A Living Sacrifice

Intro

This morning we are jumping back into our series on the book of Romans.

So I will ask you to turn with me in your Bibles to Romans 12, this morning we will be looking at verses 1 and 2.

In our study of the book of Romans we have seen the Apostle Paul’s explanation of the saving power of the Gospel.

As Paul writes in Romans 1:16

Romans 1:16 (ESV)

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.

“We are saved through faith”, and Paul has been explaining how that salvation through faith works up until this point in the book of Romans.

But that leaves us with a question: “Once we are saved through faith, what do we do then?”

Do we sit patiently and wait until Christ returns?

Do we just go about our lives and do whatever we want, safe in the knowledge that we have believed?

How then shall we live?

Our passage this morning has the answer to that question.

Romans 12:1-8

Romans 12:1–2 (ESV)

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.

Exposition

A Living Sacrifice (v. 1)

Preamble

Romans 12 really begins a whole new section of the book of Romans.

This section were moving into is where we will encounter a lot of very practical teaching.

But as we will see this morning, even the more applicable parts of the scriptures find their basis in spiritual realities.

Paul begins this new section with these words in verse 1.

Romans 12:1 (ESV)

I appeal to you therefore, brothers,

Paul is urging, exhorting his audience to do something.

And this exhortation is for his brothers and sisters in the faith; this instruction is for believers.

But there’s one very important word here in the beginning of the passage that we mustn’t skip over.

If you were here at our family service last week, you know exactly what it is.

Therefore

That word is “therefore”

You’ll remember from the message last week that when we run into the word “therefore” in the Bible,

it means that what follows depends on what came before it

In our passage this morning that “therefore” doesn’t just point to the passage immediately before this one,

but it points to the entirety of what Paul has written to the Romans up until this verse.

What Paul is about to urge his brothers to do, is in light of everything he has said over the last 11 chapters of this epistle.

So let’s do a very brief recap.

Righteousness through faith (Gospel)

Paul began early on in the book, by establishing the universal sinfulness of mankind.

Romans 3:23 (ESV)

“all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”

and how because of our sin, all of us are justly deserving the wrath of God.

But because of what Jesus did on the cross, we now can receive Righteousness through faith.

This is not a righteousness that is earned by obedience to the law. Because as Romans 3:20 says,

Romans 3:20 ESV

For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

But instead, we can be declared righteous, innocent in the sight of God, through faith in Christ’s death, burial and resurrection.

This is what Paul has just spent the last 11 chapters explaining.

This is what is behind that “therefore.”

By the Mercies of God

So, because of all that God has done, Paul is urging his audience to do something.

But what Paul is about to urge us to do is not done in our own power.

It is not accomplished through raw will.

But he says, “by the mercies of God,”

This means that what we he is urging us to do is empowered by God beginning to end.

The only way it can be accomplished is:

Because of his salvation

By his instruction

Through his power

1. Present your bodies

And here we finally get to the action, what Paul wants us to do.

And he says this,

Romans 12:1 (ESV)

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.

Present your Bodies

See, the Christian faith is not just a state of mind, or an inward faith.

And it’s not just getting your ticket punched so that you can go to heaven when you die.

But genuine Christian faith is lived out through the body.

Here the plural “bodies” is used to make it clear that this is something for each and every individual Christian to participate in.

This instruction is for all of us.

As a Living Sacrifice

And this is how we are to present our bodies:

We are to present our bodies:“As a living sacrifice”.

Paul is drawing on the imagery of the sacrificial animals used in Jewish temple worship in Jerusalem.

Worship through animal sacrifice, was commanded by God early on in the old testament scriptures.

And it was still being conducted by the Jews at the time this letter to the Romans was being written.

But all those sacrifices, though God commanded them and accepted them as worship, were just a shadow of what was to come.

We learn this in the book of Hebrews.

That Jesus, through his death on the cross as the final atoning sacrifice, put an end to the sacrifice of bulls and goats.

Instead of offering up to God a dead animal, we are to offer up to God our living bodies.

And this is not something that is done once, but it something that is done all the time in all things.

As we live our lives we are constantly presenting our bodies to God.

This is a living sacrifice.

Those who have been saved by faith, are to be constantly offering up their bodies to the lord in everything that they do.

Holy and Acceptable to God

And Paul urges that our bodies, these living sacrifices that we offer up, be holy and acceptable to God.

Holiness means “set apart”,

and throughout the Bible, it is a word that communicates purity.

When an animal was chosen for sacrifice in tabernacle or temple worship,

it could not have any blemish, stain or physical defect.

it needed to be the very best; the choice animal from the flock or heard that it was taken from.

If the sacrificial animal met these requirements, the sacrifice would be holy and pleasing to God.

In a similar way, when we present our bodies to God, unstained and unblemished by sins of the flesh,

we are offering up a living sacrifice that is holy and pleasing to God.

We see this same language used in James 1:27, when he talks about what true devotion, true religion is.

James 1:27 ESV

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

By the mercies of God

Now, I think this is a good place to pause and remind you of what Paul said just before he gave this instruction. And were going to come back to this point several times in this message.

That this is all done “by the mercies of God”.

It is done:

Because of His salvation

By His instruction

Through His power

God, because of his salvation given to us through faith in Jesus Christ, has made us righteous, blameless in his sight.

and because of this we are free from slavery to sin.

we saw this when we looked at Romans 6.

We can present our bodies to God as a holy and pleasing living sacrifice because of the salvation he has given us.

But we live out this new life of holiness through being obedient to his instruction,

we will look at this in greater detail in a moment.

But by being obedient to his instruction, we can live unstained by the world, unblemished by sins of the flesh.

And we can only accomplish this through His power.

The power that he gives us through the Holy Spirit,

who empowers us for holy living.

Because of his salvation, by his instruction, and through his power.

By the mercies of God, we can present, offer up our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God.

Reversal of the dishonoured Body

While I was studying Romans 12 for this morning I noticed something interesting:

That this presentation of the body as holy and acceptable to God was a complete reversal of the way sinful man is described in Romans 1.

You’ll remember that in Romans 1, the Apostle Paul begins his explanation of the saving power of the Gospel by describing the sinfulness of man.

In Romans 1:24 he says,

Romans 1:24 ESV

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves,

The sinful man or woman is given up to impurity, dishonouring their bodies through sin.

But what we see here in Romans 12 is a complete reversal of the impurity and dishonouring of the body.

Instead of our bodies being given over to the lusts of our hearts, and to impurity and dishonour,

because of God’s salvation, by his instruction, and through his power, we can present our bodies to him in a way that is holy and pleasing to him.

Where before we experienced salvation by faith our bodies were once dishonourable instruments used for sin,

now, by the mercies of God, they can be used as holy instruments for worship.

Spiritual Worship

And that is what Paul says we are doing when we present our bodies as living sacrifices;

that “this is your spiritual worship.”

For those who have been made spiritually alive through salvation by faith in Christ,

what they do in the body is of spiritual significance.

Though what we do with our bodies is a physical act, it is spiritual worship to the Lord. - That is, if we have been made spiritually alive.

No longer do we worship God at a temple in Jerusalem, but as Jesus told the Woman at the well in John 4,

John 4:23 (ESV)

true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.

If you have received salvation through faith in Christ, Jesus is speaking about you.

Think about it for a moment. What could be a greater offering, what could be greater worship, than devoting one’s life to pleasing him?

This is our spiritual worship, by the mercies of God,

deliberately, willfully, and continually presenting our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God.

2. Not Conformed but Transformed (V. 2)

Orthodoxy vs. Liberalism

But that leaves us with a question: how do we know what pleases God, and what doesn’t?

This question could be answered with an obvious Sunday School answer:

“The Bible”

But I’ll tell you it’s not that obvious to everyone,

this is THE battle that the evangelical church in the western world is facing right now.

The battle between Biblical Orthodox Christianity,

and liberal theology.

You might ask, what on earth do those words mean?

Orthodox just means “Right teaching or opinion”

So Biblical Orthodoxy is teaching that is consistent with the Bible.

That is what we strive to do here at Faith Baptist Church.

Liberal Theology

Liberal theology is something different altogether.

The most basic way I can put it, is that Liberal Theology is theology that emphasizes personal experience over Biblical authority and teaching.

It used to be that churches and individuals embraced liberal theology because they were trying to take into account modern science, reason, and historical thinking.

They rejected the authority of the scriptures because they were trying to be scientific.

This is what happened with many of the mainline churches over the last hundred years or so.

But more recently many churches and individuals have embraced Liberal theology, not because they are trying to be scientific, but because they’ re trying to be therapeutic.

People want God to make them feel good.

They want God to be approving and supportive of them, their whims, their desires.

And so they abandon the authority and the clear teaching of the scriptures.

Either rejecting the Bible outright, or twisting it’s teaching in order to suit their own desires.

Examples of Liberalism

This is actually a good time of the year to see this kind of thinking on display.

Because of the month we are in right now, people who hold to liberal theology often feel the need to get onto social media and make claims about God’s approval of certain lifestyles that God clearly condemns in his word as sin.

But this is just one example of liberal theology, there are many many more.

Liberalism in the Evangelical Church

Liberalism is actually THE issue facing evangelical churches in the western world.

Many once solid evangelical churches and even entire denominations have been flirting with liberalism, and many have given into it totally.

I’ll tell you why I think so many evangelical churches are going this way.

Often, it’s because they want to win the lost,

Well, were supposed to be doing that aren’t we?

Yes we are, but we need to do it God’s way.

See here’s the temptation:

The temptation is to try to win the lost by appealing to that therapeutic desire in them. Win them by making them feel good.

The temptation is to see evangelism as a public relations campaign.

If we get people to like Jesus, then they will believe in him.

If we can get them to think that God’s morals or his desires line up with theirs, then they will think positively of him.

The only way a church can appeal to the desires of a sinful culture, is to downplay or abandon the word of God.

Their philosophy of mission (their missiology) then becomes their theology.

But evangelism is not a public relations campaign.

As one person said, “Were not trying to get people to vote for Jesus.”

That is not evangelism.

Evangelism is the proclamation of the Gospel that is the “power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.”

This is the Gospel that calls sinners to repentance.

Theological liberalism is the effort to make God and his people conform to the world, rather than for the world to be transformed by Him.

It doesn’t matter if it’s being done in order to win the lost, liberalism is not the Christian faith.

Therefore, it shouldn’t be used in order to win people to the Christian faith.

As we see in verse two of our passage this morning, liberalism is the opposite of what Paul urges us to do.

Look at what he says,

Romans 12:2 ESV

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.

Do not be Conformed

The very first line here is “Do not be conformed”

Remember, Theological liberalism is the effort to make God and his people conform to the world, rather than for the world to be transformed by Him.

But Paul here says, “Do not be conformed to this world!”

By “this world” he means the patterns and culture of sin in the unbelieving world.

Do not be conformed to it.

And it is easy to be conformed to it.

Just go with the flow.

For Paul’s original audience here in the book of romans, it was literally “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”

But what are the Romans doing in our own Rome?

In what way is this culture demanding you conform to it?

I’m sure we could all think of endless ways this society wants us to conform to it.

But Paul says, “Do not be conformed to this world, but”

Be Transformed by the Renewing of Your Minds

“Be transformed by the renewal of your mind.”

See God did not save us for us to just simply melt back into the sinful pattern of this world.

God saved us by the blood of his only begotten Son, so that we might be transformed.

And this is not a transformation that we are waiting for after we die,

This is a transformation that begins at the moment we believe, and progresses over the entirety of our lives.

We call it sanctification.

This is the process by which God works to remove sin in our lives and matures us into greater holiness, making us more like him.

We see this same transformation in Ephesians 4,

Ephesians 4:22–24 (ESV)

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.

By the Mercies of God

And this transformation, this sanctification is something that we participate in, this is why Paul is urging us to do it.

But again, we don’t do this alone, we do this by the mercies of God:

Because of His salvation

By his instruction

Through his power

Reversal of the Debased Mind

This transformation is one that involves renewing the mind.

We will get to how that is done in a moment.

But I want to point out that this too is a reversal of the way sinful man is described in Romans 1.

In Romans 1:28 it says this about sinful man.

Romans 1:28 ESV

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.

Sinful man is given up to a debased mind.

But here in Romans 12, we see that because of God’s salvation, by his instruction, and through his power, the believer’s mind is renewed.

Rather than having a debased mind that leads us to what ought not to be done.

We have a renewed mind that seeks to do the will of God, as it says in our passage.

Romans 12:2 (ESV)

that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

You Can Discern the Will of God.

See through this renewing of our minds, we can discern what God’s will is.

It is in this part of the verse that we see how our minds are renewed.

See when Paul says, “you may discern the will of God,” he does not mean that you can discern God’s specific plan for your life.

The renewing of your mind is not to give you insight into what university to go to, or what Job to take, or what to eat for lunch.

That is God’s decretal will, the fact that what he decrees comes to pass.

But Paul here is not talking about discerning God’s decretal will.

Here Paul is talking about God’s prescriptive will.

What God prescribes for us to do.

And where do we find that?

In his word.

We test everything against scripture.

So that we can discern what God’s will is.

So that we can find out what is good, acceptable, and perfect to him.

So that through God’s power, by his instruction, and because of his salvation, we can live according to his will.

Application

See, this entire passage is about obedience to God.

And not obedience in order to earn our salvation.

But obedience because God has already given salvation to us.

We obey because of the mercies of God:

Because of his salvation

By his instruction

Through his power

And we obey through the body and the mind because it is our Spiritual worship.

We obey God in order to worship him.

The Christian faith is not merely salvation from sin and death, it is salvation to a new life. And this new life begins the moment we receive Christ.

And this new life, though it is certainly not achieved by good works, it does lead to good works.

Listen to what the greatest passage about salvation through faith says,

Ephesians 2:8–10 (ESV)

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

See, we are saved by faith, but that faith leads to living a new life of obedience.

Jesus says in his great commission.

Matthew 28:18–20 (ESV)

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

This is what our passage was all about this morning.

Because of Salvation by Faith in Jesus Christ,

Romans 12:1–2 (ESV)

by the mercies of God,

Because of his salvation

By his instruction

Through his power

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.

Conclusion

The Christian faith is not just about where we go when we die, but it is also about what we will do while we live.

Our passage this morning is just the beginning to this new section of Romans that instructs us how to live in light of the salvation that’s been given to us.

The question I want to leave you with this morning is this.

Will you be conformed to this world?

Or will you be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you can present your body as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God?