If there is one thing I have found to be crucial to my Christian walk, it is the constant surrender of my will. When doubt is creeping into my faith - I surrender. When I am afraid, I surrender. When I want Scripture to say something other than what it says, I surrender. When I don’t surrender I get lost in sin and confusion.
Paul always likes to conclude his words on doctrine with lists of duties. In the Christian life, doctrine and behaviour always go together. When it comes right down to it, the first two verses of Romans 12 are perhaps the most crucial verses in the New Testament for living the Christian life. This is the essence of relational theology. The sacrificing of our lives to the one who sacrificed his for us. We are to be:
I. A Living Sacrifice (vv 1-2)
What does this involve?
A. The Surrender of the Body (v. 1)
Paul often talks about the heart. Now this heart is not the muscle beating in our chest, but it is the center of our being, our mind, our will. We’ll get to this in a moment. But what is Paul talking about when he says to present your bodies as a living sacrifice?
Well it means what it says, the body or soma is the whole body and sacrifice literally means “put to death”. Jesus himself was the perfect example of a living sacrifice. Does this mean we are to kill ourselves, obviously not, but we are to die to ourselves and become literally a slave to God through the Holy Spirit.
Remember slaves in this time were indentured servants, they were selling their service, not their actual lives to their masters. Everything they did with their bodies was a duty to their masters. This is where we get the saying “do everything as unto the Lord”.
Our bodies were literally bought by Christ on the cross, and servants are to obey their masters unconditionally. We can trust Christ completely if we surrender to him, it’s not like surrendering to a fallen human being.
This it says, is our acceptable spiritual worship. Do we ever complain about having to go to church on Sunday morning? Woe are we if we do. We are supposed to be surrendered to Christ 24/7 every day of our lives. Our very worship isn’t singing, gracing the Lord with our presence every Sunday if there’s nothing else on the go. It is making him the purpose of everything we do whether it be as mundane as washing the dishes or being martyred as missionaries in Africa.
Basically it means we are at Christ’s beck and call every minute of our lives. We only have to look at the fact that we will die to see that our bodies are literally His. He can take them from us anytime just as he gave them to us. …There is also:
B. The Surrender of the Mind (v. 2)
Verse 2 begins with a profound command. Do not be conformed to this world, or literally in the Greek, this age. It takes us back to Babylon when Jesus says, “come out of her my people”. We are not to be conformed to this world but transformed by the renewal of our minds, literally renovation of our intellect, or thoughts. It’s interesting that we get our English word revival from this Greek word.
Now what is renewal or renovation of the mind? It is basically changing the way we think, and what we believe. In this context where it says do not conform to the world, it means thinking and having beliefs that are of God and not the world. And I submit that the best and maybe only way to do this is by reading the Bible, God’s word, with the assistance of the Holy Spirit.
That is what this testing is. Allowing the Holy Spirit to test your thoughts and beliefs by putting them into practice, to see if they conform to God’s will and word. The thoughts and will that are perfect, acceptable and good in God’s eyes, not our own.
This is the attitude of surrender that makes everything else about being a Christian possible. Complete surrender of both body and mind to be taken over by Him. Presenting ourselves to him as an offering, holy and acceptable. This it says is our spiritual worship, literally reasonable or even better, logical, service. Why is it logical? Because he died for us and paid our ransom, he bought us. We are his to do with as he pleases.
In other words if you are not doing your best to be holy in your thoughts and choices, living as he wants you to, if you are holding yourself or areas of your life from him, you are not really worshipping in a way acceptable to your Creator. The only sacrifice he wants is us.
The other part of this attitude is to let our minds be transformed so that we are more concerned with heaven and the salvation of others than with our worldly desires – to develop the mind of Christ. When we do this by being in His word and prayer regularly, we begin to discern what His will is. You will never get much discernment about what God wants if you just pray or think about Him, you must look at what he says throughout his entire Word and conform your mind to that.
The third part of this attitude is to be exceedingly humble. Never think of yourself as better than anyone, see yourself with sober judgment as God sees you, beautiful as his creation but flawed, defiled by sin, and far short of what he created you to be in your nature.
My friends it is not natural for anyone of us to want to do this. It’s our body, they’re my beliefs, it’s my will, my life to do what I want with, otherwise why did he give us free will? Oh yeah? What does he say next in verse three?
“For by the grace given to me I say to everyone, not to think more highly of himself than he ought, but to think with sober judgment about oneself”. In other words see ourselves, think about ourselves as God does. As helpless, death destined creatures that are only alive because of Jesus who purchased us on the cross.
This judgment of ourselves is supposed to be according to the measure of faith God has assigned us. Everyone has different levels of faith, and we are to be realistic about our own faith. Maybe our faith isn’t strong enough yet to surrender to this extent. But that should be our greatest desire to achieve, to build a faith at that level, not to use lack of faith as an excuse.
So what are these:
II. Gifts of Grace (vv 3-8)
The first gift is:
A. The Body of Christ (vv 3-5)
We have become one with Christ and every other Christian whether you like it or not, all with different but compatible functions. Why is this a gift? Because it allows us the potential to have the same intimacy with each other that Christ had with His Father, and to manifest the power of God through our unity and oneness of purpose through the Holy Spirit.
Do you see why dissension in churches is so devastating? We are literally making the body sick and unable to function as it should. It’s also why our individual hidden sin is so dangerous, because it’s like having cancer in one part of the body, it affects everyone else. More importantly it disrupts our intimacy with the Lord.
Then there are:
B. The Spiritual Gifts (vv 6-8)
The most important ones for the church body are mentioned here.
a. Prophecy. We don’t need people predicting the future anymore, God has revealed that to us, but that doesn’t mean we don’t need what the word really means, “inspired speakers”. God still gifts believers with words for others that are from or correspond to the word of God.
I am sure many of you have had a prophetic word for someone or received one from someone else. But you know every time we speak the word of God to someone else we are prophets, speaking the inspired word of God.
b. Service. Here is the Christian duty to others. Sometimes it is called the gift of helps. Many of us have skills that others don’t and we are to use those to edify the body of Christ. It might be music, carpentry, art, whatever, it is not yours to benefit from; it is for others in the body of Christ.
c. Teaching. Many of you will say, “I definitely don’t have that gift”. Don’t be so sure, teaching doesn’t just mean preaching or leading a Bible study. Some of the best teaching I have ever received is from people you would never expect over coffee.
d. Exhortation. What is this? Invite, implore, beseech. Is God’s will in your heart? Do you want people to come to him, to experience the joy of walking with him? Does it break your heart to see your brothers and sisters off course? Then you probably have the gift of exhortation and God wants you to invite people to repentance, to living for God. To speak into their lives. This is a difficult gift to have because it may offend people. But a true exhortation comes from a place of deep love not judgment.
e. Giving. Christians should be the most generous people on earth. Yet like I said last week, it’s reported that the worst tips in restaurants occur at lunch time on Sundays. Yes, this generosity is in relation to the church in this passage, but it should extend beyond the church to the world.
Not everyone can give the same amounts, but everyone can give the same percentage. It’s just a matter of priorities. I suppose this is a gift that is more bestowed on some than others, but it is a tragedy that 20% of the people in the church give 80% of the money. Of course it’s not just about money, there’s baking, food for the hungry, time, and so on.
f. Leadership. A good translation of the word for “leads” here is gives aid. Here leadership is a coming along side of someone and leading them. Much like shepherding. A good biblical leader in the church will not race ahead and say hurry up. A good leader will not take a cattle prod and push you beyond your capability. A good leader will simply lead. Show you the way while helping you get where you want to go.
In this way you don’t need to be charismatic. You don’t need great communication skills. You need to be willing to walk with people to help them get where they and God want them to go. An “equipper” might be a good word for this.
g. Finally there’s Mercy. Literally compassion. And not just show compassion, do it with cheerfulness. Literally the word for cheerfulness is the word we get hilarious from. When we are being merciful, forgiving, compassionate, we should literally be giddy about it. It should make us very happy to be merciful, in fact in the beatitudes Jesus says happy, blessed, in God’s favour, are the merciful.
And the point he makes before going through this list is that these gifts are given according to God’s grace, so use what you’re given, not what you wish you had. Don’t pretend, that’s what the sober judgment of yourself is about.
OK, let’s look at:
III. The Marks of True Christianity (vv 9-21)
These are a little different from the gifts. The gifts are given, but these are the fruit of being a Christian, and they are spoken in the form of verbs or commands that should be natural desires if we have truly come to a surrendering belief in Christ. … First we have:
A. Inner Marks
a. Genuine Love (v. 9a, 10). Let love be genuine, love one another with brotherly affection. This has nothing to do with falling in love, it has to do with working at love until it is genuine, and even trying to outdo each other in showing honour to one another. Harboring unforgiveness and holding grudges, being unfriendly, are the polar opposite of this, and therefore is sin.
b. Zealous fervent in service (v. 11). This is not referring directly to serving others, but to serving God which of course will naturally lead you to serve others. This goes back to being zealous about our acceptable worship mentioned earlier.
c. Hopeful (v. 12a). Rejoice in hope. What a wonderful hope we have (We must see that after Revelation), rejoice in it so much that people ask you why you have such incredible hope as the world crumbles.
d. Patient in tribulation (v. 12b). Revelation spoke about this one a lot. True believers are patient in tribulation, we are overcomers because our Saviour overcame even the grave. We are told to even rejoice in tribulation, because it shows our faith is getting stronger.
e. Constant in prayer (v. 12c). How many of us pray for even an hour in a day? We are to be constant in it. In other words always having an awareness of God and talking to him, and listening to him, in all situations. … Then there are also:
B. Outer Marks
a. Be generous and show hospitality (v. 13). Contribute to the church and the saints who are serving God, and feed them, welcome them into your homes. Share what you have.
b. Bless and love your enemies (vv 14, 19-20). Do not curse your enemies. Do not spread negative remarks about them. Love them, even those who do you harm. Say good things about them, pray for them.
As Jesus says, give to them even what they don’t ask for, feed them, give them what they need, and part of the result will be to lead them to repent. You are a Christian (Christ-like), so your job is to heal them, save them, even if it means your own discomfort or even death.
c. Be there for others in good times and bad (v. 15). Weep with them in bad times, rejoice with them in good. Don’t be jealous of another’s good fortune, and don’t abandon them when they are suffering.
d. Live in harmony and peace with others (vv 16a, 18). This is huge because it is the main sign that we are Christians according to Jesus. “So far as it depends on you live peaceably with all”. Have you done everything you possibly can to reconcile that broken relationship, or are you waiting for the other person to make the first move? …And right along with this it’s necessary to:
e. Be humble (v. 16b). You are no better than the lowest person on earth in God’s eyes. The only way you can pull any of this off is with a very humble spirit. Something we will explore more next week. God came to earth in a human body and made himself equal with us for heaven’s sake. Nothing you can ever do will show that extent of humility.
God wants us to be nothing without him, dead to ourselves and alive to him. The root of most anger and sin in relationships is pride, and God detests pride. You think someone owes you an apology? Go sit at their feet and beg them for forgiveness for your own unforgiveness.
f. Be forgiving and never vengeful (vv 14, 17-19). God says vengeance is mine, what does that mean if you try to take it away from Him. It means you are taking part in the greatest sin, playing God. Until you are on the cross with nails through your hands being spit on and ridiculed, you have no business being unforgiving to anyone. Even then Christ forgave them. … Finally:
g. Do not be overcome with evil but overcome it with good (vv 9b, 21). Hate what is evil, do not participate in it, agree with God about what he says is evil, and overcome evil with acts of goodness and kindness and purity.
My question to you today is this – is this body of Christ going to commit to being these people? We will never be perfect at all of this but it should be our number one ambition in this life. If we say we are Christians and being a Christian isn’t by far the most important thing in our lives, and we don’t strive for all of these as Paul did, we need to question our faith. If we believe we can’t accomplish these things, we are saying that the Spirit of God is not strong enough to make it happen in us. Do you want to say that to God’s face?
If you are here today and are not prepared to commit to these things, then you might want to consider whether you have truly been converted. Accepting salvation is one thing, being converted, transformed, and sanctified by the Spirit of God is another.
Now that we have seen some of what a Christian is, what God expects of us, what he wants to do in and through us, you may be very uncomfortable sitting here each week as we look at how we are going to let God change our character so that we can do these things and be the people he wants us to be.
I am asking for your commitment today, to come with me, to help me and anyone else who is willing, to become the people, the church, that Jesus intended us to be when we gave him our lives. Did you know that’s what you did when you became a Christian?
Today we have looked at the practical behaviours that we are to manifest as believers. For the next several weeks we are going to look at the inner characteristics of Christ-likeness from the beatitudes. These character traits will make the behaviours more likely.
As we look at these things today, and the beatitudes, our constant prayer should be that God would renew and transform us into these people, as he promised to do if we have faith and surrender to Him. We can’t do it in our own power.
A Christian should be a transformed individual even if you were a good person before you lived for Christ. If this is not what you want more than anything, than perhaps you have not fully let Christ into your life. Maybe you need to go back to these first two verses and give yourself fully to Him once again or maybe even for the first time.
