Jesus, you make everything beautiful in your time, you placed eternity in me.
”You cannot see Me, yet all around you are the signs of My presence. My creation shouts out to all the world proclaiming My Presence. You are constantly experiencing My grace and my love in your life. If you stop to consider, you know I am working all the time. Yet at the same time there is so much hate, pain, sorrow, fear, loneliness in the world. In all that, I am working to make everything beautiful again like it was in the Garden. I am working in your life and in everyone of my children’s lives to renew and beautify you all. It will be finally accomplished when you all are with Me in My glory one day.”
We come today to the great hinge-point in the letter. Up to now Paul has been explaining what God has done for us through Jesus. This has consequences in our lives and this is what He is going to address now. The first two verses of ch 12 summarise the message of the rest of the letter. Please read them: Romans 12:1,2.
Notice verse 1 starts with “Therefore”. In other words what he is going to say now flows directly from what he has said up to now. That was summarised in ch 1:16,17. Everyone, Jew and Gentile have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory and are therefore under God’s wrath. Jesus has come to take that wrath on Himself so that we can be free. All we need to do is accept that, by faith. In the light of that God is calling us to respond. Note that we respond to what He has done for us and His attitude of love, we do not earn it or deserve it, it is all according to His mercy. This order of things is extremely important. We cannot earn our salvation, nor can we earn God’s love and goodness in any way even after our salvation.
So what is the appropriate response to all God has done for us through Jesus? We are not called to go and make sacrifices, as under the Old Covenant. We are called to offer ourselves. Not just our minds or intellect, but our whole bodies to Jesus. What does that statement mean to you personally? He is calling us to place our whole lives at His disposal, nothing less than complete and active surrender to Him. That, Paul describes is true worship. Not just going to church, singing spiritual songs, praying reading your bible. These are all very appropriate things to do, but true worship is giving our whole bodies to Him, every part of our live and thinking.
But how are we going to manage that? It is a huge ask. So it is important to understand that in our own strength we cannot accede to that statement, therefore vs 2 is key. We can only give true worship, offering ourselves completely if our minds have been transformed. When we truly come to know Jesus, our minds are not just changed a bit. They are completely transformed. So only a real, born again Christian can truly, wholeheartedly obey this instruction. And let me say because our minds are transformed we can do this with great joy and relief, as we become part of God’s family and kingdom.
At the same time we still have the battle with our old nature going on and therefore this process, as radical as it is meant to be, grows over time. As we deal with those things that are holding us back. With God’s power, we are able to make this act more and more complete. What does this surrender look like? Well that is what the whole of this last part of the letter is about.
But maybe you should stop and ask yourself today. What does it mean for me to offer my body to God? How does that look? How well am I doing? You will only grow if you are constantly asking yourself this and repenting where you fall short. Asking God to renew your mind and give you guidance and strength to go forward.
God bless you all till next week.