NOTE:
This is a manuscript, and not a transcript of this message. The actual presentation of the message differed from the manuscript through the leading of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is possible, and even likely that there is material in this manuscript that was not included in the live presentation and that there was additional material in the live presentation that is not included in this manuscript.
ENGAGE
There is an old story of a chicken and a pig, who lived with a really wonderful farmer. They decided to do something nice for him and were talking about what to do. The chicken finally said, “let’s make him a nice breakfast of ham and eggs.” The pig replied, “for you that’s a contribution, for me that’s a total commitment.”
TENSION
So the question I want to ask you this morning is this: When it comes to your relationship with Jesus, are you a chicken or a pig? Are you committed only to the point that you’re willing to make a contribution or are you “all in” to the point that you’re willing to sacrifice your own life? That is the question that we’ll be pondering together this morning.
TRUTH
Today, we return to our study of the book of Romans. We began this study back in 2014 and with the exception of 2017, when we spent the entire year in the Old Testament, we’ve been tackling a portion of that important book in the fall each year since then. We last left off in January of this year at the end of chapter 11.
If you’re familiar with Paul’s letters, you probably know that those letters can usually be broken down into two distinct sections. There is a section on doctrine and a section that we might call “practical living”. Most of us, if we’re honest, probably prefer that “practical living” part of the letters. I find that in general most people are a lot more interested in that than they are in doctrine. But the fact is that we need both.
When I lived in Albuquerque and was working as a CPA, one of my clients was Public Service Company of New Mexico, so I spent a lot of time working in their offices. During that time, they decided to build a new building next to their existing one. And as I watched that construction, I began to wonder if they were ever going to get that building built because it took them forever to just work on the foundation before they could even start on the building itself. But I also know that since I spent so much time working in and around that building once it was finished, that I was thankful that they had started with a proper foundation.
Paul understood that principle when he wrote his letters. He knew that sound doctrine was a necessary foundation for godly living. Just leaping into the practical living section without first building the proper doctrinal foundation might have seemed more attractive on the surface, but without that foundation it could not stand on its own.
In the book of Romans, the passage that we are studying this morning – Romans 12:1-2 – is the transition between those two sections of Paul’s letter to the churches in Rome. For eleven chapters Paul has been building the solid doctrinal foundation that is needed and now he is going to reveal how that doctrine ought to impact the way that we live our daily lives.
We’re going to be in Romans until we start our Christmas series, so you may want to go ahead and bookmark it. You’ll find it in the New Testament right after the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and the book of Acts. If you get to 1 Corinthians you’ve gone too far.
Let’s read the first two verses of chapter 12 out loud together.
I 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. 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.
(Romans 12:1–2 ESV)
Before we get into some of the details here, let me point out a couple important fundamentals here.
First I want you to note the word “therefore”. As we often say, whenever you run into that word, you need to determine “what it is there for”. It’s a connecting word that points back to what precedes. In this case it’s definitely pointing back to the end of chapter 11, especially the last four verses. You can follow along as I read them.
Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!
“For who has known the mind of the Lord,
or who has been his counselor?”
“Or who has given a gift to him
that he might be repaid?”
For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.
(Romans 11:33–36 ESV)
When we looked at this passage in January, we said that the main idea here was:
Genuine faith moves me from
information into adoration
Paul has been writing for 11 chapters about what he calls “the mercies of God” in the first verse of chapter 12 and he is just so overwhelmed by what God has done that he is awestruck and that just overflows into praise and adoration. So certainly the “therefore” in Romans 12:1 is looking back to that, but I would suggest that it is also look back to everything that Paul wrote in the first 11 chapters.
That seems to be confirmed when he writes that the motivation for doing what he is going to appeal for his readers to do is to be “the mercies of God”. That phrase encompasses everything we read in the first eleven chapters about God’s love that He demonstrated by sending His Son to die on the cross to make it possible for our sins to be forgiven and for us to have an intimate personal relationship with God. And God did that even though we were completely undeserving.
The last thing I want us to note before we get into the meat of this passage is that Paul is writing here to disciples of Jesus. He addresses his audience as brothers, a word that he uses consistently in his letters to refer to fellow disciples.
So with those important ideas in mind, let’s begin with the main idea for this morning and then use this passage to develop that idea.
In God’s kingdom
I must die in order to truly live
In verse 1, Paul appeals to his readers to take the step of offering their lives to God as living sacrifices. Then in verse 2, he describes two ongoing practices that are the key to being able to do that. One of the reasons we’re only covering two verses this morning is because every single word is so significant that we need to take the time to understand each one. So we’re going to do something we haven’t done in quite some time and work through this passage one word or phrase at a time and then we’ll draw some practical applications from what we learn.
I appeal to you…
The underlying Greek word is a compound word that literally means “to call to one’s side”. So Paul is really just calling on his readers to do what he has already done. He doesn’t command them, even though as an apostle he would have had some degree of authority. He just exhorts them to consider joining him.
…therefore…
brothers…
We already covered both of those in our introduction.
…by the mercies of God…
We also covered this phrase in the introduction. The motivation for doing what Paul is about to ask his readers to do is because of God mercies in their lives.
…to present…
The verb “present” means “to place at someone’s disposal”. And it is in what is called the aorist tense, which means that conveys the idea of a definite point of commitment to God. However, as we’re going to see that doesn’t mean that this is something we just do once and forget about it.
It is similar to what a bride and groom do on their wedding day. They make a one-time commitment to love each other for the rest of their lives. But carrying out that commitment requires them to remember that commitment on a moment-by-moment basis and to continually act in a way that enables them to keep their vows.
…your bodies…
This is a clear reminder that being a disciple of Jesus involves both believing and behaving the gospel. That is one reason we have entitled this series A Gospel-Shaped Life.
Paul, as a Hebrew would have understood the body to encompass the totality of our being and not just our physical bodies. And by using the word bodies here, he is also making it clear that the artificial distinction we often make between the physical and the spiritual is not Biblical at all. It’s not enough to just know the doctrines in the first eleven chapters of Paul’s letter. We need to build on that foundation by presenting our entire lives to God for Him to use as He desires. That is the key that is going to enable us to do everything else Paul is going to write about in this last section of his letter.
If we don’t do that, it would be like constructing a great foundation for a new home, but then never building the building itself. None of us would do that would we? And we shouldn’t do the same thing spiritually either.
…as a living sacrifice…
This term would have been something of an oxymoron to Paul’s readers, most of whom were Jews. The term “sacrifice” would have immediately brought to mind the Old Testament system of sacrifices in which an animal was brought to the priests, slaughtered, and then burned up on the altar. But while Paul undoubtedly had that background in mind, he had to mean something else here.
God want us to bring Him an offering of our lives, but as we’ve already mentioned, it is not a one time offering that is just burned up and gone. He wants an offering that is perpetual because it is living. But as we’re going to see when we get to verse 2, there is also a sense that when we offer our bodies as a living sacrifice to God, there is a part of us that dies.
Perhaps the best commentary on what it means to be a living sacrifice are these familiar words of Jesus:
And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.
(Luke 9:23 ESV)
The followers of Jesus who heard those words would have immediately known what Jesus meant. In the Roman empire in which they lived, the cross was an instrument of death. So when Jesus told His followers to take up their cross and follow Him, He was telling them that they needed to die to their old way of life in order to really live. We’re going to talk about this idea further when we get to verse 2. But I hope you can already see why we said earlier that…
In God’s kingdom
I must die in order to truly live
…holy and acceptable to God…
In the Old Testament, the sacrifices that were brought to the priests were to be without blemish and they were considered to be “holy”, which means “set apart”. The only way that the living sacrifice of our bodies can be holy is through the shed blood of Jesus and by putting our faith in Him alone. When we do that, we are credited with the righteousness of Jesus and God considers us to be holy and thus the sacrifice of our bodies to Him is also considered holy.
The word “acceptable” means “well pleasing” and we’re going to see the same exact word again in verse 2, which is one reason we can be confident that these 2 verses are both speaking of the same idea. When we die to self and offer our entire lives to God as a living sacrifice, that is something that is well-pleasing to God.
…which is your spiritual worship…
I am at a loss to explain why the word that is rendered “spiritual” here and in many other English translations is translated in like that. It is the words from which we get our English word “logical” and it would be better translated “reasonable” of “rational”. In fact, the ESV has a footnote that indicates that is the case.
The idea here is that if I weigh all that God has done in pouring out His mercies in my life, the only reasonable response is to lay my life on the altar and offer every part of who I am to Him. So that means that worship is never to be about what I can get out of it, but rather a matter of giving all that I am to God.
Now that he has established the idea that we are to offer ourselves as living sacrifices, Paul is going to give us some practical instruction on how to do that in verse 2.
…Do not be conformed…
He starts first with a negative command that is in the present tense. The grammar here gives this command the sense of “stop conforming…”, which implies that Paul’s readers were currently doing this and they needed to stop.
The verb Paul uses here is the one from which we get our English word “scheme”. It describes our outward form that varies from year to year and even from day to day. Paul is essentially telling his readers not to be like a chameleon, which takes on the color of its surroundings. As disciples of Jesus, we shouldn’t look like the rest of the world.
… to this world…
This is literally “to this age”. It is a reference to this present sinful age that is characterized by selfishness and which seeks gratification of the flesh and indifference to the needs of others. Eugene Peterson captures the essence of this first command in the Message paraphrase:
Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking.
But even though Paul phrases this as a negative command, the idea of not being conformed to the world doesn’t mean that we are just to quit doing a few things that other people consider to be wrong. Often it means that we actually start doing things like praying for our enemies or forgiving others when we’ve been wronged or repaying a curse with a blessing. So if I’m going to be a living sacrifice I have to die to my old way of life. As we said earlier…
In God’s kingdom
I must die in order to truly live
…but be transformed…
Some of you may know that the verb “transform” here is the Greek word from which we get our English word metamorphosis. Most of us probably associate that word with the transformation of a caterpillar to a butterfly, and that’s actually a very good illustration of the kind of transformation that Paul is describing here.
It is a word that describes something being transformed on the outside to what it really is on the inside. It is the very same word that is translated “transfigured” in the gospels when Jesus took Peter, James and John to a mountain top and his appearance was transformed so that they could see just a bit of His glory.
As disciples of Jesus, we have been changed on the inside:
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
(2 Corinthians 5:17 ESV)
So the idea of being transformed here means that we are becoming on the outside the new person that Jesus has already made us on the inside. Our character and our conduct is being changed so that it is consistent with our inward spiritual condition.
It’s important to note here that this is a passive verb. We are “being transformed” which means that someone else is doing the transforming. And in just a minute we will clearly see who that person is. But at the same time this is also a present tense command. So a more literal translation might be “Allow yourself to be constantly being transformed.” That indicates that we have an important role to play in this process. That role is explained in the next two phrases:
…by the renewal…
The verb “renew” means to “make new in a qualitative way”. It would be like when we renovated our kitchen and put in new countertops. It was still the same kitchen, but it was renewed in in terms of quality.
That particular word is used only one other time in the Bible and that verse helps us answer the question of who is doing the transforming we just talked about:
he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit,
(Titus 3:5 ESV)
So now we know that it is the Holy Spirit who is doing the work of transformation and renewal. But it still doesn’t answer the question of what my part is. But the next phrases help us get a handle on that.
…of your mind…
The problem with our minds is not merely that they are finite and don’t have unlimited information. The problem is that our minds are fallen and that they have a mindset that is hostile to God. So the kind of renewal of the mind that Paul is writing about here is not merely developing a new list of moral behaviors. The kind of transformation we see here requires dying to old values and the coming to life of new ones. It requires the power of the Holy Spirit to change us from the inside out to bring us to the place where we have a mindset that sees God, and His purposes, plans and ways, as infinitely superior to ours.
… that by testing you may discern…
In Greek this is just one verb. It means to test or examine something with the goal of proving the genuineness of that which is being tested. In secular Greek culture it described the testing of metals to see if they were pure. The NIV translation actually does a really nice job of capturing the full meaning when it translates this verb “test and approve”.
But exactly what are we testing when we allow ourselves to be transformed by the renewal of our minds? We see the answer to that question in the next phrase.
…what is the will of God…
When we see the term, “the will of God”, our natural tendency is to think of it in terms of God’s will for my life – What job should I take? Who should I marry? Which car should I buy? But here Paul is focused more on the all encompassing will of God for His creation which goes far beyond just what God wants me to do in specific circumstances, as important as that is. We see that in Paul’s description of that will:
…what is good and acceptable and perfect.
Again, we are tempted to view these terms from our perspective so we think of God’s will as what is good for me, what is acceptable to me or what is perfect for me. But Paul is thinking here of those terms from God’s perspective. He is writing here about God’s overall will for His entire creation for all of eternity – a will that is good and acceptable and perfect to Him.
When we put all this together, I think the point that Paul is making here is that when we offer ourselves as a living sacrifice to God and we allow ourselves to be transformed by the Holy Spirit as He renews our minds, we will first recognize that God’s will is being worked out in our lives and second, we ill rejoice in that reality.
APPLICATION
In order for us to be transformed by the renewing of our minds so that we can be those living sacrifices that God desires, the Holy Spirit must work in our lives in two directions. He must work from the outside in by exposing our minds to Christ exalting truth. And He must work from the inside out to change our corrupt minds that have been squeezed into the world’s mold.
I know that we’ve covered a lot already this morning, but I would be remiss if I didn’t take just a few minutes to bring this down to a really practical level. So let me leave you with just two things that all of us can do in order to cooperate with the Holy Spirit as He works both directions in our lives.
HOW TO LET THE HOLY SPIRIT TRANSFORM ME
1. Saturate my mind with God’s Word
In another of his letters, we find this admonition from Paul:
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly…
(Colossians 3:16 ESV)
The verb “dwell” Paul uses there means “to take up permanent residence”. It is the same verb Paul uses elsewhere to describe how the Holy Spirit dwells permanently in every disciple of Jesus.
The world around us doing its best to saturate our minds with the things that are contrary to the will of God that is good, pleasing and perfect. I’m not telling you anything new here. But the only way that our thinking is going to be transformed from the mindset of this world to the mindset of Jesus is by the Word of God. We need to read it, listen to it, study it, memorize it and meditate on it every chance we get.
2. Pray for a humble heart
Even if we saturate our minds with the Word of God, we have proud and stubborn hearts that will naturally reject that truth without the work of the Holy Spirit from the inside out. So we need to constantly be praying that we would have the humility to embrace Christ exalting truth no matter what we might think or feel about it.
INSPIRATION
In God’s kingdom
I must die in order to truly live
Now that we’ve looked at this passage, let me ask you the same question I asked you at the beginning of the message: When it comes to your commitment to Jesus are you a chicken or a pig? Are you just willing to make a contribution or are you willing to go “all in” and be a living sacrifice?
[Prayer]
ACTION
Genuine worship always includes responding to God and God might be leading you to respond to Him in a variety of ways this morning. You’ll find some suggestions of some of those possibilities on the back of your sermon outline.
We’re going to begin our response time with a time of offering in which we give back to God out of the material blessings He has entrusted to us. But as we’ve seen this morning, God wants more than just our money. He wants us to offer all we are to Him as a living sacrifice. So would you respond appropriately as God leads you and as the music continues to play softly. If you would like to talk to someone about your decision or if you just want someone to pray with our Elders will be in the front and back of the room during that time.
Discussion questions for Bible Roundtable
1. How would you respond to someone who says that doctrine isn’t important and that all that really matters is the practical living part of the Bible?
2. What is the significance of the fact that we are to present our “bodies” as a living sacrifice?
3. Why is not being conformed to the world not just a matter of removing immoral behaviors. What else must we do?
4. In the work of being transformed, what is God’s part and what is my part in that process? Can you think of some other passages that shed some light on your answer?
5. What are some practical ways to let the Word of God “dwell in you richly”?
