Bible Study Notes From Tonight: Romans 12:1-2

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.  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. (Romans 12:1-2)

In lieu of Bible study being cancelled tonight, I thought I’d post my notes from the study as a blog post. 

We’ve been studying through Romans the last several months roughly covering a chapter a night.  We’ve had to slow down a bit through chapters 8-11 (obviously) but we finished chapter 11 last week.  And since the first two verses of Romans 12 act as a transition to the “practical” section of Romans, the plan was to only look at those verses and have a shorter Bible study.  See the Scripture posted above.

In these verses I want to focus on three aspects: Two commands and the power to keep them. 

The first command: To present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, as spiritual worship.  

Here Paul highlights the distinction between the Mosaic Law and the New Covenant in Christ; the ceremonial and ritual laws of the former, as well as the building of first the tabernacle and then the Temple were all pointing forward to something better and greater: the true spiritual worship of the people of God filled with His Spirit.  As God had been meticulous in both His command to build the OT worship spaces and in His commanding of the sacrifices in ceremonial worship, His holiness and righteousness is displayed, as is the sinfulness and neediness of His people as they obey Him.  Thus the “system”, including the sacrificial system, is meant to communicate heavenly truths to His people in their own language.  God really is holy, we really are needy, He really is separate from the world, and blood (death) must be shed for a holy God to dwell with sinful people.  Hebrews 9:6-11 and 9:23-24 highlight how the whole system was aimed at displayng copies of the heavenly realities – the realities of heavenly worship that believers presently experience in a partial – but real – form.

But Jesus said that God is seeking people who will worship Him “in spirit and in truth” (John 4:23).  In other words, it isn’t about a building, location, or anything that can be made with human hands (although those things can certainly help to focus a person).  But rather God is after worship that flows from a person’s heart attitude in response to the truth claims of the Gospel.  Thus “we are those who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh” (Phil. 3:3). 

With all of the lessons from the Mosaic Law communicated and understood, those who are united with Christ by faith now walk by the Spirit (Gal. 5:25) and fulfill the Law’s righteous requirement through their faith in and obedience to Christ.  This is spiritual worship.

So as one presents their body to God, they are to set aside their own interests and present themselves to God to live after His will.  Some might impatiently respond, “Well, what is His will?  I’ve been waiting and not hearing anything!” But this one might be guilty of mixing their own interests with His, their impatience with His working slowly and “quietly” betraying them.  But those who are in Christ – truly in Him by faith – their patience and time bows to God’s working on His own time.  They sit still and rest in His being Lord of all (Psalm 46:10).  They are learning what it means to obey Jesus’ command of self-denial, and they are forgetting their selves more and more as time goes on.  Jesus’ life of self-denial and submission to His Father is moving from being their own through God’s accounting, to their own through the Holy Spirit’s empowering.

The second command: To not be conformed to the world but to be transformed by the renewing of the mind, that by testing you may be able to discern what is God’s will.  

The truth is that there is no middle road – you’re either being conformed to the world or you’re being transformed by mind renewal under King Jesus’ power and grace.  There is no middle road.  To claim independence and that no one tells you what to think is to naively avoid that you’ve been influenced to think that way.  The individualistic society in which the present hour places us is one that says truth is inside you, and happiness is in pulling it out and showing the world.  This has disastrous effects because, although human rights are God-given and He does want you to flourish, if the whole endeavor is an A and B conversation between yourself and the culture, with God free to C His way out, you’ll destroy both yourself and the culture around you. 

And that isn’t to say that America or the Western world used to be more Christian because it hasn’t always been so individualistic.  There were times when it was more influenced by the morals of the God of the Bible.  But the world has always been a battleground of cultural extremes.  And we are in one today.  Think about it like this: Didn’t Paul’s command in 12:2 to not be conformed to the world also apply in the early 1900s and the 1800s and the 1700s?  But wasn’t that a more “Christian” time?!  Come on – the world isn’t falling apart around you for the first time.  It already was, and the present furthering of the extreme individualism is only making it unavoidable.

The culture says the problem is outside of you, while it’s only good inside of you.  The Gospel says the problem is both outside of you and inside of you, and that Jesus came into the world to redeem both.  And both are desperate and crying out.

God told Israel as they were to enter the Promised Land to keep His rules and not “those of the nations around (them)” (see Lev. 18:1-3).  It’s always been a temptation for citizens of God’s Kingdom to live as though they aren’t.  But when Paul says it here he is speaking to regenerate believers.  Thus whereas Israel did in the end fall prey to the temptation (Ezek. 11:12), and believers will have moments of sinful weakness, the word here spoken to them is potent to move them to live as the Kingdom citizens they are (cf. Jer. 31:31).  They see that there are only two choices: conformity or transformation.

And what kind of transformation is it?  It is transformation out of the fallen and broken person that they can’t avoid they are, and into the perfect image of God in Christ, even more glorious than man was even before Adam and Eve rebelled.  Thus true Christians are being transformed in their minds into the image of their Creator (Eph. 4:23) as God’s Spirit leads them into His truth (John 14:26). 

Thus they can learn what God’s will is.  God’s revealed will – what He wants, what He’s doing, and what glorifies Him – by nature of being revealed, is not a secret.  His Word is loud and clear.  But one must be transformed in heart to understand it.  They can’t understand or discern it (1 Cor. 2:14) nor can they can’t submit to it (Rom. 8:7-8).  But God is merciful to wake people up to His truth by giving them life by His Spirit and shining the light of His Son’s glory in their hearts.  They are made new and renewed by His Word (1 Pet. 1:23).  So when Paul says to be transformed so that you can understand God’s will, he’s saying that a new identity in union with the risen Christ is first required.  And it seems that the key to obedience to this command is “playing back” the realities of this Gospel.  This of course leads to the last point.

Power for obedience, from the Gospel: By the mercies of God..  

Paul has spent the last 11 chapters of text describing the greatness of God’s work in Christ, and what it means for us: Man is entirely a sinner (1:18-3:19), Jesus is entirely a Redeemer (3:20-27), His work is received by faith (4:1-5:11), he transforms us into new creations (5:12-7:24), we have great hope in His great love (8:1-39), and the salvation of Jesus’ sheep has been God’s plan from before the foundation of the world (and it will continue until the end) (9:1-11:36). 

Thus, for the person who would live the redeemed life in the life-setting of the Roman Christians to whom Paul is writing, as he’ll give them personal instruction the rest of the letter, it starts with the experiential joy of God’s mercies given in Christ.  You must start with Christ’s claims on you in the Gospel and work from there.  You must remember His great redemptive plan from eternity and how you are seated with Him presently in His resurrected body (6:4-6, Col. 3:1-3).  And when you do, then you can present yourself to God as a living sacrifice, and walking with Him according to His will.

In the Biblical storyline, piety never worked by itself.  Any time people were pious and God-ward in their actions, it seemed to be isolated events of obedience separated from the larger culture and surely not long-lasting.  But rebirth through the work of Christ, inaugurating these “last days” in which we live (Heb. 1:2), makes it so that obedience is not just piety, but a pleasure.  According to 12:1, our bodies, though presently dead in sin (Rom. 8:10), are, in Christ, acceptable to God!  Thus our spiritual union with our risen Lord spurs us to love and good works so that He’d be made much of, we’d get the joy, and the world would have even more witness of the goodness of its Creator.  So the call to present one’s self as a living sacrifice isn’t a renouncing of happiness and the hope of flourishing – instead the call is the very key which opens the door to happiness and flourishing.