A Living Sacrifice — Gaining a clear understanding of one of the key texts in Romans

Speaker: 
Andrew Fountain
Date: 
Sun, 2022-03-20

Video cover image by Sanjay C CC0

  • In two beautifully compact verses, Paul gives us a new “rule of life” for living under the New Covenant and lays a foundation to everything that follows about the gifts of the Spirit.
    —a perfect summary of what it means to be part of the new people of God.
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Sermon Slides - A Living Sacrifice — Gaining a clear understanding of one of the key texts in Romans

  • We have been doing our Old Testament series for over a year now
  • From time to time we have been taking a break, and looking at what is different in the New?
  • This week we will look at how the sacrifices in the O.T. were replaced not only with Jesus, but also with each of us being “living sacrifices”
  • Later in Romans Paul tells us God’s plan for the church is that every single person has something to offer
    • Not just a few special people who are gifted
  • But here in Romans 12, Paul says something before he starts talking about the gifts
    • We have to sort this our first
    • the level of commitment

Goal

To open our eyes with excitement to one of the key verses of Scripture
and to be motivated to commit to its message.

  • I’m going to go through it three times:

A Living Sacrifice

  1. An overview, seeing what it means and how it fits together
  2. Step back and see the big picture
  3. Ask what it means in practice

1. An overview, seeing what it means and how it fits together

Romans 12

  1. I appeal to you therefore, brothers,
    • by the mercies of God
    • to present your bodies a living sacrifice
      • holy and pleasing to God
      • which is your reasonable service
  2. and do not let yourself be conformed to this world
  • but let yourself be transformed by the renewing of your mind
  • that you might discern and approve what is the will of God:
    • what is good, and well-pleasing and perfect
  1. “Therefore... by the mercies”
    • There is a ‘therefore’ to link with what has gone before
    • This is about God’s mercies
      • we were lost, slaves to a self-centered way of living
      • unable to please God
      • heading for destruction
    • God looked down on us and had compassion
      • at tremendous cost to himself he gave his son Jesus
      • Not only did he forgive us, but adopted us into his family
      • and has an amazing destiny for us
  • At this point I’m going to develop the translation a bit:

Romans 12

  1. I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters,
    • by the mercies of God
    • to present your whole beings a living sacrifice
      • 100% dedicated and bringing joy to God
      • which is your service that makes complete sense
  2. and do not let yourself be pressed into the shape of this world
  • but let yourself be continuously morphed by the renewing of your mind
  • that you might recognize and be 100% in agreement with the will of God:
    • what is good, and well-pleasing and flawless
  1. Now we come to our response
    • There is a switch—God has given himself for us, we give ourselves to him
    • But they are totally different:
      • Jesus was a “dying sacrifice” for us—that was agony
      • We don’t have to die—ours is a joy
    • “bodies” is used here for the whole being, —he is not trying to drive a wedge between our mind and our body.
    • “reasonable service” KJV & NET, or “rational sacrifice”?
      • the word means “it makes logical sense”, it is totally reasonable.
      • the word for “service” is the same as the priests serving in the temple—we are not only the sacrifice itself, but also the priest who offers it up! And it all makes sense!
  2. This looks like transformation into the new, not the old
    • It is stopped by the opposite happening—we are conformed to this world
      • back problems: shape of car seat
      • shape of the metal sides of the car (not hand crafted by elves)
      • literally means shaped by being with something
        • so it’s hard for us to transform, because we are being continually pushed back into the old shape
    • The word transformed is metamorphosis.
      • We are morphing into something different
      • Think of superman
      • Think of transformers
      • Think of caterpillar to butterfly
    Two things to note:
    1. it is a continuous process (slow motion transformation...)
    2. It is done to us
    So what stops this? and what makes it happen? —the shape of the world pressing us
    • Oh, and it’s your mind not your body. (body still looks the same!)
      • One day it will be the body as well
      • for now it is your inner world that being radically changed
  3. The goal is becoming shaped to the beautiful will of God
    • We become in tune with God’s will
    • This is not so much about having a revelation of his will, as being in tune with it
      • The word means to examine something and be in 100% agreement with it at the end
    • Both you and God agree that it is good, brings pleasure, and is flawless
  • So that is an overview
  • Now we will step back and see the big picture

2. Step back and see the big picture

Old Covenant New Covenant
Boundary markers defining God’s people The Law Faith in Jesus
  • Circumcision
  • Food laws
  • Sabbath and other special days
  • Sacrifices
  • Priests to serve God
  • Government
  • Ten Commandments
  • The Temple
  • Presence of the Spirit
  • Jesus is the replacement for all of this
    • Joined to him by faith, the imprint of his love is on us, shining out
  • Outline of Paul 9–11, 13—
  • Relates to 10 commandments and Government:

Romans 13:7–9

  1. Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed.
  2. Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.
  3. For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
  • food laws: loving the weaker brother or sister

Voluntary

The Old and the New

  • Old People of God
  • The New People of God
  • What is the new rule of life?
Old “Do this and live” Lev 18:5
New “present your bodies a living sacrifice” Rom 12:1

3. Ask what it means in practice

  • So that’s the theology, what does it actually mean for us today?
  • Jesus defined what it looks like
  • I am going to make you do some work now!

Questions

  1. What does it actually mean in practice to be a “living sacrifice”?
  2. What does “this world” mean?
  3. What are the pressures that conform us?
  4. How do we go about getting transformed?
  5. What are we morphed into?
  6. How does recognizing God’s will actually happen?

Romans 12:2

  1. and do not let yourself be pressed into the shape of this world
  • but let yourself be continuously morphed by the renewing of your mind
  • that you might recognize and be 100% in agreement with the will of God:
    • what is good, and well-pleasing and flawless
  • If you recognize it’s beauty and rightness, you will be excited and want to do it!

Parallel Colossians 3

  1. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices
  2. and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.

2 Corinthians 4:

  1. So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.

Romans 12

  1. I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters,
    • by the mercies of God
    • to present your whole beings a living sacrifice
      • 100% dedicated and bringing joy to God
      • which is your service that makes complete sense
  2. and do not let yourself be pressed into the shape of this world
  • but let yourself be continuously morphed by the renewing of your mind
  • that you might recognize and be 100% in agreement with the will of God:
    • what is good, and well-pleasing and flawless
  1. Let’s pray these words to God right now, making this commitment
  2. Let us make a commitment to be morphed into Christ this week
  3. Ask God to change our perception of what is the beauty of God’s will “my food is to do the will of God”

Updated on 2022-03-20 by Andrew Fountain