Whoa, Keith, looks like you skipped
a few chapters there! Yesterday we were in Romans 8, and today we’re in chapter
12! What’s going on?
I didn’t skip any chapters. I
already went through chapters 9-11 when I did a study on how we’re supposed to
relate to the Jewish people, which you can read here if you'd like.
Oh,
the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out!
Who
has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor?
Who
has ever given to God,
that God should repay them?
For
from him and through him and for him are all things.
To him be the glory forever! Amen.
If your theology doesn’t lead to
doxology, then something’s wrong. And then your theology, if it’s orthodoxy
(right belief), should lead to orthopraxy (right lifestyle and actions).
It all starts with the word “therefore.”
Please pay attention to prepositions and conjunctions and other “connecting”
words. After eleven chapters of showing what God has done for us, now he spends
the remainder of the book (five chapters) about how we should live in the light
of this glorious salvation.
“In view of”: When we know about and
think about and ponder 1) where we were, 2) what he’s done, and 3) what he has
planned for us, the only right question to ask
is “What should we do now?” And here’s where we start to answer that question.
First and foremost, you need to
offer a sacrifice. People under the Old Covenant had offered sacrifice after
sacrifice after sacrifice. But there’s a huge difference here. God has no
interest in dead sacrifices any more. He wants living ones. We’re to offer our
bodies (metonymy for
the whole of us) to him as a living sacrifice.
But here’s the thing to keep in
mind. An animal in that culture was extremely valuable. For you to hand it over
to a priest, watch him slit its throat, pour out the blood, and then set fire to
it was a sacrifice that cost you
something. And once you handed that lamb or goat or bull over to the priest,
there was no getting it back. I mean, it’s hard to get wool from a lamb or
milk from a goat after it’s set on fire. That animal had been completely
handed over to God, and you resolved yourself to doing without that animal from
now on. It belonged to the Lord, completely and permanently.
Why am I hammering this home? Because
our living sacrifice is supposed to be as much given over to the Lord as that
animal burning on the altar. I'm supposed to be as much dead to the world, and
alive to God, as that animal. When Paul said
in another context that we're not our own, that we’ve been bought at a price,
he wasn’t kidding. That’s the truth we have to concentrate on and live out.
The problem, as someone once told
me, is that a living sacrifice keeps crawling off the altar. Yes, in a sense I committed
myself to him once and for all when I believed in Christ and submitted to him
as my Lord. But I think that Paul isn’t talking about a once-and-for-all
submission to him. No, it’s a daily thing. Everyday I have to make the choice to deny myself, pick up my cross, and follow
Jesus. Every day, really every moment, I have to decide—in his empowering Spirit—to
give myself over to him as much as that animal.
I have a lot more to say about how
Paul describes this is as worship. That’s for tomorrow. In the meantime, let’s
commit to living like dead animals.
Lord Jesus, it’d be really foolish to
commit myself in any sense to you in my own strength. Only you can give me what
I need to do what you command. But in your strength and power, I’ll offer
myself to you today.
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