Romans 12:1-5 — Bruce Rodgers

Let's look tonight, please, in Romans chapter 12. Romans chapter 12. Certainly appreciate each one that's come along again tonight. Last night we were looking a little bit at Romans chapter 11, some foundational material for what we're going to look at tonight.

God's Mercy and the Practical Life of Romans 12

And that section of the book, chapters nine to 11, focuses on the sovereignty of God, the ways of God in the world, the judgments of God, the decisions that he makes in relation to individuals, to nations, to communities.

And at the bottom of it all, behind it all, is mercy. And that's the climax of those three chapters, that there is a wonderful divine mercy at work in the world. And so the very last verse of chapter 11 says, for of him and through him and to him are all things, to whom be glory forever, amen.

Presenting Our Bodies as a Living Sacrifice

Now chapter 12 and verse one, I beseech you therefore, brethren, by or through the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.

And be not conformed to this world or this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. For I say through the grace given unto me to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly according as God has dealt to every man a measure of faith.

For as we have many members in one body and all members have not the same office or the same function, so we being many are one body in Christ and every one members one of another. Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith or ministry, let us wait on our ministering.

Or he that teacheth on teaching, or he that exhorteth on exhortation, he that giveth, let him do it with simplicity. He that ruleth with diligence, he that showeth mercy with cheerfulness, let love be without dissimulation or hypocrisy.

Now that's as far as we're going to read tonight and we probably won't get this far, as far as I have read. I hope that by the end of the week, I'll have gotten through to the end of the chapter, but it's interesting if you come to the last verse of the chapter, it says, be not overcome of or by evil, but overcome evil with good.

And if we in our Christian experience would be enabled in God's grace to not be overcome by evil, but to have a power to overcome the effects of evil, that would be triumph. That would be a life that is worth living.

The epistle to the Romans is really all about God's gospel, God's deliverance, and God wants us to experience his deliverance. He wants to experience the blessing of his grace in our lives. So it's interesting that when we start into this chapter 12, which is really the, you might call the practical section of the epistle, the first thing that he challenges us with is to hand ourselves over to God.

Now this might be a good question to ask. Are you about to hand yourself over to anybody else's control? Is there anybody that you love enough, that you trust enough, that you would yield yourself to that person?

That's what this chapter is all about. That's why I spent so much time last night talking about God's mercy, his riches, the resources that he has for us, the wisdom, the intelligence that he has to be able to manage our lives.

Sometimes it takes us a long time to come to terms with really recognizing what God has for us and just how great it is to be in his hands. But it's interesting that as the apostle Paul starts this chapter, he starts out with pleading, beseeching.

It's a very tender word, like a father would plead with a son or daughter. Maybe some fathers are kind of gruff, but Paul as a true father, a true spiritual father to other Christians, with a genuine love for our wellbeing, he pleads.

And I would like to say that in all the experience of my life, I am totally convinced that the best choice that you could make as a Christian, the most fundamental choice of life would be to present yourself to God and to let him have your life to use.

I have found for myself that it actually settles a lot of the issues of life that trouble many Christians. You can't complain too much about how life turns out when you've already handed it over to God, when you've given him the right to use your life as he sees fit.

Whether that involves certain aspects of service or whether it involves certain arenas of suffering, we have already yielded ourselves, presented ourselves, and we're just there for the ride as he takes us through life.

Now, I want to try to explain these different expressions as we go through it and try to interpret it, teach it to you as simply as I can. But recognizing that this is really the response of a heart, this is not just something intellectual for us to go through, but this is the response of our whole spirit, our soul, our whole being to respond to the living God as he really is in all his glory and to realize that it is the highest privilege that is possible, to present myself to him as a living sacrifice.

It's interesting, and I'll draw attention to this before I get too far into the passage, that the word present that we have here is the identical word that we have in chapter six, where we have it repeated to yield.

And I'm gonna take you back to chapter six. While it's a different context, I think it's very significant to connect it together. Now, if you are familiar with the section of Romans in chapter six through eight, really from the middle of chapter five through, you'll know that it's really dealing with how God delivers us from the corruption of sin within us, how God enables us to overcome evil that indwells us.

Union with Christ and Yielding to God

And what we learn in Romans chapter six, and I'll just bring a few verses before you, it mentions in verse six, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed or rendered powerless, that henceforth, that from now on, we should not serve sin, for he that is dead is freed from sin.

So then we have these expressions of having died with Christ and being raised with Christ. It says in verse 11, likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body that you should obey it in the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, but yield yourselves unto God as those that are alive from among the dead.

That's the literal sense of it. And your members as instruments of righteousness unto God for sin shall not have dominion over you for you are not under law, but under grace. Now, in the context of Romans six, where we get this word to yield, he says, don't keep on yielding, don't keep on yielding your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, but yield once for all yourselves unto God as those who are alive from among the dead.

One of the things that really impressed me in the past few months in studying through this part of the book of Romans is to realize that here we have one of the secrets of the Christian life, one of the fundamental secrets.

And if you want to know why that is, I'll take you back a little further to help you to think about how sin gained its power over us in the first place. Because if we can understand how it is that sin took over the human race, then we will understand why submitting to God is the safest place for us to be.

Sin's Mastery and Humanity's Need for Deliverance

Back in the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve were brought into this place of temptation, how did sin gain its mastery by causing them to be disobedient to God? And what they didn't recognize was that in making that choice to disobey a known command of God, they were actually becoming slaves to another authority.

And this is where sin fools us over and over. Because when you're sinning, you think you're doing what you want to do. The genius of sin is that it masters us, it takes over, just like a virus takes over the cell of our body, the cells.

And our body begins to serve that virus. It doesn't recognize it's actually serving a foreign intruder. And until your body recognizes that virus as an intruder and a destroyer, it's just going to lend its resources to the manipulation of that deceiver.

That's the way sin is. And what we don't understand is that in whatever way we sin, we are actually serving another authority. And that's ultimately Satan. What that really means is that no human being is ever able to act perfectly free and independent, even when you think you are.

Now, it doesn't mean you don't choose and act according to your choices, but what I'm saying is, as you live your life, as you choose your way, you are serving someone other than just yourself, no matter what that choice is.

You don't have a choice as to whether you are going to serve someone else or not. You only have the choice of who you're going to serve. And so if we can realize that the Lord Jesus Christ is our rescuer, our deliverer, and he has died for us to deliver us from the bondage and the corruption, as well as the condemnation of sin, then the safest place for us to be is under his headship, under his sovereignty, under his rule in obedience to God.

That's where we're safe, because we have his authority and his power counteracting, shielding us from sin and its deceptive power. That is what God has done for us. And he has, of course, as Romans chapter eight teaches us, granted to us his own spirit, so that we might be empowered to live before him and live in the energy and strength of the grace of God, of the character and life of God.

And so in this passage then, it's a different context, but the same word is being used, present yourself a living sacrifice. So what does it really mean then? Well, it's using sacrificial language, as is very evident in this verse, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice.

You see, it is in and through our bodies that is the arena of conflict between sin and God. It's in and through our bodies that we live and serve and worship. And so in pleading with us, he is saying that because all things that are of value and are of worth have their origin in God and are under the superintending power of God and return to God in honor and glory, the wisest, most honorable, most appropriate response to the mercy of God in saving us from destruction is to present ourselves in a dedication of ourselves to him so that he can live out his life within us.

Dedication, Sanctification, and Consecration

The idea, in giving an outline of this, I didn't give it to you before, but verse one is really the dedication of our bodies. Verse two is the sanctification of our minds. And verse three to eight is the consecration of our gifts.

What does dedication mean? Well, the dedication of something or the devotion of something to God is the handing over to God's use irrevocably, irrevocably, just like the burnt offering was put upon the altar and it was given to God totally.

This is not so much something being burned on an altar. It is a life that is being presented to be available to God. Now, it is given, as we might call it, a once for all act. And I do believe that God intends for us to be very deliberate, to have a decision of life, just like when we got saved.

In fact, ideally, this should have happened when you got saved, or at least when you were baptized. Because when you went through the waters of baptism, you were acknowledging the ending of a life and the beginning of a new life lived unto a new Lord.

And that's basically what this is all about. But you know, you can't live your whole life in one moment, and you can't give it all in one moment. So it is basically the presentation of ourselves to make ourselves available to God to use.

And then as each day comes along, we must, in a sense, renew this commitment. And I think it would be a good thing for each one of us, morning by morning, as we become conscious of a new day, to consciously present ourselves before the Lord and say, Lord, I'm yours.

Use me today, because this is the element of life in which we are to live our Christian lives. He says that it is wholly acceptable unto God. It is well-pleasing unto God. It is your reasonable service.

Now, the expression reasonable service is sometimes translated as your intelligent service, your spiritual service. And even the word service is sometimes translated alternately as worship. It is used as worship and as service.

And it really tells us this, that I am to live my life as a worship towards God, as an expression of my appreciation of my love and devotedness to my God, that I will use my life for his glory. So that really means that worship is to enter into every aspect of our life.

We can live our whole life as a spiritual sacrifice, as a devoted offering to God himself. But the challenge that immediately confronts us in verse two is that there's a problem. And that problem is that we are immersed in a world that is opposed to God, that is alienated from God.

Resisting Conformity to the World

And so we have a challenge. If we are going to be devoted to God, to please him, to serve him, we're going to have to face the challenge of continually saying no to the world. So in contrast to the sense of a once for all dedication of ourselves to God in verse one, in verse two, both of these main expressions that are given here, be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Both of these are in what is called the present continuous passive. Now, whenever you get a passive verb, it means that somebody else is trying to do something to you. Something else is acting upon you.

And this is really expressing your response to it. So here are two responses. We can either yield to the influence of the world, or we can yield to the influence of the Holy Spirit of God within us. Be not conformed is to continually say no to the pressure of the influence of what the world is.

Now, there are quite a number of verses that we could read that would give to us some of the emphasis of the world as it is in opposition to God. You know, it's a hard thing for us to really evaluate life and to say, well, what is it in the world that I'm supposed to not be conformed to?

And what does it mean to be not conformed? Does it mean that I have to dress like someone from 300 years ago? Is that the measure of nonconformity? Is that the idea of nonconformity that he wants us to be?

You know, it's a really funny thing that the attitude of our culture is of being rebellious, of being nonconforming. But it's just being nonconforming to whatever was normal, whatever was upheld as a standard.

And it's basically a rebellion against whatever was the status quo. But now these same people who did this, and unfortunately, I'm in the generation that has experienced the hippie movement and all that has flowed from that revolution of culture.

And so the hippies are in their 60s now. I probably came along just at the tail end of it. I was still in public school when the Beatles hit North America. And all the fellows in my class started wearing their hair longer and longer and longer and longer.

And by the time I was in high school, whenever dad would say, well, it's time you went and got a haircut. I usually did what I was told because the alternative was that he would cut it. And I sure didn't want that because that would be white walls.

But you know, I was sitting in a class of students where my hair was already about three inches shorter than anybody else in the class. And then here I was going off to the barbershop to get my haircut.

You know, I'm sure you've seen it over and over again. The image, the image of our culture. Everybody wants to be different like everybody else. And the more different people want to be, the more they are just like everybody else.

And I can't tell you how many times because my younger son sort of rebelled in his teen years and I watched him adopt the image of the world. And I don't know how many times as I would drive home or whatever down the street where we lived in Timmins and I would see my son.

Only it wouldn't really be him, but it was just what he, the image he had repeated over and over and over again. And so what does it mean? Don't be conformed to this age. You see, this age is controlled by certain principles, certain desires, certain ambitions, certain pleasures.

And we're continually being challenged. We're continually being drawn to go along with it, to become like what they are. One of the things that you have to come to terms with is that evil can never be satisfied to let good outshine it and to display its evil, its wickedness.

So whether it's in school, whether it's among your neighbors, wherever you are, those who are evil will want to drag you down to their level. They will want you to become what they are. It makes them feel a lot more comfortable.

And that's why the evil hates the light because it exposes the corruptness of the evil. And so there's a deceptiveness, a deceitfulness about this age, but it's made up of individual people who all have their little world, their little ambitions, their little desires.

And that's how this world operates. And there's other verses that tell us that the world is basically summarized by the lust of the flesh. That's so prominent, so powerful today, the lust of the flesh, immorality.

And that is being presented as being normal, as being good, as being healthy. And there is a very blatant denial of any distinction between morality and immorality. The lust of the eyes is perhaps a little more subtle, a little more difficult for us to judge in our own lives because the lust of the eyes is really the desire for what is beautiful.

And that covers basically everything that we know in what we call materialism. Although materialism also goes into the next category of the pride of life, where you have to buy this certain thing because it makes you look successful.

And we're all affected by it. We're all drawn by it for one reason, because we all carry within us that indwelling sin that is of the same character that the world is. So that's why it is a continual challenge to us.

You see, everything that is in the world is carried to an extreme and out of balance. There are many things which are normal and healthy in themselves, but it's just that the world can't let anything be healthy and normal.

It has to carry it to an extreme where it becomes all-consuming. And so as we live our lives, there's a saying, I don't know if this will make sense to you, it's not how much you own, it's how much owns you.

It's very difficult to properly judge anyone else's life in all of these areas. You have to just judge your own heart and assess your own motivations for why you involve yourself in what you involve yourself in, why you pursue the things you do, the things that you possess.

Is it following, pursuing what the world is, or is it serving God? So the challenge really is that we won't let the world sap the energy and life that we have, because the world will certainly do that.

Transformation Through the Renewing of the Mind

It says, but be transformed. And what is that all about? Well, to be transformed again is an ongoing process. It's not something that you can just flip a switch and you're a different person. You have been given a new life, and that new life has a new character, and that is Christ himself.

Ephesians chapter four, Colossians chapter three, both refer to the new man. Colossians chapter three mentions that you have put on the new man, which is being renewed unto knowledge, or in the knowledge of him who created him, after the image of him that created him.

And so you have this recognition that the creator himself, the risen, sovereign Lord Jesus Christ, in becoming our redeemer has entered into our being to provide, you might say, the template of spirituality, the template of spiritual life.

There's a living image that we are to live out, and we are to be transformed. We're to be changed from what we wear and what the world is around us into what is new, what is new in character, what is different and distinct in character.

And that transformation is by the renewing of your mind, your thinking processes, your attitudes, your character being transformed by the power of the Spirit of God working within you. Now, how does the Spirit of God do it?

Well, it's one of the amazing things, and I'm sure you have experienced this, and if you have seen someone who has been saved, you might say out of the raw, out of the world. It's amazing what changes happen within that person and how their thinking and attitude changes even before they have read very much of the Bible.

And you have to recognize there is a new life within that person. There is a new impulse and new desire created within that person, and the Spirit of God is molding that mind into a whole new set of attitudes.

But the Spirit of God does use the Word of God. And so again, as an ongoing influence in our lives, we cannot, we cannot afford to be negligent. About this Word of God. The Word of God will affect your thinking.

It will affect your motives, your attitudes. And you can't go wrong with meditation in God's Word. So make that a goal, a purpose of life that you are going to nourish and feed that which God has created within you by meditation in the scriptures.

But he also uses prayer as a vehicle of change. As we pray, we are bringing ourselves consciously into the presence of God. And as we are in communion with God, God searches our beings. He exposes us to ourselves, and we become conscious of what is not consistent with him.

And so meditation in the Word of God brings us face-to-face with God. Prayer, communion brings us into that atmosphere in which the Word of God, the truths of God, the principles of God will have an influence and change our thinking.

Christian Fellowship and the Assembly of Believers

But there's another aspect that I think is very, very important. And sadly, it has become one of the weaknesses among the Christians very notably in this generation. And that is the influence of fellow Christians.

God intends that we would have a positive spiritual peer pressure on one another. And that the influence of the assembly meetings and of the fellowship that we experience with one another would have this effect of molding our thinking to what is of God.

And that is why, to me, it is a very sad reality. There is such a lack, such a loss among God's people today because we're not with each other very much. And there is a neglect of the assembly gatherings.

It's become optional. You know, I grew up on a dairy farm when there wasn't very much time for fun and games. In fact, maybe that was one of the drawbacks of my life as I began to have my own family and so on is that I was not play-oriented at all.

Our family was a work-oriented family. Dad was a very hard worker. And I remember, in contrast to our cousins who were also Christians, they would be going off in the middle of the summer in the evening to go off swimming and we would be going out for another load of hay.

But anyway, be that as it may, despite Dad's strong work ethic and business ethics, character, we didn't know what it was to miss meetings. It didn't matter what time of the year it was. Didn't matter whether it was haying season, harvest season, whatever it was.

When a meeting was on, we were there, usually barely in time. I knew often the minute that we started the milking to about a minute or two to the time we would be finished milking and at the time that we would arrive at the meeting.

But that was simply a framework in which my spiritual life grew, that the things of God were first. It was not, at least I never accepted it as some kind of a legalistic bondage, but simply that God's things were first.

And I certainly have no regrets of that kind of influence upon my perspective of what matters in life. So the apostle, as he says this, he says, the outcome of this is so that you might prove, that you might prove by experience that God's will is what is good, is what is acceptable, is what is perfect.

You see, God's principles can be tested. God's ways can be demonstrated to be beneficial, to be a blessing in life. And again, I can only say I have absolutely no regrets that in the measure that God has been recognized and sought after, there has been benefit and blessing to me.

And I think if we're honest, we will recognize that in the measure that we have sought God and sought to live to please him, it has been to our benefit, our blessing, our wellbeing. It's interesting that these three terms that are used here, good and acceptable and perfect, although they're given here as adjectives in the text, they're actually nouns.

That doesn't make much difference in the outcome of the meaning. But just as I gave it to you, it's that God's will is good. God's will is beneficial. His will is acceptable, not only to him, but a blessing to us.

And it's complete, it's perfect. Now, in the verses that follow, he is going to show us what aspect primarily of the will of God that he has in mind. He is really going to integrate us now to our relationships with one another.

Spiritual Gifts and the Body of Christ

And this is one of the important things of the Christian life that sometimes, sometimes we somehow find a little bit of a tear in our life. There's like a break somehow in our life. My relationship to the Lord and my relationship to fellow Christians is not meant to be two isolated worlds, but to be totally integrated.

And the first thing that he emphasizes in drawing our attention to our service for God is that our service in our worship of God in our life is primarily to be lived out in relationship to fellow Christians as members of a body.

And every passage that deals with the subject of spiritual gifts deals within the context of body truth, a body. And yet, I think we all probably, if we're honest, would admit there are times when we would wish that we could just live our spiritual life just between me and the Lord and forget about everybody else.

It would seem so much easier, so much simpler. But that is not the way he has brought us into relationship to himself. Now, first of all, in verse three, there's an emphasis upon how we think about ourselves.

But it's not just simply an issue of being proud or humble about our own selves personally. It is especially in relationship to the spiritual gifts that he has given us. And so he says, for I say through the grace given to me, to every man.

Now, every time this word or this expression is used, it's actually, we might call it generic. It's not necessarily only men, every person, each one. For I say through the grace given to me to each one that is among you, not to think, and notice of himself, at least in my Bible, is in italics, not to think more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly according as God has dealt to every man the measure of faith.

And then he begins to talk about members in a body and each member having a certain function and having these spiritual gifts. And so the grace that he's referring to here and the faith that he's referring to here is not the grace of God in saving us, nor the faith in coming into salvation, but it is the grace and faith involved in our spiritual service.

You could call the grace that is given here the God-given ability, the enablement from God to use a gift that he has entrusted us with. Verse six emphasizes that again, having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us.

Now each one of us has received salvation equally. No one is more saved or has a better quality of salvation than anyone else. The grace of God is common to each one of us in salvation. But when it comes to our spiritual service, the grace or gift of God to us is specific.

And he uses a very logical analogy for us so that we can understand this, of our human bodies. And it's not too hard to figure out that our fingers aren't exactly like our toes and have a little different function.

And our eyes don't have the same function as our ears. And some parts of our bodies may be more significant to us, more valued, more prominent, more attractive. There's all kinds of distinctions and variations.

And yet the important thing that he emphasizes is that each has an importance. And each is needed by the others. And each one needs the others. And so he desires then that we would think soberly about ourselves and not to become self-occupied.

Because self destroys the benefit and the blessing of what God has bestowed upon us. It distorts. And of course, this is the problem that pride being the essential, fundamental sin against God. Pride is the exalting of self, the aggrandizement of myself.

And as soon as I am self-occupied, what God has bestowed upon me is being subverted from God's glory to my glory. And that's one thing that God cannot support. So he is calling upon us then, first of all, to think realistically, soberly about ourselves in view of the fact that he has brought us into a great relationship.

An interrelationship spiritually with one another related to Christ himself. And that each one of us has been gifted to be useful in relationship to Christ and to one another. And God wants to use us for his glory and for the blessing of others.

And so he says in verse four, for as we have many members in one body, and all members of not the same office or the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ and everyone members one of another.

Mutual Care Within Christ's Body

You know, I have come to believe that this is something we have to work at. When something happens in my own physical body, it's not hard for me to be sympathetic. It's not hard for me to be caring. It doesn't really matter which part of my body it is.

The whole body gets focused on looking after that part that's in pain. But if it's my wife that's got the suffering, I have to think about it because I can't physically feel her suffering. But if I am going to live beneficially in my relationship with my wife, I'm going to cultivate being sensitive to her feelings, to her needs, to her wellbeing.

In fact, this is the very character of the life of the body of Christ, that we would recognize one another as being part of ourselves, that we are together part of Christ. Now, it's not hard to be happy with the realization that I am united to the Lord Jesus Christ forever, that I belong to him and that he cares about me and he is committed to my wellbeing and my blessing forever.

But I am to recognize that he has that same interest, that same love for you as he does for me. And so my interest and care in fellow Christians is to be governed by and controlled by what each one is to Christ and to recognize my oneness with one another in him.

And so it says, so we being many are one body in Christ. If we don't get the one part right, all the diversity, all the distinctions are just going to be causes for conflict and problems. But if we can capture the reality that we belong to one another and I exist for your blessing, you are for my blessing.

And all that the Lord is doing through the ministry of his spirit in our lives is to nourish, strengthen and bless each member of the body of Christ. We're to recognize that and live in the control of that relationship.

Now, my time is gone. So tomorrow night, Lord willing, we'll look at verse six to eight at some of these specific gifts and try to help us to appreciate. And one thing I will just comment in closing so that you might think about it a little bit, that every one of these gifts are part of the glory of God, part of the character of God, part of the goodness of God.

Prayer for Transformation and Faithful Service

So that in reality, God has entrusted something of himself for us to administer for the wellbeing of his people and for his glory. Let's pray. Our father, we would draw near to thee. We pray that as we live day by day in this world, that we might honestly acknowledge that we do not belong to it and that we are different because we have become united to the Lord Jesus.

And we share a life that is holy, that is of God, and that we belong to an age that is yet coming, an age where righteousness will dwell, where wickedness will be banished, and where all the consequences of sin will no longer exist.

Our father, we cry to thee that we might experience the blessing of the power of thy spirit in our lives, transforming our attitudes, our character, so that there is a life that will correspond to that hidden life of the Lord Jesus.