Paul, the writer of Romans, begins chapter 12 with some very strong language. Paul is intensely urging, strongly summoning, even beseeching his audience. He is begging them to grasp hold of, and respond to God’s incredible mercy. And this same urging reaches out to us as we read Paul’s words today.
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Romans 12:1-2
As Paul says in verse 1, it all begins with God’s mercy. Mercy is the very deep, tender love and compassion within the heart of God. The depth of God’s tender love and compassion draws each of us and calls us to a personal response.
Offer your bodies
Our response is to offer our bodies to God. Today, we tend to think of this in terms of giving ourselves wholeheartedly to God – rather than “presenting our bodies as a living sacrifice.” So in order to grasp the significance of Paul’s words here, we need to understand something of the culture of Paul’s day.
In Greek thought, your body was unspiritual. They understood the spiritual part of you to be inside you – your spirit-being – but not your body. They therefore thought that it really didn’t matter what you did with your body, as long as your inner spirit-being was okay. So you could indulge in all kinds of promiscuity or sexual sin, or gluttony or any other outward thing, and it just didn’t matter because your body was “unspiritual” anyway.
So there was a separation between the outer body and inner spirit. The outer body was unspiritual – and therefore bad – but the inner spirit was spiritual and good.
Then along comes Paul and says our body actually matters – and what we do with our body matters too. This was a very radical thought! (Paul addresses this same issue in 1 Corinthians 6:12-20.)
God is still asking us to give absolutely everything about our lives to Him – both what we see as good, and also what we see as bad. The things we see as ‘spiritual’ as well as the things we deem ‘unspiritual.’ The unbroken parts of our lives but also all the broken parts.
Holy and pleasing to God
We tend to think of ourselves as anything but holy. Why on earth would God accept me with all my garbage and baggage? Yet Paul says that giving myself 100% to God is holy. It’s pure and clean, simply because it’s given to God, and becomes HIS. And He is the one who is pure and clean.
Not only is it holy, it’s also well-pleasing to God. Our offering becomes a special, sweet, beautiful aroma to God. That’s because we are fully responding with our whole selves to Him. And remember, it’s all because of His deep, tender love and compassion for us!
Seeing ourselves from God’s perspective
God’s love and acceptance of us is incredible. But it also challenges us to think differently about ourselves.
Maybe there are areas in your life that you have held onto because you don’t think God would be interested in your “rubbish.” But that’s not what these verses say. Paul is quite adamant that our proper response to God’s mercy is to offer our whole lives – both the good and the bad – as a sacrifice to God. And that God is absolutely delighted when we do this.
Once we give everything to Him, we are genuinely able to see ourselves in a new light – and the garbage we have accumulated will no longer hold us back. All it takes is full surrender.
