God's Worth, Our Reponse

God’s Goodness, Our Response

In Chapter 11 in Romans, Paul was talking about the plan of salvation and how us gentiles have been included in Christ’s death for us resulting in eternal life. At the end of Romans 11 Paul praises God for his greatness and exclaims that glory belong to him forever and ever. After this Paul writes, “

New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update Chapter 12

Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.

Paul urges us to present our bodies a living and holy sacrifice, which mean to strive to give our self completely to God, to be acceptable to God, some translations say to be pleasing to God. This holy sacrifice is our spiritual service of worship as the verse states. How does us worshiping God and us living lives that are acceptable to God connect? We have a similar scenario in Romans 2:4. Paul says,

do you think lightly of the riches of God’s kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance?

New American Standard Bible: 1995 update. (1995). (Ro 2:4). La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

It is clear from this verse that God’s kindness towards us is to make want to repent from our ungodly ways. But again, why should our desire to repent or honor God result from God’s goodness to us?

It connects because when we see God as worthy of worship, we automatically have the desire to honor and respect God, which then naturally leads us to want to turn from our God- dishonoring ways and live lives that honor and respect God and, to live lives that God is happy with and glorifies him. God’s goodness leads to our worship, and within our worship comes a desire for us to live a God-honoring life.

In Jonathan Edward’s book, “ The End for which God created the world”, Edwards asks,

“How much honor and respect should be given to God? How much should all created intelligent beings honor God? And how much should God honor himself? How much respect should be shown to God through all the actions which are performed in the created universe? What degree of honor should be given to God through the vehicle of his providential care in the whole universe of being? What degree of respect does God deserve to receive for and through his acts of creating, preserving, using, disposing, changing, or destroying?”

Now, we respect and honor those things that we deem as good. From the outside, a passer-byer that looked at Jesus on the cross may have deduced that Jesus was probably a very bad person, therefore he was deserving and worthy of punishment. Yet Christians today knows that Jesus was actually a good person, and therefore he would be not be worthy of a death on a cross, but would be worthy of praise and honor. Looking from the outside, whether or not Jesus’ death was justice or injustice depends on whether we think Jesus was good or evil.

Similarly, How good we think God is will determine how much we will want to honor him with our lives. Some see God as not that good, and so only regard him in few parts of their life. Others see God as evil so they pay no mind to him at all. But Others find it their greatest joy and deepest desire to honor God with every single part of their lives because of the surpassing greatness of God, this seems to be the case for Jonathan Edwards who goes on to say the following, “

The Creator is infinite. He has all possible existence, perfection, and excellence, therefore he deserves all possible honor and respect. In every way, God is first and supreme. His excellent qualities are the supreme beauty and glory, the original good, and the fountain of all good. He is worthy to reign as the supreme head of all existence with an absolute and universal dominion. Since he is God over all things, every other being is appropriately subordinate to him, depending upon him for their very existence.

It is, therefore, fitting that every other being in existence show God the proper honor and respect he deserves in everything they think, say, or do.”

In Romans 3 Paul is talking to those who are clearly not yet Christians and Paul says that the general kindness of God towards them should lead them to repentance. God’s general goodness to us is the fact that every breath we breathe, every friends we have, every family we love, every food we taste, and every type of weather, entertainment, and every comfort we enjoy, is directly from God.

In the context of romans 12 Paul urges our worship to about God has saved us gentiles.

When we fully begin to realize the greatness of what eternal life is, and how much greatly is will be than this life, and how much wrath our sin deserved and was taken on the cross by Jesus, we then fully begin to realize of much honor, glory and praise should be shown to God through our lives.

We are saved already, our works do not save us. Yet, if we have the holy spirit in us, we will see God as surpassingly great and great towards us and we therefore will think it fitting that we respect God in everything we think, say, or do. If we have the holy spirit, the thought that our lives and glorify and honor God will excite us. We will rejoice when we get an opportunity to “Submit all of our ways to God” as proverbs 3 commands.

And if we have the holy spirit working in us, we will want to

present our bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is our spiritual service of worship.