor. 8:5: "First they gave themselves by the will of God to us."
2. It is a process of growth (be being transformed)
3. It is an orientation of our whole being (the renewing of our mind and the presentation of our bodies)
4. It is communal (as the next paragraph shows. Acts 13:26, "David served his generation by the will of God." and Mark 3:35: "Whoever does the will of God is my brother and my sister.")
The result will be that we "prove what is the will of God, that it is good and acceptable and perfect." J. B. Phillip's translation is splendid: "... that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good, meets all His demands, and moves toward the goal of true maturity." You prove it out in experience. One of the members of a Disciple's Breakfast group I led for some years gave to the Lord at one time a radical and costly obedience, one that remedied a wrong course her life had taken for years. She said, "It has made me so happy I don't know how to say it." God's plan for you is good. It is completely satisfying.
And it "meets all His demands." It answers to what He asks of us. It puts us right with Him.
And it moves toward the goal of true maturity. We start getting somewhere. We start growing up. Life takes on meaning.
Related passages from other letters of Paul are worth setting down beside this one:
Col 1:9 - "Filled with knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding to lead a life worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him, bearing fruit and increasing in the knowledge of God."
Phil 1:9 - "That your love abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment that you may approve what is excellent, and be pure and blameless for the Day of Christ."
Both verses indicate growth in understanding with a view directly to obedience. The factors are:
(a) pleasing God - that is personal
(I Thess. 5:18, "Give thanks in all things for this is the will of God for you." Eph 6.6 - "Doing the will of God from the heart" - working well and honestly. I Pet. 2:15, "The will of God, that by doing right, you silence ...)
(b) being sanctified - that is ethical
(I Thess. 4:3 - "This is the will of God, that you abstain from immorality." Heb. 10:10 - "By which will we are sanctified.")
(c) bearing fruit - that is practical
(d) knowing God - that is relational ... so -
(e) for the Day of Christ - that is purposeful ...
(Eph. 1:9: "the mystery of His will: to unite all things in Christ."
Col. 4:12 - "... complete in the will of God, mature and fully assured.")
This material is copyright; it may not be published, quoted or reproduced without permission, nor may it be preached without acknowledgment!
BACK TO SITE HOME PAGE