"Bridge to Practicality"

Connection from Doctrine to Doing

A bridge is a connection from one place to another, bring two parts together (Mackinaw Bridge)

Paul is setting them up for instruction/correction/exhortation, here taking them from doctrine to doing.

Doctrine is very practical. Teaching is both motivational and guiding.

These 2 verses refer to what’s been said and what’s to come.

What choice do we have? (v. 1)

Answer: Present your bodies as a living sacrifice.

What?

Bodies - life in the body - living

Sacrifice - offering

Holy - sacred, consecrated, wholly dedicated to God

Acceptable - pleasing, what God wants, which Paul will exhort

Why?

They have a choice and a reason.

Appeal - urge, exhort

Therefore - the doctrines of chapters 1-11

Mercies - compassion - summary/conclusion about God from those doctrines.

Spiritual - reasonable, rational, thoughtful

Worship - service

What change do we need? (v. 2)

Answer: Change of the mind, new thinking.

From what?

Alike to this age, something in the past, what we were (1 John 2:15–17 “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.”)

Ephesians 4:17–24 “Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”

To what?

Testing - proving, examining, discerning, making determinations about

What God wants

Knowing it is good (beneficial), acceptable (pleasing), and perfect (mature, complete, without flaw).

From not considering God at all to always considering God.

Doctrinal Doing

The command here is to be always changing/reforming/becoming new…because of what God has done.

Teaching leads to thinking. Thinking leads to doing.

Benediction: Romans 16:25–27 “Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith— to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen.”

Scripture Reading: 1 Peter 1:13–2:12