Brief Textual Application

Text:  Romans 12:1-8

Liturgical Date:  3rd Sunday after Epiphany, 2007

Calendar Date:  January 21, 2007

Title:  Justifiable Legalism:  A Marriage Made in Heaven, Part 2

Series:  Transformational Christianity:  God’s Design for Discipleship

Text’s Intention:

            Paul is exhorting the Romans to offer their bodies as living sacrifices in worship to God.  He is really asking the people to be transformed by this giving over of their bodies.  In this giving stop conforming to the world and unite with the body of the church and apply their gifts.

Text’s Mood:

            This is an exhortation from Paul in which he is teaching.  He is doing his best to appeal to and motivate the Romans.  It is a scolding to anyone that would think more highly of themselves than the whole of the body and, at the same time, he is assuring them that we have gifts through the grace of God and His mercies.

Text’s Genre and Purpose:

            This text is an epistle.  Its purpose is to teach how we as Christians should live.

One Possibility for a Law/Gospel Dynamic:

            To take the call to transformation and discipleship and emphasize the mercy of God in three different spaces in time or narratives (Past, Present, Future).

Goal for the Sermon:

      That the hearers are moved to buy-in to the proposition that a structure for discipleship is not only helpful, but essential. (from Pastor Seidler’s Template)

Proposed Sermon Structure:

• Transformed by mercies of God (Past)
• Introduce by talking about coming to faith, living faith up to today
• Child and adult convert.
• Talk of my own walk up to today.
• Incorporate details of Biblical Knowledge, Doctrine, Practice, and Mission into the introduction.
• We are united in faith in God's salvation history.
• One God, one will
• Transformed by mercies of God.  (Present)
• Present bodies – physical, emotional, spiritual in all of life and relationships.
• This is worship of God in service and loving others.  Not conformed to this world.
• We live in this world but have residence in heaven
• Examples of "transforming" in our own means.
• Seek our own internal transformation.
• Only partially engage transformation.
• Transformation in Body of Christ which we are all part of.
• Individual personalities good – no cookie cutters.
• Different gifts all under grace of God.
• Different level of faith all under grace of God.
• Different service all under grace of God.
• One God, one will for all in body of Christ.  Body of Christ is bigger than just me, letting me both see transformation and model transformation to others.  The body works even with individual limitations. 

• Transformed by mercies of God. (Future)
• Discipleship at Concordia Kirkwood
• Purposeful – transform whole bodies and lives as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God.
• Biblical Knowledge
• Doctrinal Knowledge
• Practice of Christian faith
• Mission and Ministry