As you know, in January we have been racing through the book of Romans, covering every chapter in one month; that’s our plan – Sunday morning, Sunday evening, Wednesday nights. You will remember the main divisions of the letter. Chapters 1 through 3 – the bad news of sin and misery. Chapters 3 and 4 – the good news of God’s provision of righteousness in Christ available to all who believe. Chapters 5 through 8 – the implications of the good news with special emphasis in chapter 8 in particular on the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the believer’s sanctification. Then chapters 9 through 11 that we concluded this morning reflect on the Gospel in light of God’s plan to save sinners from every nation, begun in the electing purposes of God in eternity and fulfilled through the great work of global evangelism in a glorious ingathering of Jews and Gentiles, reaching to the ends of the earth and promised in our future.
Now the next section of Romans, which we begin this evening with a look at chapter 12, runs right through chapter 15 and it deals with various aspects of the Christian life, of life in the church of God or the church in the world. The first eleven chapters were largely theological in their character, but now we’re going to see that emphasis changing somewhat from the primarily theological to the primarily practical and ethical. If you’ll look for a moment at our passage this evening, Romans chapter 12, I want you to notice that verse 1 rather sets the context for everything else he is about to say, certainly in chapter 12, but perhaps even in the remainder of the letter. “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God.” The “therefore” in verse 1, “I appeal to you therefore,” harkens back to everything he has been saying in the chapters preceding this one. The mercies of God have been his great theme for eleven chapters. The vistas of mercy that Paul has shown us, they’ve been breathtaking, haven’t they? Mercy spanning eternity in divine election, reaching down into the depth of human lostness and depravity and sin to save hell-deserving sinners like me and you by the obedience and blood of Christ. Mercy that spans the globe and reaches the world for Christ so that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. It’s all mercy. And as we saw this morning at the end of chapter 11, as Paul sees the wonder and beauty and grandeur of the mercy of God on a global scale, it makes his heart sing in gratitude and adoration. He bursts into doxology – “O the depths of the riches and the wisdom and knowledge of God.”
But now having sung his praise at the end of chapter 11, here in chapter 12 verse 1, he says, “In light of all that, in light of all the mercy layered one on top of the other, the manifold mercies of God, here are the implications. Here is the ‘so what.’ In light of God’s mercy, therefore here is how we must live.” He says in effect in chapter 12, the mercies of God make us look in three directions. First in verses 1 and 2, they will make us look upwards to God in consecration. God’s mercies make us look upwards to God with the consecration of our whole lives. Secondly, verses 3 through 8, we should look inward at ourselves, assessing ourselves in humility that we might be of service. So we look upward to God in consecration, we look in at ourselves in humility, then thirdly, verses 9 through 21, we look outward to one another and toward the world in love. Look upward to God in consecration, look inward at ourselves in humility, and look outward to one another and to the world in love.
That’s where we’re going tonight. Before we read the passage and unpack those headings, let’s bow our heads as we pray together. Let us pray.
Our Father, come now, we pray, that we might hear by the ministry of the Spirit of Christ, our Savior’s voice speaking to us, directing our steps. We are hungry. Would You come and nourish us by Your Word. Make us bread from heaven and water from the rock. We come to You prone to wander, Lord we feel it; prone to leave the God we love. Direct our steps in the way everlasting, for we ask it in Jesus’ name, amen.
Romans chapter 12 at verse 1. This is the Word of God:
“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.
For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.
Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’ To the contrary, ‘if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.’ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
Amen, and we praise God for His holy, inerrant Word.
Let’s look together at verses 1 and 2, first of all, where Paul calls us to look upward to God. He exhorts the Romans, notice carefully, “by the mercies of God.” He is talking, as we said a moment ago, about his sweeping survey of God’s Gospel mercy in the chapters leading up to this one. And he presses our duty in this chapter, notice this carefully, in light of all that mercy that God has shown. So mercy is the engine that drives Christian duty. If we get that wrong, we will misfire as we seek to be obedient to God. We will rely on our own energy and strength and power. But the great motive force that drives Christian obedience to duty is the mercy of God gripping the heart and propelling us forward in His service. Not regret, not guilt, not ambition, not the opinion of others – the mercy of God toward us in the Gospel of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. In view of God’s mercy, he says, first of all I want you to look upward to God.
Notice the two parts of his exhortation. In verse 1 he calls us specifically to a consecrated life. And secondly in verse 2, the way we are to do that is by a transformed mind. So consecration and transformation. Consecration first – verse 1 – “Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” Romans 11:33-36 teaches us that true worship involves doxology. It is a doxology – it’s glory words; words of praise. Romans 12:1 teaches us that true worship also requires the consecration of our whole lives. This is worship now in its widest sense. Not just the offering up of praise regulated by God’s Word in the solemn assemblies of the church, but the entirety of our lives, lived for the honor of God every single day.
And don’t miss the place of the body in Paul’s exhortation in verse 1. Do you see it? We mustn’t minimize that. We live in a very body-negative time, don’t we? It’s a time when people struggle with terrible body image problems, when others believe that the body with which they were born does not determine the gender with which they identify. The body, at least in much contemporary thought, actually not unlike the body in ancient Greek thought, the body is a problem for people today from which we are all seeking escape. But that is not at all the Biblical view of the body. Paul says, no, we are to offer our bodies, not just our brains, not just our words, not just our spirits – our bodies are to be offered to God. We are not souls stuck, housed in the prison of flesh. That is not the Biblical view. We are soulish bodies. We are embodied souls. And the worship of the heart, of the inner self, is always expressed in the actions of the body, isn’t it? You’ve been singing with your body. You are looking at Scripture, I hope, with your eyes. Even more I hope you are engaging your brain. Our bodies are at play here. We worship with our bodies. Conversely, Paul urges us not to yield the members of our bodies as instruments to sin. Sin and obedience play out in our bodies. Consecration to God is something that happens not just with our heads but with our whole selves. So when he says, “Offer your bodies,” he is calling us to entire consecration – inside and out, mind and heart, will and affections, head and eyes and ears and tongue and hands and feet. Every single part of us given up to the honor of God. “Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small. Love so amazing, so divine, demands” – what? “My soul, my life, my all.” That’s what Paul is calling us to. That’s his view of Christian consecration.
How should we respond to the mercy of God in sending His Son to obey and bleed and die in your room and place? Well to be sure, the worship of an hour or two on Sunday matters and you cannot ever safely neglect it. But if the hour of corporate worship isn’t the climax and expression of a whole life given up to the worship of God, a whole self surrendered to the honor of God, well then the worship of that hour on Sunday can never hope to please God. It can never please God. Have you come to the place in your Christian life, I wonder, where you are willing to say to God, sincerely and from your heart, “Take my life and let it be, consecrated Lord to Thee. Take my moments and my days and let them flow in ceaseless praise. I want to be wholly Yours, all the time consecrated to Your glory and honor.” The mercy of God, Paul says, requires and calls for nothing less.
And Paul calls it, this act of consecration, this life of consecration, he calls it our “spiritual worship.” Do you see that language in the text? The word “spiritual” there, you might notice in your ESV translations, there is a little footnote. That word can sometimes be translated either as “spiritual” or “reasonable” or”rational.” It’s the Greek word “————-.” Epictetus, who was a first century Stoic philosopher, said, “If I were a nightingale, I would do what is proper to a nightingale. If I were a swan, I would do what is proper to a swan. In fact, I am ———–, so I must praise God.” The only fitting response, the only logical answer to the mercy you have been shown is to give everything in the service to Jesus Christ. There is no room in Paul’s vision of the Christian life for half-measures and moderation. The claim of mercy, mercy’s just due, is the consecration of all of you and all of me. Jesus wants it all, all the time, every day in every area of your life. He claims absolute Lordship. Consecration is how we are to respond to God’s mercy. And how could we withhold anything that we are or have seeing that we have been so loved, that such mercy is ours? He gave His Son for you – what would you give for Him? Consecration.
Then, transformation. Look at verse 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.” Here’s how we can live this consecrated life – not conformed to the world but transformed by the renewing of our mind. The “world” there – “Do not be conformed to this world” – the “world” doesn’t refer to the globe. Paul isn’t talking about geography. He’s talking about this present evil age, dominated by sin and human rebellion against the rule of Jesus Christ. The “world” here is shorthand for self regulated humanity. It is the universal system of natural human thinking and natural human living, governed by the prevailing unbelief and sin that rules our hearts. That’s the world. And the world is constantly exerting pressure on us, isn’t it?
J.B. Phillip’s paraphrase, you may know, gets at that point brilliantly. Phillips paraphrases verse 2, “Do not let the world squeeze you into its mold.” That’s what the world, this system of unbelieving thinking and values and ethics is always trying to do to us, isn’t it? Have you felt its pressure enforcing conformity, pressuring us, squeezing us to conform? Your classmates will laugh at you if you pray before you eat lunch at school. Your so-called friends will exclude you if you refuse to cross the line with them in their use of alcohol. Parents, we can feel enormous pressure to break the Sabbath and compromise our witness and neglect the worship of God and give us the rest to which we are called on the Lord’s Day because sports practice and competitions have been scheduled for our children on the Sabbath Day. And on and on and on it goes. The world is organized to squeeze Christians into its mold and push us away from obedience to Jesus Christ. And we can feel that pressure very keenly sometimes, can’t we?
Well Paul is calling us here to an alternative path, to a different way. Do not be conformed to the world. Do not let it squeeze you into its mold. Instead, he says be transformed. Be transformed. For the grammar nerds among you, “transformed” there is a present passive imperative verb. In other words, Paul says literally, “Go on being transformed.” It’s not a one and done event, a sudden flash of transformation. God doesn’t zap us into holiness. It is the incremental process over time of slow, spiritual, moral change and it is a change that has its center – look at the text – in the mind. “Be transformed by the renewal of your mind.” The “mind” there of course refers to the internal command and control center of the human personality. You want to live a life consecrated to God so you can be a living sacrifice that is holy and acceptable to Him? You need your mind renewed. You need a new mind.
Paul actually uses the same language in 2 Corinthians 3:18 that shows us a little more how the renewal of our minds take place. He says, “We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.” How do you get a new mind? How are you transformed? You gaze long at the loveliness of Christ. You make Him your study and preoccupation and your delight. You give yourself to knowing Him as He comes to you in holy Scripture, resolving to be like Him, God helping you. Adoring Him, loving Him, seeking His face and seeking to be pleasing to Him. Looking like Christ, Paul says, we are transformed into the same image, from glory to glory, piece by piece over time, made like the one we study. You sometimes hear people say that about old couples who have lived together for decades and decades and decades. They love each other. They’ve made each other the constant study of their devotion so that they begin to look like each other; they resemble each other and they act like each other. The reflection of the one can be seen in the other. That’s what Paul is saying. You get like Jesus by fixing your eyes on Him. Look to Christ in His holy Word and He will renew your mind.
Pleasing God, notice, is the end and the goal of this whole grand project of transformation. He wants us to honor Him, live according to His will. You see that at the end of verse 2? Verse 2 is talking about the discovery for ourselves by lived experience of the moral will of God for our lives. The way you come to do and be what God commands in Scripture, the way you learn to live it out, how to go about it, what it means to kill sin and obey God’s law, the way all of that happens is by the renewal of your mind. So listen, a closed mind, a mind that doesn’t want to learn or to think deeply, to know the Bible, to love doctrine, to grow in understanding, to grasp who Jesus is and why He came and what it means to follow Him, a dull, lazy mind that shuts down and switches off under the ministry of the Word of God, a mind like that cannot produce transformation in our lives. In fact, it offers very little resistance to the world, the predatory world, as it constantly seeks to squeeze us into its mold.
And so the first direction in which we are to look – do you see this in the text – in view of God’s mercy is upward. We are to look to God in renewed consecration, having our minds renewed and our lives transformed. The second direction in which we are to look you’ll see in verses 3 through 8. First, look up to God. Secondly, look inward to yourself in humility. Look up to God in consecration and in at yourself in humility. Verse 3 makes it clear the subject now is how we think about ourselves. “I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith God has assigned.” God knows well how prone we all are to self absorption and self obsession. Isn’t that so? Either we want to promote ourselves, boast in ourselves, push ourselves forward not infrequently at the expense of others around us that we may deem less than us, or we put ourselves down, we doubt ourselves, we discount ourselves. We conclude that we are worthless, useless, insignificant.
And Paul here actually is rebuking both extremes. We are not to think of ourselves more highly than we ought, but we are to think of ourselves with sober judgment, accurately reflecting the gifts and graces that God has granted to us and deploy them humbly but unapologetically in His service. Pride and false modesty, self pity and insecurity are all here excluded. And the reason this sober self-assessment is so important Paul illustrates by the metaphor of one body with many members. Do you see that in verses 4 through 8? Not all the members of the body have the same function and neither do we all have the same gifts or roles or ministries. Our gifts differ according to the grace given to us and we are to use what gifts we have, not complain about what gifts we don’t have or what gifts we wish we had. You’ll notice Paul lists prophecy, service, teaching, exhortation, contributing financially, leadership and works of mercy in his brief survey of spiritual gifts. This is not an exhaustive list; it’s a sample, a standard list.
Notice the gifts here fall into two broad categories. There are gifts of Word ministry – prophecy, teaching and exhortation – and gifts of deed ministry – leadership, service, contributions and mercy. The two offices of the New Testament church, elders and deacons, broadly correspond to those two lists of gifts. Elders and deacons are to embody and exercise teaching and leadership gifts and mercy ministry gifts. But Paul expects these gifts to be found and used throughout the congregation of God’s people by every member as they are distributed according to the purpose and will of God. You may not be able to teach, but you can serve. You may not be able to contribute much financially, but you can exhort. You may not be able to preach the Word, but you can do works of mercy. Understand when Paul says, “So God has gifted you; get busy serving,” he isn’t saying the church should create titles and provide name tags and establish committees with a budget for everyone’s needs and interests so that everyone can have a ministry and feel important. Paul certainly isn’t promoting an attitude that sits back with arms crossed waiting for the church to create ministry opportunities for us. No, Paul is saying that if you are a Christian, God has already gifted you for modest ministry in His service, so get busy! Use your gifts. Serve the people around you that God has placed in your life. Reach out to the lost.
You know we have groups here that go weekly to the county jails, that go to Methodist Rehab to share the Gospel. You could join them; they would be delighted to have you. But you have many in your work life, in your home life, in your family, on your street every day who need to hear from you about the good news of the Lord Jesus Christ. Pray. Pray. We have weekly prayer in this church for global mission. We have an intercessory prayer team that meets here at 5 o’clock every Sunday and they would be overjoyed to have you come and join them. Give generously and sacrificially for the work of the church. Practice hospitality. Open your home. Care for the poor. We partner with ministries all over the city to help the needs of those less fortunate than ourselves. A team goes regularly to Gateway Rescue Mission – serves and assists in worship, opens the Scriptures. You can teach the Bible. I know our children’s ministry is desperate for helpers. Our Sunday Schools for adults, our small groups, our women’s ministry are always looking for gifted, capable Bible teachers. But to do any of that we need to practice both humility – so prideful entitlement, the sense that we deserve to be given place to, that’s the death nail of faithful, fruitful ministry, so there must be humility. And boldness – we may have been given gifts for service, but if we’re not willing to step forward and use them for Christ’s sake, we will make no difference with them.
And so Paul wants us to look upward to God in the consecration of our lives and then he wants us to look inward at ourselves with sober judgment, appropriately assessing and evaluating ourselves, practicing the grace of humility so that we may use our gifts for the blessing of God’s people rather than to make a name for ourselves. And then thirdly in verses 9 through 21, he wants us to look outward to one another and toward the world in love.
You’ll notice the contrast between good and evil holds verses 9 through 21 together. Do you see it in verse 9? “Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.” Verse 17, “Pay no one evil for evil but gift thought to what is honorable in the sight of all.” Verse 21, “Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good.” The good life that does not embrace evil, that does not repay evil with evil, that overcomes evil with good, the good life, Paul wants us to understand, is a life of love. Verse 9 – “Let love be genuine.” Verse 10 – “Love one another with brotherly affection; outdo one another in showing honor.” Living a life that is consecrated to God, that thinks of itself with humble, sober judgment, that kind of life is expressed and lived out in community in love. A love – notice this carefully – that goes beyond feeling and on into practice. It’s about pushing past mere affection for one another into outdoing one another in showing honor. Christopher Ash says, “Although Christianity that does not begin with the individual does not begin, Christianity that ends with the individual, ends.” That’s helpful. Let me say it again. “Although Christianity that does not begin with the individual does not begin” – we all individually, each of us on our own must respond to God’s offers of mercy and grace in Jesus Christ; it begins with the individual if it is to begin at all. “Although Christianity that does not begin with the individual does not begin, a Christianity that ends with the individual, ends.” That is to say, someone who claims to be a Christian but is utterly self absorbed, has privatized their faith in Jesus, never seeks to serve, cares nothing for those around them, does not love the brothers, does not have a broken heart over the lost world, such a person gives the lie to the profession that they make. A Christianity that ends with the individual, ends. It’s not the real thing at all.
And did you also see in this passage, part of the passage, how Paul blends together, he almost alternates back and forth between exhortations for how we should treat one another within the church and exhortations for how we should treat those outside of the church who are often hostile to us. Verses 9 through 13, mostly full of exhortations to love the members of the church, to contribute to the needs of the saints, to practice hospitality. And yet right in the middle of all of that, he talks about tribulation and being patient under affliction. Verse 14 opens, “Bless those who persecute you.” He’s thinking about those who are in opposition to the church and to the Gospel. Bless them; do not curse them. And then verses 15 and 16 go back to exhortations to live in harmony with one another in the local church. Then he swings back again, 17 through 20, “Do not take revenge on enemies but live peacefully towards all people as far as it depends on you. Never avenge yourself but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘’Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’” Instead, be kind to your enemy. Isn’t that counter-cultural? It will blow people’s mind in their hostility and animas toward you when you respond to their hostility with kindness. And so he says be kind to your enemy, “and in so doing heap burning coals on their heads.” Be Christlike towards those who are outside and you will awaken their conscience. Show them such kindness that you might actually yet be the instrument under God of doing them some lasting, eternal good. “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
Look, here’s the point – Faithful Christianity, Christianity really shaped by the Gospel, that is lived out in view of God’s mercies, Christianity like that never circles the wagons. It never hunkers down, hoping to keep the big bad world out. We’re not to live in a safe little churchy bubble, only ever called to serve those who are called upon to serve us. You can’t have a heart, you see, that beats with genuine love for the people of God that does not also beat with love for the lost who do not know God. We are not yet living in view of God’s mercies, not yet living as sacrifices consecrated to God, with renewed minds and transformed lives if we are only focused on our little circle of Christian friends and we do not ache with compassion for those around us on our streets, at our workplaces, in our classrooms that are going to hell because they don’t know Jesus. They may be hateful, hurtful, horrible people, but do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Outlove them, outserve them, because that is the pattern Jesus gave you, He gave us. First Peter 2:23, “When He was reviled, He did not revile in return. When He suffered, He did not threaten, but continued entrusting Himself to Him who judges justly.”
That’s the pattern to which Paul exhorts us to conform our lives into which we are being transformed as our minds are renewed – likeness to Jesus. And when the world sees it, it has no explanation at all for it. It heaps burning coals on their heads. It stirs their conscience. It makes them say, “What is it with her? With him? You care. They don’t care. You know my children’s name. No one else seems to care about my children. You pray for my family when I’ve just been mean as spit to you every time we interact? You try to be helpful. You serve me. You live with the values of another world. And I see it, I’m an alien and a stranger to that world. I know nothing of it, but man, I wish I did.” God may yet use you to awaken the conscience of someone hateful, hurtful, horrible though they may be. You may yet as you love them in Jesus’ name heap burning coals on their consciences and awaken them to their need for Christ.
So do you see the vision of the Christian life that Paul is beginning here in chapter 12 to paint for us? It is lived upwards in consecration to God. It looks inward at self and it assesses self with sober judgment and in humility seeks to serve those around us, not looking to be given place to, given a name, given a platform – simply seeking ways to be a blessing. And it looks outwards at God’s people and outwards beyond them to the lost, hostile world, loving them in Jesus’ name, resolving to repay evil with good to the glory and praise of Christ. May the Lord help us, all of us, this week to begin to live such a life by His grace and in view of God’s mercies. Let’s pray.Our God and Father, we confess that we love ourselves often to the exclusion of our neighbor. And we think of ourselves more highly than we ought and we consecrate our lives on the altar of worldliness far too readily. So now, as we bow before You, we cry out to You for forgiveness in view of Your mercies. We’re bold to ask for it in view of Your mercies because You have provided Your Son, our Savior for our pardon and cleansing. So, O God, in view of Your mercy, wash and cleanse us, renew us, strengthen us, send us from here freshly determined to serve and love those around us – in our families, in our communities, in our workplace, in our classrooms – to be Your instruments of Gospel good. So help us, hear us, and go with us, for Jesus’ sake, amen.