A Call To Total Consecration (12:1-2).
‘I therefore plead with you brothers, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service. And do not be fashioned according to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.'
Paul calls on the Roman Christians to perform an act of priestly service (latreian), on the basis of God's many mercies revealed earlier, by offering their whole beings as a living sacrifice, totally devoted to God (holy), and free from all spot of blemish (acceptable), something which it can be through the righteousness of Christ given to His people.
‘Therefore.' He pleads with his readers on the basis of the mercies of God that he has been outlining. These have included being accounted as righteous through faith, having received the gift of the righteousness of God in Christ, having been crucified with Christ and having been raised again in Him, having received newness of life, having experienced the power of the Spirit at work within them, and having been conjoined together with Christ and with each other, in the olive tree of the true Israel.
They are called on ‘to present (yield, compare Romans 6:13; Romans 6:19) their bodies as a holy and acceptable living sacrifice to God.', being united with Christ in His sacrifice of Himself (Romans 6:3-11). They are thus to see themselves:
· As presenting to God (yielding) their bodies (that is, themselves physically) as a living freewill offering (to be a continual offering that never dies but is continually and willingly offered), thus dying to themselves, and being totally committed to Him. They must not only be willing to die for Christ, but to ‘die daily' (Luke 9:23), so that He might live through them (Galatians 2:20). In view of Romans 6:1-11 this must include the idea of dying with Christ and rising with Him in newness of life, so as to serve Him fully. The sacrifice is a living one because the offerers partake in Christ's risen life. They walk in newness of life (Romans 6:3). The verb ‘present' is in the aorist. In one sense it is once for all, but because of our own weakness it has to be an act constantly repeated.
· As being totally set apart to God in order that He may take possession of them (being made holy). It is to be a ‘holy' sacrifice, one totally set apart to God and endued by His Holy Spirit, seen as something Wholly belonging to God. Its very holiness should prevent any possibility of again becoming involved with ‘the course of this world'.
· As being acceptable to God through receiving the righteousness of Jesus Christ. The only acceptable sacrifice to God is now through our Lord Jesus Christ, on the basis of His redemption and atonement. As a result they are made without spot or blemish in His sight, and they are called on to make that a reality in practise.
· This is their spiritual/reasonable service. The word logikos can signify both spiritual and rational. The worship of the Christian has to be both. It is positive worship, carried along by the Spirit, coming from the heart (unlike much of the old formal worship), and it is rational, coming from a transformed, rational mind. The Christian should never be foolish.
So this presenting of themselves to God is to be their continual act of spiritual service, evidencing the work of the Spirit within them, and their offering is to be holy and acceptable to God in all that they do. Just as the Old Testament sacrifices had to be ‘holy and without blemish' so must the Christian sacrifice. Nothing less is worthy of God. Our lives are to be such therefore that at any moment they could be presented to Him and be seen as totally acceptable in His sight.
The words translated ‘spiritual'(logikos) can also mean ‘reasonable'. And this life of dedicated and practical worship is to be lived out in a spiritual and rational manner by not being conformed to this world (or ‘this age'), with its desires and lusts and vanities (thus by not having the mind of the flesh), but instead, by being transformed by the renewal of their mind (responding to the mind of the Spirit, by responding to the life of Christ within them - Romans 6:3; Romans 8:9-10) so that they might demonstrate to the world and to angels and to men, (and to themselves), the good, acceptable and perfect will of God. It is a call to total submission and yieldedness.
The concept of sacrifice must not, of course, be overpressed. Only Jesus Christ could be a guilt offering and an atoning sacrifice. We are, therefore, more to be seen as whole offerings, thanksgiving offerings and freewill offerings, excluding the atoning element that even they necessarily had within them, for in our case, full atonement having already been made by Christ, no further atonement is necessary. The element that Paul has in mind is the total offering of ourselves in ‘new life', having died with Christ and risen with Him.
‘Present your body.' This counteracts much of the teaching around at the time among Greek speaking people which considered the body as evil, and but the prison-house of the spirit. According to their ideas it was the release of the spirit by various means that could finally involve them with God through a series of intermediaries. Paul renounces such an idea. He emphasises that we are to offer our bodies directly to God.
‘Do not be conformed to this age.' The Christian lives in an age when sin is paramount, and when the world is ruled by the desires of the flesh, by the desires of the mind, and by false ambition (the pride of life). See 1 John 2:15. An age when it lies in the arms of evil (or of the Evil One). See 1 John 5:19. Notice the passive voice. The unbeliever is not in control of his life. He is controlled and shaped by the spirit of the age, indeed, ‘the spirit now at work among the sons of disobedience' (Ephesians 2:2). But the Christian has died to these things in Christ, and has risen to newness of life. He no longer has any part in them. He does not allow himself to be controlled by the world's straitjacket, but is free to live a pure and holy life for Christ. And this is possible because he has been transformed by the renewal of his mind. He is renewed in the spirit of his mind (Romans 8:2-16), and ‘has put on the new man which, after God, has been created in righteousness and true holiness' (Ephesians 4:23-24). He walks in newness of life (Romans 6:3-4). He no longer sees things as the world sees them. He does not look on the things that are temporal, but on the things that are eternal (2 Corinthians 4:18). He has ‘the mind of Christ' illuminated by the Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:16). But in saying this we must not overlook the fact that the mind of Christ is especially revealed in His teaching in the Gospels. Anything that is not fulfilling that is not the mind of Christ.
‘Good, acceptable and complete.' By their minds being transformed they will understand what is fully required by the will of God, thereby ‘proving' in their hearts 1). what God will see as good, 2). what God will see as acceptable, 3). and what is perfectly in accord with God's will.