Scripture
For the past few weeks we have been studying Romans 12:1-2. I would like to conclude my series on these two verses today.
In Romans 12 the Apostle Paul begins applying the doctrine that he has been teaching for the previous 11 chapters. Now, it is not that he has made no application in the previous 11 chapters; he has. However, as he begins chapter 12 he is, in a sense, saying, “In light of all that I have taught, how should we then live?”
So, let’s carefully examine each phrase in Romans 12:1-2.
Let’s read Romans 12:1-2:
1I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:1-2)
Introduction
Years ago the staff of James Montgomery Boice’s radio program, known as the Bible Study Hour, prepared a brochure that compared the world’s thinking and the Bible’s teaching in six important areas: God, man, the Bible, money, sex, and success.
The differences were striking, but what was most notable was how right many of the world’s ideas seemed if not considered critically and biblically. We hear the world’s approach given out so often, so attractively, and so persuasively, especially on television, that it’s imperative that we think critically about it.
Here are some of the world’s statements that the Bible Study Hour printed:
• I matter most, and the world exists to serve me. Whatever satisfies me is what’s important.
• If I earn enough money, I’ll be happy. I need money to provide security for me and my family. Financial security will protect me from hardship.
• Anything is acceptable as long as it doesn’t hurt another person.
• Success is the path to fame, wealth, pleasure, and power. Look out for number one.
How about the Christian way? From the world’s perspective the Christian way does not look attractive or even right. It says such things as:
• God is in control of all things and has a purpose for everything that happens.
• Man exists to glorify God.
• Money cannot shield us against heartbreak, failure, sin, disease, or disaster.
• Success in God’s kingdom means humility and service to others.
Because we are so much part of the world and so little like Jesus Christ, even Christians often find God’s way unappealing. Nevertheless, we are to press on in that way and prove by our lives that the will of God really is good and acceptable and perfect in all things.
It is significant that this is where Paul’s statements about being transformed by the renewal of our minds—rather than being conformed to this world—end. They end with testing the way of God to be the best way and the will of God to be perfect. This means that action is needed: God is not producing Christians with the world’s worldview. He is forming people who will prove the value of God’s way by conscious choices and deliberate obedience.
This point was expressed well by Robert Candlish, one of the best Scottish exegetes of the 19th century. He wrote,
The believer’s transformation by the renewing of his mind is not the ultimate end which the Holy Spirit seeks in his regenerating and renovating work. It is the immediate and primary design of that work, in one sense. We are created anew in Christ Jesus. That new creation is what the Holy Spirit first aims at and effects. But “we are created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). The essence of a good work is the doing of the will of God. The testing of the will of God, therefore, is a fitting sequel of our “being transformed by the renewing of our mind.”
Lesson
In today’s lesson I want to examine what it means to test what is God’s good and acceptable and perfect will.
I. God Has a Good and Acceptable and Perfect Will for Each of Us
First, God has a good and acceptable and perfect will for each of us. Paul says in Romans 12:2, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
Today when Christians talk about discovering the will of God what they usually have in mind is praying until God somehow discloses a specific direction for their lives—who they should marry, what job they should take, whether they should be missionaries, what house they should buy, and so on. This is not exactly what “by testing you may discern what is the will of God” means, nor is it what Romans 12:2 is teaching. The will of God is far more important than that.
In 1980 Garry Friesen, a professor at Multnomah School of the Bible, and J. Robin Maxson, a pastor from Klamath, Oregon, wrote a popular book titled, Decision Making and the Will of God. They distinguished between three meanings of the word will:
1. God’s sovereign will, which is hidden and is not revealed to us except as it unfolds in history;
2. God’s moral will, which is revealed in Scripture; and
3. God’s specific will for individuals, which is what people are usually thinking about when they speak of searching for or finding God’s will.
These authors rightly accepted the first two of these wills, but they disagreed with the idea that God has a specific will for each person and that it is the duty of the individual believer to find that will or “live in the center of it.”
When I was a student at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School Garry Friesen came and spoke at chapel. I had the opportunity, along with several other students, to have a meal with Dr. Friesen. We shared with him that we thought that his book was helpful in many ways. For example, it was helpful in exposing the weakness of subjective methods in determining guidance. It was also helpful because of its stress on Scripture as the sufficient and authoritative guide in all moral matters. However, we spent most of our time expressing our belief that God indeed has a specific will for Christians.
We may not know what that specific will is, and we do not need to be under pressure to “discover” it, fearing that if we miss it, somehow we will be doomed to a life outside the center of God’s will. We are free to make decisions with what light and wisdom we possess.
Nevertheless, we can know that God does have a perfect will for us, that the Holy Spirit is praying for us in accordance with that will, and that this will of God for us will be done—because God has decreed it and because the Holy Spirit is praying for us in this area.
Still, having said all this, I need to add that this is not primarily what Romans 12:2 is talking about when it speaks of God’s will. In this verse will is to be interpreted in its context, and the context indicates that the will of God that we are to follow is the general will of offering our bodies to God as living sacrifices, refusing to be conformed to the world’s ways, and instead being transformed from within by the renewal of our minds. It is this that we are to pursue and find to be good and acceptable and perfect, though, of course, if we do it, we will also find ourselves working out the details of God’s specific will for our lives.
So, first, God has a good and acceptable and perfect will for each of us.
II. The Will of God Is Good and Acceptable and Perfect
Second, the will of God is good and acceptable and perfect. This teaches us about the nature of God’s will for us.
First, the will of God is good. In a general way the will of God for every Christian is revealed in the Bible. I am disappointed when I hear Christians say, usually in prayer, “Oh God, please make so-and-so all that he can be.” The Bible is very clear what God’s will is for every Christian. Paul tells us in Romans 8:29, “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son.” So, God’s will for every Christian is to become more and more like Jesus.
But God has given specific instructions about what that will looks like. The Ten Commandments contain specific instructions about God’s will for every Christian. It is God’s will that we have no other gods before him, that we do not worship even him by the use of images, that we do not misuse his name, that we remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, that we honor our parents, that we do not murder or commit adultery or steal or give false testimony or covet (Exodus 20:1-17).
Jesus amplified many of these commandments and added others. It is God’s will that we be holy (1 Thessalonians 4:3). It is God’s will that we should pray (1 Thessalonians 5:17). Above all, Jesus taught that we are to “love each other” (John 15:12).
These things often do not seem good to us, because we are far from God and are still thinking in the world’s way. Nevertheless, they are good, which we will discover if we will obey God in these areas and put his will into practice. As one of the great Romans commentators, Robert Haldane, says,
The will of God is here distinguished as good, because, however much the mind may be opposed to it and how much soever we may think that it curtails our pleasures and mars our enjoyments, obedience to God conduces to our happiness.
Second, the will of God is acceptable. But acceptable to whom? Not to God, of course. That is obvious. God’s will is always acceptable to himself. However, when Paul says that God’s will is acceptable, he obviously means acceptable to us. That is, if we determine to walk in God’s way, refusing to be conformed to the world and being transformed instead by the renewal of our minds, we will not have to fear that at the end of our lives we will look back and be dissatisfied or bitter, judging our lives to have been an utter waste. On the contrary, we will look back and conclude that our lives were well lived and be satisfied with them. For as Hannah More, the English poet and philanthropist, said, “No man ever repented of being a Christian on his deathbed.”
I think that is exactly right. It is what Paul is saying.
And third, the will of God is perfect. There are a number of words in the Greek language that are translated by the word perfect. One is akribôs, from which we get our word accurate, meaning correct. Another is katartizô, which means well fitted to a specific end, like a perfect solution to a puzzle. The word in Romans 12:2 is different. It is teleios, which has the thought of something that has attained its full destiny, is complete. It can be used of one who is mature, a mature adult. It is used of Jesus, who became a complete, or perfect, man. In our text it means that those who do the will of God discover that it is not lacking in any respect. There is a satisfying wholeness about it.
To put this in negative form, it means that if we reach the end of our lives and are dissatisfied with them, this will only mean that we have been living in the world’s way and have been conformed to it rather than having been transformed by the renewal of our minds. We will have been living for ourselves rather than for God.
So, first, God has a good and acceptable and perfect will for each of us. And second, the will of God is good and acceptable and perfect.
III. The Will of God is to Be Tested
And third, the will of God is to be tested. Paul says, “. . . that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2c-d).
This is the exact opposite of our normal way of thinking. Usually we want God to tell us what his will for us is, and after that we want to be able to decide whether it is good and acceptable and perfect, and thus whether or not we want to do it. Romans 12:2 tells us that we have to start living in God’s way and that it is only as we do that we will begin to know it in its fullness and learn how good it really is. Robert Candlish says,
The will of God … can be known only by trial.… No one who is partaker of a finite nature and who occupies the position of a subject or servant under the authority of God, under his law, can understand what … the will of God is otherwise than through actual experience. You cannot explain to him beforehand what the will of God is and what are its attributes or characteristics. He must learn this for himself. And he must learn it experimentally. He must test in his own person and in his own personal history what is … “that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”
The word test in this verse is fascinating. The idea is that we are test by experience that God’s will is good and acceptable and perfect. According to Candlish every free and intelligent creature has been called to test the will of God in order to discern that it is good and acceptable and perfect.
First, the angels were to test the will of God. We are not told much about this, but it is clear that some of the angels did not test God’s will to discover that it is good and acceptable and perfect. They rebelled against the will of God and were thrown out of heaven, and became demons.
Second, Adam was to test the will of God. God told Adam that he could eat of all the trees in the Garden of Eden. He simply could not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. However, Adam did not think that God’s will was good and acceptable and perfect. He was told that he would be like God, knowing good and evil (Genesis 3:5), and he decided that he wanted to be like God. So, he disobeyed God, and, instead of becoming like God, he brought sin, judgment, and death upon himself and his posterity.
Third, Jesus was to test the will of God. When Jesus came to earth his purpose, in part, was test by experience that the will of God for his life was good and acceptable and perfect, even though it eventually involved the pain of the cross, which hardly seemed good and acceptable and perfect.
In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus prayed that the cross might be taken from him. He said, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me,” but added, “nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:39). Of course, the Father did not withdraw the cup of his wrath from him. And Jesus tested and submitted himself to the will of God, to the very end of his life.
Candlish writes about Jesus testing the will of God:
It must have been, it often was, with him a struggle—an effort—to do the will of God. It was not easy, it was not pleasant. It was self-denial, self-sacrifice, self-crucifixion throughout. It was repulsive to the highest and holiest instincts of his pure humanity. It laid upon him most oppressive burdens; it brought him into most distressing scenes; it involved him in ceaseless, often thankless toil; it exposed him to all sorts of uncongenial encounters with evil men and evil angels. But he tested it. And in the testing of it, and as he was testing it, he found it to be good and acceptable and perfect.
And finally, Christians are to test the will of God. God has called us to himself. He has saved us by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. He has given us his Holy Spirit. He has called us to test that his will his good and acceptable and perfect.
Who is to do that? You are, and you are to do it in the precise earthly circumstances into which God has placed you.
How are you to do it? You are to do it experimentally—that is, by actually putting the revealed will of God to the test.
When are you to do it? Right now and tomorrow and the day after that. You are to do it repeatedly and consistently and faithfully all through your life until the day of your death or until Jesus comes again.
Why are you to do it? Because it is the right thing to do, and because the will of God really is good and acceptable and perfect.
Candlish says this:
Of the fashion of the world, it may be truly said that the more you try it, the less you find it to be satisfying. It looks well; it looks fair, at first. But who that has lived long has not found it to be vanity at last?
It is altogether otherwise with the will of God. That often looks worst at the beginning. It seems hard and dark. But on! On with you in the testing of it! Test it patiently, perseveringly, with prayer and pains. And you will get growing clearness, light, enlargement, joy. You will more and more find that “the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.” For “wisdom’s ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.” “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold; sweeter also than honey, and the honeycomb. Moreover by them is thy servant warned; and in keeping of them there is great reward.”
So, first, God has a good and acceptable and perfect will for each of us. Second, the will of God is good and acceptable and perfect. And third, the will of God is to be tested.
Conclusion
Let me close with Paul’s appeal:
1I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:1-2)
May God help you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice to God, not to be conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the renewal of your mind, so that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. Amen.
