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About Jesus Steve Sweetman Chapter 12 Living
Sacrifices (ch. 12:1 – 8) Paul
had just ended chapter eleven with his doxology.
His defense of the faith is now complete.
He now makes a slight change in direction.
The remaining part of Romans deals with how we should live once we
have come to faith in Jesus. Chapter
twelve verse one begins with the word “therefore”, meaning, “as a
result of all that I have just said”.
So in light of what Paul has taught in earlier chapters and also in
light of God’s mercy, he urges the Romans “to present themselves as
living sacrifices to God”. The
Old Testament is very familiar with sacrifices, but they are all dead
sacrifices. Paul is saying
that we should be a living sacrifice.
Simply put, Paul is saying that we need to come to Jesus in faith,
lay ourselves at His feet to be and to do as He wishes.
As he says in chapter six verse eighteen; “we are to be slaves of
righteousness”. Just as
Jesus presented Himself as the ultimate in living sacrifices, so should
we. That being said, our
sacrifice is to give ourselves to Jesus and His will.
We don't sacrifice our bodies through mutilating it as some of the
old monks once did. A
sacrifice is something that is presented to the Lord.
Therefore in like fashion we present ourselves to Jesus and say,
“here I am, to be as you wish”. In
the Old Testament, the giving of sacrifices was a form of worship.
Paul says that when we offer ourselves to God in this way, this is
also worship. This is
spiritual worship. To me, this
is the first definition of the word worship.
Yes, singing and raising our hands to the Lord on a Sunday morning
can be called worship as well, yet what makes this expression true worship
is that we have first offered ourselves to Jesus as a living sacrifice.
Paul
says “not to be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be
transformed by the renewing of your mind”.
What does this mean? Paul
makes two points here. He
first says that we need to not follow after the ways of the world.
The old time Evangelicals used to call this “worldliness”.
We are not to be worldly in our thinking or in our actions.
We don’t want to leave it here as I think some Evangelicals have
in the past. There is a part
two to Paul’s point here. He
says, “but be transformed by the renewing of your mind”.
He does not say, “be transformed by the renewing of your
heart”. Back in chapter ten
verse ten Paul says that we are save when we believe from the heart.
Here he says that we are transformed by the renewing of your mind.
We are not transformed by merely not being worldly. We are
transformed when our minds are changed.
The
word “transformed” here is the Greek word “metamorphoo” which
means to “change into another form, like a caterpillar changes into a
butterfly. The same Greek word
is used in Mark nine when Jesus is “transfigured” before the disciples
and speaks with Moses and Elijah. Jesus
most likely looked the same but in my thinking had some kind of spiritual
body, as did Moses and Elijah. Here
Paul says that we will be transformed, changed into something different
than what we are, even though we are still recognizable for who we are. How
are we transformed? Paul says
by the renewing of the mind. The
Greek word “anakainoo” is translated as renew.
This word simply means to “make new”
Paul is therefore saying that our minds need to be renewed, needs
to be made new. The way we
think needs to come in line with God’s thinking.
Once again, with our hearts we believe and are saved, but with the
renewing of the mind we are made into something new and different.
In this new framework we can know, test and approve of God’s will
for our lives. The
NIV uses the word “approve” in verse 2 while the KJV uses the word
“prove”. What is meant
here is that once we are transformed, then we can test God’s will and
then approve it. It is not as
if God’s will needs to pass
by our desk for our stamp of approval.
It is more like, once we test God’s will, we will respond by
saying, “yes!, that’s it, that’s right for me”. We approve or
affirm that we want God’s will in our lives. Our
lives will prove that doing God's will is the only way to live. Paul
goes on to say in verse 3, “by the grace given to me, don’t think of
yourself more highly than you ought …”
Paul was “given grace” to say such things to people.
We may or may not have such grace to say such things to others.
One thing we can do is to repeat what Paul says to others.
We know that he had the grace to say these things. Paul
says that we need to think of ourselves soberly, meaning seriously,
according to the “measure of faith God has given to us”.
Now this is interesting. All
along Paul is telling us that Salvation is by faith, by trusting Jesus.
Now he is saying that this faith or trust is actually given to us
by God. Some may try to reword
this, or reinterpret these words, but Paul is pretty clear.
God gives us this faith. It
is like this. In our frailty
we look up to Jesus, we cry or call out as it says in chapter ten.
Jesus responds to us and gives us faith.
He gives us the ability to believe.
Some
people differentiate between “saving faith” from “faith to live
by”. They say that there are
more than one aspect to faith. They
say that man has the ability to believe and therefore they can have faith
to be saved. Yet beyond this
“saving faith” God can give us more faith, or add to that which we
already have to help us live as we should.
There may be a truth to this. We
can at least say that man has the ability to cry out to God in order for
Him to give us faith. Others
who believe strongly in the Depravity Of Man believe man is so far lost
that he does not have the ability to even believe, that is why God needs
to give faith to us. There may
be a truth to this as well. So
we have two camps. One camp
believes man can believe, the other believes he can’t and therefore God
needs to give him faith. One
thing to note here is that the faith talked about is in relation to doing
tasks within the body of Christ. This
faith is God giving us the ability to do what He wants us to do.
That may be why He needs to give us this faith.
What He calls us to do, He also gives us the ability to do it. So
why is Paul encouraging us not to think of ourselves more highly than we
ought. It is because, even
though we are individual people, we as Christians are part of a group of
people. Paul compares this to
our physical body. Our body
consists of many parts. All
parts have their own roll to play in keeping the body healthy.
Paul says that God has given each of us grace and faith to be and
to do our part. You may think
one part is more important than the other, yet Paul tells us to think
soberly in respect to this. All
parts are important. The important thing is to do your part and not to
make a big deal about it. Some
may prophesy, some may teach, some may encourage.
The list can go on. The
important thing to note is that we all have a part to play.
We perform our tasks by the measure of faith and trust Jesus has
given us. We must do what we
do in this context. All we do
must be done as a result of our trust in Jesus.
If not it is sin, as seen in Rom. 14:23.
These
next few verses are self explanatory.
These verses continue in the context of
the Body of Christ. Paul
says such things as, “live in harmony with one another, don’t be
proud, don’t repay evil for evil”.
He also tells the Romans to be “zealous, keeping your spiritual
fervor, be joyful in hope, patient in affliction and faithful in
prayer”. All these things
are things that a good follower of Jesus will want to do.
Being human though, we tend to fall back at times.
It seems hard to be consistent in our faith. We need to maintain
that which we have in the Lord. There
is nothing on earth that will grow and become
healthier without being properly maintained.
Maintenance is crucial in the Christian life, as it is with
anything that is important. In
verse 19 Paul tells the Romans not to take revenge against those who
oppose them, but leave revenging to God’s wrath.
We may feel like taking revenge, but God’s wrath is far beyond
anything that we can do anyway. Let
Him take care of those who do evil to you.
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