Holy and Acceptable to God

Romans 12:1 ESV

1 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.

I remember how excited I was when I first received my call to go into ministry. I couldn’t wait to tell my pastor about the calling that I had received and to tell him how eager I was to fulfill my calling.

He was also excited for me and was willing to share everything that he could with me to help me in my preparation for ministry. He began to let me preach on occasion, lead Bible study, and come with him to visit the sick and shut ins. I really felt as though I was on my way.

After this went on for about a year I sat in his office across the desk from him and I said, “Ok, when can I be ordained and start doing this for a living?” His response almost took the wind out from under my sails when he told me that before I could be ordained, I needed to go to Bible college.

I said, “Why? I’m already preaching sometimes and doing all of the other things that a preacher does, why do I need to go to college?” He responded by telling me that though I was getting some good on the job training, I still needed to know how to effectively do what God had called me to do.

And he was right, as I quickly discovered that while there are some things that I can only learn on the job, there are many other things that I can only learn to do if I am properly educated.

And the funny thing about it is that while I initially despised the thought of going to learn more in the academic realm, now I spend a large portion of my time learning more in the academic realm, even though it’s no longer required for me to earn another degree. Now I want to learn more, because when I do, I’m more effective at fulfilling my God-ordained calling.

That’s pretty much how everything is in life. For example, I might say “I want to play the piano!” and then sit down and try to play. If that happened, what I would discover is that while I want to play the piano, I can’t play the piano because I don’t know how. Somebody must teach me how.

As we will see in our reading for today, the Christian, the one who has truly been changed by God, having received a new heart, a new nature will always desire to know God more, to love Him more, to serve Him more.

But just because that is what we want to do, still, what is required for us to effectively do that is to learn how to do that, and to learn it more and more as long as we live.

This month we will be working through a series of sermons from the from the first eight verses of the 12th chapter of Paul’s epistle to the Romans, and in this chapter, God, our Teacher, reveals to us through Paul what is required for us as Christians to live a truly godly life in Christ Jesus.

And this morning, we are going to be looking at the first verse of Romans, chapter 12 as Paul gives us a general introduction to what this entire chapter is about.

The first thing that we see in the first part of verse 1 is Paul putting forth his appeal to these Christians in Rome where we read:

Romans 12:1a ESV

1a I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice,

Here we see Paul putting forth an appeal. To make an appeal means to make a serious or urgent request. Thus, we know that what Paul says here he does not say passively, kind of like, “You should really do this, but, you know, you don’t have to if you don’t want to.” No, this is a serious request that possesses great urgency.

Now, notice that it says, “I appeal to you therefore…” Something that I always emphasize when I exposit the Scriptures that I know all of you have heard from me before is that when you come to the word “therefore” in Scripture, it’s there for a reason. And what “therefore” always signifies is that the writer is concluding what he has written beforehand.

And when we look at what comes before our reading at the end of chapter 11 what we see is Paul being in utter amazement as he takes in everything that he has written about God thus far in this epistle, in the first 11 chapters.

Paul takes in everything that he has written concerning the justification, the sanctification, and the salvation that God freely gives to His elect people.

He takes in the holiness of God, the total depravity of man. He places the most holy God on one hand, and he places man, born in depravity, deserving nothing but the wrath of God on the other hand, and he recognizes that God has graciously and lovingly taken a portion of this people, His elect portion, and He has saved them.

And He has saved them not because of anything impressive or lovely within us, not because we have impressed Him just enough, not even because, as our Arminian friends will tell us, God looked down the corridors of time and saw who would believe and who wouldn’t believe, no, God saved His elect simply because it is His good pleasure to save them.

We have nothing to offer Him, we are just as depraved as anyone else. So, it’s not like even though we all are equally depraved, there are some of us who naturally resisted our depravity just enough to where we “chose God”. No, that doesn’t make any sense.

The only thing that makes sense is the biblical doctrine that God saves whom He wills and those whom He wills to be saved will most certainly be saved, for God predestined them to be saved.

So, taking all of this in, Paul says, “therefore”, or, in light of this utterly amazing reality, I appeal to you by the mercies of God, or I appeal to you to freely give to God as He has freely given to you. And what Paul appeals us to freely do is “present our bodies to God as a living sacrifice”.

Now, when Paul appeals to us to present our bodies to God, he doesn’t mean to merely present our external selves to God. Rather, “body” in this sense signifies both body and soul. Therefore, what Paul urges us as born-again children to do is to offer to God our entire selves.

Thus, what Paul appeals to us, strongly, vehemently desires us as God’s elect people to do is to willingly, joyfully, devoutly present our entire selves as a living sacrifice, or, to the active, conscious, dedicated service to God, recognizing Him as most worthy of our entire selves. That He deserves far more than we ourselves, so we ought to give Him what we can, and that is every part of us.

And this living sacrifice of ourselves that we are to present to God, Paul describes in the next part of this first verse as:

Romans 12:1b ESV

12b holy and acceptable to God,

Paul appeals to us to offer our very selves to God, and that our offering be both holy and acceptable to God.

Similarly, God had commanded the Israeli to offer the very best of his livestock, that which was most valuable to him, and which was without blemish, because that was the only acceptable sacrifice in His sight.

And what God commands of us today is to also offer to Him that which is holy, without blemish, that which is acceptable in His sight.

But Paul tells us to offer ourselves to God. And at hearing that we may think “If God wants me to offer to Him that which is holy and acceptable, yet He wants that thing which is holy and acceptable to be myself, then I’m just not going to be able to offer Him anything, because I am the farthest thing from holy!”

But you see, we reason that way because we think of something being holy and acceptable by virtue of some kind of outward conformity on our part. In other words, we think that we are holy and acceptable to God only so long as we are absolutely obedient to God.

But you see, we can’t be absolutely obedient to God, that’s why Jesus came and was perfectly obedient to God on our behalf. What we could not and cannot do, Jesus done for His elect people. And because of what Jesus done our behalf, we those whom He has chosen before the foundation of the world to salvation have now been made holy and acceptable to God, by God.

Thus, when Paul commands us as God’s elect people to offer ourselves to God and then says that what we offer will be holy and acceptable, he is not at all inconsistent, but rather, that which he speaks of is completely factual and logical.

And because we have been made holy and acceptable by God, it is most natural that the worship that we offer to God be worship that is consistent with our new God-given nature.

For this reason, Paul says at the end of our reading that when we offer our entire selves to God as a living sacrifice as a result of being made holy and acceptable by Him, what we partake in is our spiritual worship.

Well, what is our spiritual worship? Let me explain it to you this way:

Let’s say that there is a man who is perpetually asleep. He sleeps through anything and everything, and because he is always sleeping, he onlydoes those things that someone who sleeps does.

He snores, he drools, he rolls from his back to his side, to his stomach, he even talks in his sleep on occasion; but that is all that he does; because the only things that he can do are those things that one can do while he is sleeping.

Now, let’s say that this man who perpetually sleeps is somehow miraculously awakened one day and because he is now awake, he should, of course, do those things that one who is awake does.

I know that the only things that he is used to doing are snoring, drooling, and dreaming, but now he’s awake, so he needs to get with the program and start doing the things that people do when they are awake. In fact, because he is awake, he is expected to not do the things that he does when he sleeps while he is awake.

Because he is awake, it is expected that he will notwalk around snoring and drooling. Rather, because he is awake, the expectation is that he will act like he is awake.

And in the same way, if we have been made holy and acceptable by God, then it is expected that we act like those who are made holy and acceptable by God.

When Paul says that presenting our entire selves to the service of God is our spiritual worship, what he means is that because God has made us holy and acceptable, it is only right, it is only fitting, it is in fact expected that as regenerated people, we give God preeminence in all things.

In other words, as people who have been eternally changed by the power of God, we are to now willingly and joyfully give our entire selves to God.

We no longer live in darkness, but instead, we have been raised to new life, eternal life! We are now children of the light! And as children of the light, we must have God at the forefront of everything that we do.

Beloved, God has made you His children, children of the light, therefore, let us walk as those who live in that light!

Amen?