“I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice to God, which is your spiritual worship.” Romans 12:1
What is it that you’re supposed to do as a Christian? How is it that you’re supposed to worship? Our answer is right here.
First, note that Paul “appeals” to his reader. The Christians in Rome were his brothers in the faith. They weren’t his subjects. He didn’t boss them around. He didn’t write something like this:
“Okay, you guys don’t know squat about the faith. You don’t know Bo Diddley about the patriarchs, nor study the Scriptures like I have. I had an audience with the Lord on Damascus Road. A personal meeting with Him. Have I reminded you of that lately? So, listen to me. I’m the Apostle Paul! Sure, the other disciples lived with Jesus but that’s while He was here. I saw Him afterwards, which means He specifically came back for me. Any-hoo…here are your orders…”
Nope. None of that worldly, pride-fueled, condescension that’s common to all men. There’s no hint of superiority. Paul had been a super-Jew – a Pharisee. He was a Roman citizen too. His education was first-rate. And there’s evidence throughout Romans (2:16 and 16:25) that he was aware of the need to remind the Romans of the authenticity of his apostolic credentials and defend against critics and the spread of rumors (Romans 3:8). In light of this tension (and there’s always tension and conflict in a sin-sick world) he “appeals” to them. He calls them brothers. And he rests the weight of what he says, not on his authority, but upon the “mercies of God.” Catch that? He bases everything that’s to come on the reality and meaning of the cross.
So, we note soberly the manner in which Christians are to use authority.
It’s a real authority, indeed. Pastors and elders, especially, and every other authority on earth, have their power as a derivative from the Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 13:1; Matthew 28:18-20). Authority is wielded in the name of God, for the glory of God, in the context of the Word of God, for the building up of the saints. Any severity or discipline executed by the church or even the sub-authorities (such as parents, bosses, judges, police officers, etc.) are to be done in accordance with God’s righteous ordering of the world. All conflict on earth is the result of our stubborn refusal to accept this elementary fact of life: God is God and we have dominion over nature, not other men. God does not give men dominion over others (Genesis 1:28). Discipline exists because of the flesh and sin. Ungodly discipline and tyrannical rule is yet another result of sin.
Thus, the big idea not to miss as we move forward into “practical” living (and all theology is practical insofar as it teaches us about Christ) is that we’re to swear off the abuse of authority. In Matthew 20:25-28 we read:
“But Jesus called to them and said, ‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them (tyrannizing them). It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.’”
It shall not be that way! Wow. That’s what Paul is showing us. He appeals to his flock. Paul has authority, but look at how he uses it! God is holy and we aren’t to use this as an excuse for lazy living. The fact that we aren’t to lord it over each other doesn’t mean we’re to live in sloppy spirituality or, God forbid, sin, because we’re under grace, not the law. No! We’re to present our bodies as a living sacrifice to whom? To others? To more sales? To a championship? To more profit? To higher grades? No. To the Lord. All those things are fine insofar as the motive for them is our glorification of the Lord.
No one and nothing has the right to command the heart and soul of another except the Lord Jesus Christ. He alone has all authority and yet He leads by laying down His life for us. That’s the appeal “by the mercies of God.” In other words, the Apostle Paul is saying that giving your entire life to Him is logical because He gave you His. He’s our redeemer and His burden is light, his yoke is easy (Matthew 11:28-30). The argument has already been established in Romans 6:16. We are finite and created beings. We can’t be absolutely free (the premise of humanism). We’re slaves either to sin or to the Lord.
“What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient FROM THE HEART to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness” Romans 6:15-18 (emphasis mine).
This is the foundation upon which the lives of all Christians are built. The reality of our lives is the power of the cross and our redemption!
This is why all attempts to make outward rules for Christian living are worse than useless. They’re actually dangerous. That’s like a man making rules for treating his wife well when, in fact, love requires no checklist. A man who needs to be told not to yell at his wife but to hug her, not to ignore her but to give her a Valentines Day gift, isn’t a man who loves his wife. Likewise, a Christian who see the Lord Jesus Christ as his Savior, his Redeemer, will see all of life differently. Will such a man want to sin? He may very well still struggle with the flesh but it will now rightly be called a struggle because before he didn’t mean not to sin and now he does.
Love, be sure, will drive that sin out. How? By the mark of Christian life which is the recognition of the reality of sin and the solution of the cross to it. Law brings us to the cross whenever there’s sin and the reality of what happened there lifts us back upon our feet again, restored, renewed, cleaned up and sparkling like new. Jesus Christ washes us, sanctifies us, and our hearts – experiencing not judgment but love everlasting – bursts within our chests! Sweet and blessed tears flow from the soft heart of contrition, softened by the love of God in the first place, and He personally wipes away those tears as He whispers –
“You are clean, My child…you are Mine and always Mine…look at these scars I have. They are your scars because they were for you. Carry them in your heart, dear one. Carry them and they will carry you because this mud you fell into is not sticking, and won’t stick and can’t. My grace is what sticks. It’s all over you. Let it refresh you, little one. You fell because of fear. When you sin you sin against your new nature. But I’m here and will not lose you, will not forsake you. You are loved and there’s no more fear. Your broken heart I won’t reject, nor despise. Give me that broken heart and see what I will do. Follow me, child. Follow me and see…and see that sin is ugly…it’s a counterfeit of all that you have in Me.”
This is why having a rules based church is a loveless, graceless church. This is why having outward conformity is missing the point. The heart that loves is going to seek the object of its love. Do we love Him or do we love our sin? The heart that loves sin won’t be corrected by being told it can’t listen to certain types of music and has to go to chapel every day. The heart that loves Jesus Christ will pull away from sin as it marches through the long-haul which is life in a sinful world. The mud will splatter upon that lover of Christ, sure…but the specks of sin’s mud will be seen for what they are as that lover and follower of the Perfect Soul keeps their eyes fixed on Him.
Don’t cuss? Don’t do this and that? We notice the absence of such a list here when, in fact, Paul could clearly make just such a one. He doesn’t because that’s the whole point. The list follower will boast in their performance and the goal of all that would be self-glory, not love of God. Be sure, that to glorify God is first to love Him. No man can glorify the God they don’t love and no man loves God who is in sin. God’s love is first poured into our hearts – we aren’t the source of it, He is (Romans 5:5).
This is the perfect logic of the gospel. It’s the life of the love of God, which is the life of faith, not works. Sure, we’ll do good works in Christ but those works will be inspired by grace, not pride. By works of the law no human being will be saved (Romans 3:20). This is why Paul appeals to us and it’s how we’re to interpret our lives as living sacrifices. It’s why marriage is a type of the union we have with Christ. Love is the glue that binds the promises of fidelity and devotion of a man and woman. Without that love, no law will hold together what sin will fracture.
And no law or rigidity or seven-fold path or asceticism or anything else will give us righteousness. We have the righteousness of God through faith already, not by works, lest we boast, but by faith alone. So now…go…let’s look at the rest of Romans through these eyes of love. And remember that there can be no true love without righteousness and no righteousness without faith. None of this is arbitrary. Love is real. God is love (1 John 4:16).
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