I am writing up reflections on my devotions every day for six weeks. This is one of those posts.

Psalm 28 is not complex poetry, though it is beautiful. David opens with a plea for mercy, asking Yahweh not to destroy him alongside the wicked. He spends some time describing the wicked men he has in mind—men who do evil, who are hypocrites toward their neighbors, who do not regard Yahweh’s works as they should. Then he praises Yahweh for answering that plea. It is not the propositional content in and of itself that gives the psalm its particular value; these ideas are found throughout the Psalms, as well as throughout Scripture. Rather, it is the particular way David put them together, and the particular response for which the psalm calls.

Poetry is designed not merely to communicate content but to move the heart.¹ The fear of judgment is heavy in the first section. The second sequence paints a vivid picture of the men David has in mind. I described them above, but the poetry works far better on its own terms:

Do not drag me off with the wicked,
with the workers of evil,
who speak peace with their neighbors
while evil is in their hearts.
Give to them according to their work
and according to the evil of their deeds;
give to them according to the work of their hands;
render them their due reward.
Because they do not regard the works of the Lord
or the work of his hands,
he will tear them down and build them up no more.

David wants nothing to do with these kinds of people, and he wants very much not to be like them. He wants God to judge them, and he yearns not to be judged himself. So when he comes to the second half of the Psalm, we should feel the change. “Do not drag me off with the wicked… he will tear them down and build them up no more. / Blessed be Yahweh!” The sharp transition, the sudden turn from the fearful expectation of judgment toward praising Yahweh, should catch our attention and make us demand an answer.

David supplies us the answer, of course, in beautiful phrases:

For he has heard the voice of my pleas for mercy.
The Lord is my strength and my shield;
in him my heart trusts, and I am helped;
my heart exults,
and with my song I give thanks to him.

The Lord is the strength of his people;
he is the saving refuge of his anointed.

The plea David offered to begin has been answered. Our plea with David has been answered. Yahweh saves. But the response is not simply an acknowledgement of a fact: This is true. David’s response is exulting and singing. Exultation is elation and jubilation. This salvation warrants more than mere recitation of facts or even some degree of happiness. It deserves the kind of excited joy that comes bursting out of the heart in uncontainable song.

Yahweh saves. Hallelujah. Hallelujah!

I am writing up reflections on my devotions every day for six weeks. This is one of those posts.

Matthew waits until he is some 16 chapters into his text¹ to start explicitly saying what the whole book has said implicitly thus far, and what the annunciation at the beginning proclaimed loud and clear: Jesus is the Messiah, the one to whom all the hopes and expectations engendered by the Old Testament pointed. “Who do you say that I am?” he asks. And Peter’s answer, ringing down through the ages, is still breath-taking in its assurance and simple truth: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”²

Most of the sermons I have heard on Matthew 16 focus on Peter—on his statement of the bedrock truth of our faith, or on his need of rebuke just a few verses later, or even on the question of Petrine authority over the church. Not many stop to notice how pivotal this chapter is in the flow of Matthew as a whole. Not many recognize that for the first time, Jesus openly accepts being called the Messiah, and openly proclaims what the Messiah will do—that is, die. Yes, Peter first got it amazingly, remarkably right and then got it equally amazingly, remarkably wrong. But at least as important here is the picture of who the Messiah is and what he is about.

Matthew spent 15 chapters getting here—laying the foundation in Jesus’ teaching, his miraculous healings, and specific fulfillments of some prophecies and “filling up” of others³—so that when Jesus acknowledges Peter’s claim, the reader is not only unsurprised, but delightedly saying, “Yes!” because Jesus’ words and actions to this point confirm everything the prologue declared to be true of him. This is important, in no small part, because then Matthew turns around and hits the reader in the face with the unexpected: Jesus plans to be crucified.

Who plans that? Peter’s confusion is understandable (even if his response was ultimately so wrong that Jesus aligned Peter with Satan for trying to prevent it). No one plans to be crucified. But this Messiah does. Good thing we’re already convinced he’s the Messiah.

And then? Then Jesus tells us that whoever wants to follow him—whoever wants to “come after” him—needs to embrace that same cross. The call to follow this Messiah isn’t a call to immediate glory, and a kingdom of this world. It is a call to self-sacrifice, to lose the world and gain one’s soul. It is a call to live in such a way that when the Son of Man returns with his holy angels in judgment, we will not be ashamed.

As I closed yesterday: Lord come soon!—but in light of his coming, how shall we live? Come and die, he says. Come and die.

I am writing up reflections on my devotions every day for six weeks. This is one of those posts.

Eschatology is a big word, but it’s an even bigger concept. The things to come —the things we do not yet see fully—are hard to grasp. Not so hard for us, perhaps, as they were for those who came before us. In Genesis 15, Abram¹ received a number of promises. None of them were exactly easy to believe: here he was, closing in on a century old, and his always-barren wife in the same category,² and God promises him a child from his own body. More than that, God promised him descendants that would outnumber the stars, or the sand on the seashore.

That promise has been fulfilled. In fact, it has been fulfilled doubly: first by the nation of Israel, in the course of her long history from Abraham to the time of Christ, and then through those many of us who have been grafted in since then. Just as Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness (Genesis 15:6), so we have been counted righteous as we believe God, and now the number of those from the nations dwarfs even that of the Jews.

There is another promise there that wasn’t fulfilled, though—at least, not all the way. In verses 18–21, God promises Abram that his descendants will inherit a massive territory. Israel never did, though. The Hebrews’ national territory, relatively substantial though it was at its peak, certainly never made it anywhere near the Euphrates on its eastern edge. Some might take this an example of the Bible’s fallibility. I don’t; I take it instead as a picture of things yet to come.

This kind of eschatological situation is common in the Bible. A promise is made, and the fulfillment comes, but only in part, never wholly. Even the Messianic promises, which we often think of as fulfilled in Christ, remain incomplete. They found their first and partial fulfillment in his first coming, just as the promises to Abraham were fulfilled first, partially, in the nation of Israel, and then again more fully in the nations (you and me, unless you’re a Jewish convert), and then finally someday when Jesus returns and the New Jerusalem is here on earth.

It is not a stretch to say that “eschatological hope”—mouthful though the phrase may be—is one of the defining characteristics of Christians. We are the people of “already but not yet” who are incomparably glad of what God has already done and impossibly hopeful about what he will someday do.

The nation of Israel got a taste of what the final fulfillment will be like as Jesus walked among them. Matthew 15 reiterates what Matthew 11 first made clear: Jesus is the one who fulfills the promises of God’s final setting things to rights—the mute speaking, the crippled healthy, the lame walking, and the blind seeing. But they did not see it finished. Jesus did not heal every person on the earth; we still have the mute and crippled and lame and blind among us, and all of us yet will die.

But there will come a day when he comes back, and those promises to Abraham are fulfilled in their entirety at last, and the hopes engendered by a prophet offering healing in the first century in Israel are realized. No more tears, no more sorrow, and we will worship our King and enjoy unbroken fellowship with God and one another in the New Jerusalem.

Hallelujah. Lord, come soon.

The following paper was prepared for my Greek Syntax and Exegesis class, taught by Dr. Benjamin Merkle. I hope even the non-Greek scholars out there can get at least some profit from it.

Download

Please enjoy the paper in PDF, EPUB3, or Kindle format for more convenient reading!

Introduction

The faithful Christian must ask every day: “Believing in Christ, how shall I live?” The gospel grounds and shapes the Christian life, but the issue of how best to apply the gospel is often vexing. The interplay between the elements of salvation is sometimes difficult, both intellectually and experientially. The relationship between justification, sanctification, and glorification is complex. The experience of justification and sanctification while awaiting glorification is often painful or perplexing. Knowing, then, how to live day by day—even in a broad ethical sense—can be a major challenge for the believer who is both free from the power of sin and yet forced to confront and reject its alluring promises over and over again.

No less challenging is the question of how to discern God’s will, especially in areas that are morally neutral or ambiguous. Few passages in Scripture speak clearly to the issue, and even the examples that do exist are more often perplexing than illuminating. What exactly were the Urim and Thummim? Should believers cast lots to make decisions? What exactly did the apostles and the church at Jerusalem mean when they wrote, “For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us…” (Acts 15:28)? These are not merely academic matters. Believers must understand how relate to God, one another, and the world if they are to glorify God in their decisions.

As Scripture makes clear, believers cannot begin to tackle these challenges without first understanding what God has done. Only then can one begin to walk out the painful path of sanctification, and only as one grows both in knowledge and in holiness can one begin to discern God’s will in matters of everyday life. Key to understanding these realities is Paul’s thought in Romans, and key to the relationship between them is Romans 12:1–2, where the apostle transitions from theology explained to theology applied, and explains clearly the relationship between the content of the gospel and the believer’s right response to the gospel.

Context

Historical-Cultural Setting

Paul’s letter to the church at Rome is set against the backdrop of Roman rule, addressed to believers living in the center of Roman cultural and military power at or near its height.¹ This situation, though not substantially affecting the interpretation of Romans 12:1–2 itself,² does shed some light on the structure of Paul’s letter and on his choice of practical excurses in the latter section of the epistle. Specifically, the cosmopolitan nature of Rome led two realities to dominate the letter.

The first is the relationship between Jewish and Gentile believers, who seem to have been struggling (at times sinfully) to relate to one another rightly in light of the Messiah’s advent. Given the major emphasis on God’s saving relationship to both Jews and Gentiles throughout the theological consideration earlier in the book, especially in chapters 9–11, Paul’s audience was almost certainly a mix of Jews and Gentiles. The freedom professed by non-Jewish believers in the early Christian community clearly conflicted with Jewish mores drawn from the Mosaic law.³ Much of the hortatory material in the letter is concerned with resolving this conflict.

The second, which set the context for many of those ethnic and cultural conflicts, was the ever-dangerous cultural and spiritual pressure of Roman life in the middle of the first century. In particular, Greco-Roman practices of cultic and familial worship⁴ (especially the imperial cult and temple)⁵ form the backdrop and supply the cultural framework for much of the rest of Paul’s instruction following these verses. These practices were antithetical to both Jewish law and Christian doctrine. Thus, Paul’s admonitions here at the very beginning of the hortatory section of the epistle should be understood in light of these realities. When he writes to the “weak” and “strong,” he is accounting for the challenges that confronted newly mixing ethnic groups with radically different cultural and ethical backgrounds. Likewise, when he reappropriates cultic language, he borrows from both Jewish and Gentile understandings, and then reconfigures them.

Literary Setting

The exhortation offered in 12:1–2, although originally addressed to a Roman audience, is remarkably broad in character—so much so that its immediate applicability to all believers is immediately obvious.⁶ As such, it is far more important to understand the literary context of the passage than the cultural conditions under which the epistle was constructed. The epistle is broken into two major sections, framed by typical epistolary preliminaries and concluding materials.⁷ The preliminaries, as is characteristic of the Pauline epistles, serve to introduce Paul and his calling. The conclusion of the book is concerned with Paul’s appeal for aid in his upcoming missionary journey to Spain, along with his greetings to the people with whom he was acquainted in the church at Rome.

The first major section (1:16–11:36) is a lengthy expository discourse, in which Paul explains his view of the gospel and defends it at length. He variously addresses questions of individual justification and sanctification, the relationship between the Mosaic covenant and the new covenant of grace instituted by Christ, and the relationship between Jew and Gentile in this new era. Though this section is overwhelmingly explanatory in nature, Paul occasionally punctuates the progression with brief asides into hortatory material—asides to which he returns at great length once he concludes his argument. This treatise-like section of the epistle ends, in typically Pauline fashion, with a doxology (11:33–36).

The second major section (12:1–15:13) consists of a series of hortatory excurses related to the theological points Paul makes in the expository section. The various components of this second discourse are not a set of pareneses connected to the previous discussion and each other only insofar as they each relate generically to the indicatives of the gospel.⁸ Rather, they build on each other, and each ties back to specific elements in Paul’s explanation of the gospel—especially to the notes he sounded on the relationship between individual salvation and the people of God, and on the relationship between the Jews and Gentiles under the New Covenant. In each case, the indicative aspects of Paul’s gospel lead directly to the imperatives with which he now enjoins the Roman believers.

Within this overall structure, Romans 12:1–2 marks the transition from the first section of the book to the second, and thus from expository to hortatory discourse. As such, it serves as a heading for all of 12:1–15:13, and provides the reader with a gauge for how Paul will proceed. It also emphasing the continuity between explanation and exhortation in Paul’s thought. The imperatives he introduces are not a set of rules separate or distinct from the gospel he preaches. Rather, they flow organically out of it and depend on it, and it necessarily includes them.⁹

Exegesis of the Passage

Romans 12:1–2 is a straightforward text, evoking a minimum of controversy.¹⁰ On the basis of God’s mercies, Paul exhorts the Roman believers to offer themselves as a sacrifice to God. They are to accomplish this self-sacrifice by rejecting the pattern of the world and being transformed by their minds being renewed, until they can rightly discern (and obey) God’s will. This pattern of self-offering for the glory of God then serves as the matrix through which all of Paul’s following exhortations are to be understood. The passage consists of a transitionary (discourse boundary) marker, followed by two major hortatory statements: “present your bodies as a sacrifice” and “do not be conformed… but be transformed.” The use of καί here marks the second clause as subordinate; people present their bodies by means of rejecting the world’s pattern and undergoing the renewal of their minds.¹¹ In the latter case, the statement is a compound construction with ἀλλά connecting the pair as a single unit, so that the first command (“do not be conformed”) and the second (“but be transformed”) must be understood as two halves of the same exhortation.

Transition

The first phrase (Παρακαλῶ οὖν ὑμᾶς, ἀδελφοί, “I exhort you therefore, brothers”) clearly indicates a change in topic and the transition from exposition to exhortation. The first-person present use of the word παρακαλέω is common in Paul’s letters and frequently marks the beginning of a new section in his letters.¹² Moreover, the word clearly indicates the transition not only from one topic to another, but from one kind of discussion to another: from indicative-heavy exposition to imperative-heavy exhortation. Similarly, the use of the vocative and the doxology that concludes the previous section (11:33–36) are both strong discourse boundary markers. The presence of all three of these makes for an exceptionally strong indication of the change in rhetorical approach at the beginning of chapter 12.¹³

The word παρακαλέω can mean “comfort,” “beseech,” or “exhort,” depending on the context. In Paul’s fifty-four uses, thirty besides Romans 12:1 are taken to mean “exhort”;¹⁴ most commentators agree that the same meaning is in view here.¹⁵ Paul is not merely suggesting or recommending, but strongly urging his audience to act in certain ways in response to the gospel. As throughout the letter, Paul addresses his audience in the plural (both the direct object ὑμᾶς and the vocative ἀδελφοί); these commands are to be carried out by each individual as they participate in the life of the congregation.¹⁶

The postpostive conjunction οὖν typically carries the meaning “then” or “therefore.” While a few commentators suggest that the word here serves simply as a transition word with no connective force,¹⁷ most argue that the word should be taken with its full explanatory force.¹⁸ Indeed, given the massive shift in topic and Paul’s careful presentation of topics, each one building on the previous, it is nearly inconceivable that the word does not have its full connective force. Furthermore, the word appears in just the same way as a causal connective elsewhere in Paul’s epistles (Eph. 4:1, Col. 3:1, 1 Thess. 4:1, 2 Thess. 3:6).¹⁹ The question is not whether οὖν links the latter section of the letter to an earlier section, but how far in each direction its force proceeds. At the very least, it includes all of chapters 9–11. More likely, given the exhortations that follow and its position at the transition between major sections of the letter, οὖν indicates that Paul views all of 1:16–11:37 as the basis for the entirety of 12:1–15:13.²⁰ As such, each part of Paul’s exhortation flows out of God’s completed work in Christ, rather than resting on human efforts for self-improvement.

The second phrase (διὰ τῶν οἰκτιρμῶν τοῦ θεοῦ, “by the mercies of God”) has been variously taken as modifying either the opening verb (παρακαλῶ, “I exhort”) or the following verb (παραστῆσαι “to present”).²¹ The former seems more likely: The mercies of God are the grounds for Paul’s exhortation to the Roman believers. Although some commentators have suggested that the mercies of God are the means by which believers are enabled to perform the actions Paul enjoins, or even the agency behind his own actions, it makes more sense to take the phrase as indicating the basis of all Paul’s instructions going forward.²² Indeed, Paul’s reference to “the mercies of God” clearly points back to the previous section of the book, especially 9–11.²³ Again, the exhortation is not hanging freely, but is itself a part of the gospel—a part that cannot be removed without doing harm to the gospel itself.

Present your bodies as a sacrifice

Paul now moves to the first of two imperatives, instructing the believers to present (παραστῆσαι) their bodies (σώματα) as a sacrifice (θυσίαν). The sacrifice is to be living, holy, and pleasing to God (ζῶσαν ἁγίαν εὐάρεστον τῷ θεῷ). Almost every word in this sentence is laden with cultic overtones; each was used in Greco-Roman culture and Hellenistic Judaism to refer to the offering of animal sacrifices in the temples.²⁴ However, Paul makes a pair of surprising moves, here. First, he instructs the believers to offer their own bodies as the sacrifice. Unlike the usual cultic practice, Christians do not offer up something else, but their own persons to the worship of God. Paul’s use of σῶμα here probably refers to the whole human person, but in such a way as to emphasize the physicality of human worship, thereby preventing possible misreadings of Paul’s elaboration on the mental aspects of worship in verse 2.²⁵

Second, he qualifies “sacrifice” with three terms²⁶—two of them are typical cultic terms (ἁγίαν, “holy,” and εὐάρεστον τῷ θεῷ, “pleasing to God”²⁷), but the third (ζῶσαν, the first in the sequence) is rather surprising.²⁸ Cultic sacrifices were killed in the act of offering; the Christian sacrifice goes on living, for Christ already accomplished the only death of this strange new cult. The sacrifice that Paul calls believers make is giving themselves—the totality of their embodied existenced—wholly over to worshipping God. As Moo puts it, “In Rom. 12:1… the sacrifice we offer is not some specific form of praise or service, but our ‘bodies’ themselves. It is not only what we can give that God demands; he demands the giver.”²⁹

Nearly all commentators take the final clause in this phrase (τὴν λογικὴν λατρείαν ὑμῶν) as standing in apposition to the entire clause beginning with παραστῆσαι. That is, the whole act of offering oneself to God is the believers’ λογικὴν λατρείαν.³⁰ The best meaning of the phrase λογικὴν λατρείαν is contested, since the semantic range of both terms is broad: λογικός can mean both “rational/reasonable” and “spiritual,” while λατρεία can mean both “service” and “worship.”³¹ Given the flow of Paul’s argument (particularly noting that he steps almost immediately into a discussion of the transformation of the Christian’s mind), the phrase is best taken as “reasonable worship,” where the worship that a believer offers is doubly fitting. It is an appropriate response to what God has done, and it rightly reflects the rational and volitional nature of humans beings.³² Paul has thus transformed worship from a single, morbid act in the temple to an ongoing, physical and volitional design for all of life.

Aside: On the Tenses and Meanings of παραστῆσαι, συσχηματίζεσθε, and μεταμορφοῦσθε

Many commentators have emphasized the aorist tense of παραστῆσαι, arguing that the tense indicates that believers are to offer themselves up decisively in a once-and-for-all action.³³ This view cannot be sustained, however. First, as both Moo and Schreiner comment, nothing in the context suggests such a usage; indeed, the use of two present tense imperatives in the following verse militates at least somewhat against such a reading.³⁴ Second, and more significantly, at no time in the New Testament is παρίστημι used in the present tense outside the indicative, whereas it appears thirteen times in the aorist in non-indicative moods. The act of “presenting” seems to have been telic by nature, and thus defaulted to the aorist tense outside the indicative. In context, then, Paul’s exhortation to the believers to present their bodies as a sacrifice should almost certainly be read as bearing the same ongoing force assigned to the other imperatives. In each case, this ongoing sense the “ongoing” character of these actions is suggested by the context alone.

Not Conformed but Transformed

The second major imperatival phrase, or rather, pair of phrases (μὴ συσχηματίζεσθε… ἀλλὰ μεταμορφοῦσθε… “do not be conformed… but be transformed…”) explains and elaborates on the first.³⁵ How exactly are believers bodies to be presented as this kind of sacrifice? Paul supplies a double answer, noting both what believers must reject (the pattern of the age) and what they must embrace (the renewal of the mind), strongly contrasting the two by splitting them with the “strong adversative” ἀλλά (“but rather”).³⁶ Both commands correspond to profound alterations in a believer’s nature, for although the Messianic age has broken into the present age, the tension between the two ages in which the believer lives remains severe.³⁷ Thus, resisting the daily siren call of the world and living in light of Jesus’ finished work marks a deep change in the depths of a person’s nature.³⁸ No one can offer the reasonable worship owed to God and still be persistently shaped by the age of rebellion against his good authority.

Likewise, to “be transformed” (μεταμορφοῦσθε) is not merely to acquire information and respond at some superficial level, but to experience a radical alteration of one’s mind. Just as human reason was progressively marred by the aftereffects of the Fall as sin increased (Romans 1:18–25), so human reason is progressively restored by the Spirit as holiness increases.³⁹ The latter half of this clause (τῇ ἀνακαινώσει τοῦ νοός, “by the renewal of the mind”) is a fairly straightforward and therefore largely undisputed construction. The transformation to which believers are called to submit comes about by means of renewal (taking τῇ ἀνακαινώσει as an instrumental dative), and it is the mind itself that is the object of renewal (taking τοῦ νοός as an objective genetive). As in Colossians 3:10 and Romans 8:29, the renewal of the human person centers on Jesus Christ, into whose image the believer is being transformed.⁴⁰

The final major structure in the compound sentence (εἰς τὸ δοκιμάζειν ὑμᾶς τὸ θέλημα τοῦ θεοῦ…, “so that you may be able to discern what is the will of God”) marks the purpose Paul has in mind for the believers’ rejection of this age and transformation by renewal of the mind.⁴¹ As sanctification proceeds, Christians come to more fully understand the will of God. Indeed, the transformation produces Christians “whose minds are so thoroughly renewed that [they] know from within, almost instinctively, what [they] are to do to please God in any given situation.”⁴² The final clause (τὸ ἀγαθὸν καὶ εὐάρεστον καὶ τέλειον) stands in apposition to τὸ θέλημα τοῦ θεοῦ, explaining that Christians discover what the will of God—that is, they discern what is good, pleasing, and perfect.⁴³ The Christian is thus called to resist the world and pursue holiness—both ends in which he is utterly dependent on God—and promised that if he does so, he will know the will of God.

Application

Paul’s exhortation is sufficiently straightforward that, quibbles over shades of meaning aside, the commentators agree on the substance of the passage. The challenge comes in putting into practice Paul’s commands. Submitting the entirety of one’s life as an act of worship to God is no mean task; it requires enormous humility and perseverance. The world, though being transformed by the in-breaking eschatological age, still presses in on the believer with the temptations and demands of the old age. The old, fallen mind that characterized the believer before regeneration fades only slowly. The renewal of the mind is almost never an overnight transformation but instaed a gradual experience along the path of sanctification.

It is no coincidence, then, that Paul spent so much time on the indicatives of the gospel, emphasizing time and again the mercies of God shown to Jew and Gentile alike. Nor is it an accident that his exhortations in 12:3–15:13 all entail the life of the community. The Christian cannot hope to faithfully give himself over as a sacrifice to the glory of God if he does not see how God gave himself as a sacrifice first. Nor can the believer successfully resist the lures of the present age and submit to the transforming work of the Holy Spirit—the desperately needed renewal of the mind that allows the believer to clearly perceive the will of God—apart from the people of God. Every believer must hold fast to the indicatives of the gospel and pursue the imperatives of the gospel arm in arm with his fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.

This hinge in the book of Romans points the way forward for all these commands. God is glorified when believers give their whole selves over to worshipping him—body and mind, rejecting the lies of the world around and submitting to the sanctifying work of the Spirit and so being transformed. And in a surprising turn of events, this (and not any mystical experience) is how one comes to know the will of God.

Sermon Outline

1. Introduction
   • We all long to know the will of God.
   • The hilarious subtitle of Kevin DeYoung’s book on knowing the will of God: “dreams, visions, fleeces, impressions, open doors, random Bible verses, casting lots, liver shivers, writing in the sky, etc.”
   • God has told us how to know his will, and the answer might be surprising.
2. By the mercies of God
   • Note Paul’s transition from the whole first section of the book into the second: he has established the indicatives, and now moves into imperatives that flow out of them.
   • What, then, are these “mercies of God” on which Paul bases these exhortations?
     • justification
     • sanctification and glorification
     • grace to every nation
3. Present yourselves as a sacrifice
   • Bodies: we are physical, and this is a good thing. We offer oiur whole selves, and we cannot give God the worship he deserves without our bodies.
   • Three adjectives: In using these three adjectives of our bodies as sacrifices, Paul takes the language of temple sacrifice (Jewish and pagan alike) and applies it to our whole life.
     • Living
     • Holy
     • Pleasing to God
4. How?
   • The way we offer ourselves as a sacrifice: both are works of God in which we actively participate.
     1. Do not be conformed to this age. Offer some thoughts on what this may (and may not!) look like, specific to the audience.
     2. Be transformed by the renewal of the mind. Our minds have been corrupted by the Fall and sin (Romans 1) and now the Spirit renews them. It is a gradual process, and one to which we must come over and over again.
   • The result of being transformed: As our minds are made new by the Spirit, in the likeness of Christ (Romans 8:29, Colossians 3:10), we grow to know the will of God. We become people, as Doug Moo puts it, “whose minds are so thoroughly renewed that we know from within, almost instinctively, what we are to do to please God in any given situation.” If you want to know the will of God, pursue holiness!

I continue to find Proverbs interesting, challenging, and insightful in ways I have not experienced in years. While I have made a habit of spending time in the book off and on since childhood (my parents encouraged me to read it regularly, not least for its advice on honoring and listening to one’s parents!), I have only begun to grasp how profoundly true its usually straightforward wisdom is as I have come back to it yet again in these last few weeks. God has seen fit to speak to almost any aspect of the mundane we could imagine or wish.

He who is often reproved, yet stiffens his neck,
will suddenly be broken beyond healing. (Proverbs 29:1)

As with a number of verses I have come across in the last week, this one struck me in no small part because I now have had enough experience to see it for true experientially. Not personally, thanks be to God and to many faithful friends and family members who have born with me well. But I have watched others resist rebuke ad nauseum, and the result is never pleasant. Those who refuse to listen when others bring correction—who are absolutely unwilling to change—ultimately suffer for their stubborn folly. The choices we make are not without consequences; we can go on only so long before they catch up with us and break us. In light of this, we should learn to see God’s rebukes and his chastisements as measures of his grace. He does not rebuke us or bring chiding situations into our lives out of malice, but out of love, to save us from ourselves.

This has me doubly thoughtful: reminded, first of all, to be quick to accept rebuke in my own life, and then also to pray for those I know who are struggling in this area.

Matthew 11

It has been rather in vogue these last few years to suggest that what Jesus really cared about was the plight of the poor and downtrodden—what we might call issues of “social justice.” To be sure, Jesus did care about these things, and God has always cared about them. (There is hardly a book in the Bible where this concern is not displayed!) But as profound as God’s hatred of injustice and abuse of the helpless is, there is something he hates even more, unpopular as though is to say it: unbelief. In Matthew 11, Jesus rebukes three cities, Bethsaida, Chorazin, and Capernaum, not for any other sins but because there he had done a great many miracles, and they did not believe him. And refusing to believe in Christ deserved a harsher punishment than did all the myriad sins of Tyre and Sidon and Sodom: cities known for everything from economic injustice to rape and murder. We must therefore keep the gospel’s call to repent and believe Christ first and foremost—not neglecting the other matters of righteousness, but not forgetting that which is worst and has the highest penalty.

I am writing up reflections on my devotions every day for six weeks. This is one of those posts.

On Sundays, I will be using this space as an opportunity to reflect publicly on the sermon presented.

Today, Ashok Nachnani¹ preached through 1 Corinthians 6:12–7:7. Since Paul speaks throughout this section (even across a topic change) about issues related to sexual (im)morality, Ashok, tackled the whole passage together.² He broke the text down into three major points:

1. Flee sexual immorality.
2. Embrace marriage as a protection against sexual immorality.
3. Recognize that both marriage and singleness/celibacy are gifts from God.

Ashok spent the greatest amount of time addressing the first issue—and he did an excellent job of it. Sexual immorality is a hot-button topic in our culture, and it is easy to talk too much, too harshly, too little, or too passively about it; I think Ashok hit the right balance of preaching both the sinfulness of sexual immorality and the glorious power of God’s grace in Christ. That is precisely the balance that we must always strive for, whatever the topic, and all the more so in areas where our culture is particularly sensitive.

A few gems that particularly stood out to me:

• Sexual immorality is like a terrible house guest who promises to come for a short, pleasant visit—and instead sticks around indefinitely, destroying everything along the way.
• Following Matt Chandler: “It is okay not to be okay. It is not okay to stay that way.” The gospel, Ashok reminded us, is for people who are not okay, and we need to welcome people however broken they are. At the same time, the gospel calls us to be transformed—not to remain in that same state of brokenness forever without change.
• Ashok pointed out that the world tells teens that God made a beautiful garden, and promptly fenced off the nicest part with barbed wire, intimating that extramarital sex is worth violating God’s will. This is, he pointed out, not exactly a new lie… just a repetion of the oldest lie.
• All of us face temptation in the area of sexuality—whether heterosexual or homosexual. As such, Christians who do not experience same-sex attraction can (at least to some extent) and need to empathize much more with the struggles of their brothers and sisters who do experience same-sex attraction. We must not treat homosexual practice as any worse than any other kind of extramarital sexual practice, but recognize instead that all of us are tempted and fallible in precisely this area, though not in precisely the same ways. For all of us, the call is to place our identity not in our sexuality but in Christ himself—a hard call, but one we are empowered to walk out by the Holy Spirit.³
• Marriage has many good purposes, including procreation, imaging Christ to the world, and sanctifying us—but Paul makes it clear that, among those many other purposes, it also helps us avoid sexual immorality. That was no less significant a help to the Corinthians than it is to us.
• Marital sex is not about using your spouse for your own satisfaction, but about giving yourself to your spouse for his/her good pleasure.
• When considering the gifts of marriage and singleness (and here Ashok was speaking particularly to singles), do not forget who the gift-giver is. He gives no gift out of spite, or ignorance of what is best for us; the gift of singleness is therefore a good thing, however it may feel at the time.
• Trust God to give you all you need.⁴

It is always tempting, when dealing with hard sin issues, to either gloss over them or to spend the entire time hammering on that issue. What believers (and non-believers!) need, though, is to hear both the deadly cost of sin, and the price that has already been paid for it. I was blessed today, because Ashok showed us the cost of sexual immorality and showed us the beautiful work of Christ in atoning for any and all our sexual immorality. Hallelujah.

I am also translating the sermon passage from Greek whenever applicable sometime Saturday or Sunday morning for my own profit; I will supply these translations, with some brief commentary, at the end of my reflections in case anyone is curious and wants to see my progress.

My translation:

All is permissible to me, but all is not helpful to me; all is permissible to me but I will not be mastered by anything. “Food is for the stomach and the stomach for food,” but God will do away with both. But the body is not for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. Now God both raised the Lord and will raise us by his own power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? So then, a member of Christ cannot become a member of a prosititute, can he? By no means! Or do you not know that the one who is united with a prostitue is one flesh with her? For it says, “The two will become one flesh.” But the one who is united with the Lord is one spirit with him. Flee sexual immorality! Every sin which a person does is outside his body, but the one who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price—so then glorify God in your bodies!

Now concerning that which you wrote, “It is good for a man not to touch a woman”— On account of sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman should have her own husband. The husband is to give what he owes to his wife, and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but her husband does; and likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but his wife does. Do not hold back from each other—unless by mutual consent for a time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer, and come together again—that Satan may not tempt you by your lack of self-control. And I say this as a concession, not as a command—now I wish all men to be even as I myself am, but each one his own gift from God: one of this sort, and another of that.

ESV(2007):

“All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything. “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food”—and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, “The two will become one flesh.” But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

Now as a concession, not a command, I say this. I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another.

NIV(2011):

“I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but I will not be mastered by anything. You say, “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy them both.” The body, however, is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.” But whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit.

Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.

Now for the matters you wrote about: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband. The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife. Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. I say this as a concession, not as a command. I wish that all of you were as I am. But each of you has your own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that.

As with last week’s section, the translations overlap substantially. For the most part, the language—both the vocabulary and the syntax—in 1 Corinthians is fairly straightforward. To wit: I was able to translate this passage while only having to look up about five words, and with little to no confusion on the grammar. Even granting that it is a familiar passage, this is pretty straightforward.

Between the NIV and the ESV, I slightly prefer the ESV’s rendering; the NIV (somewhat unusually) adds a lot of interpretive material throughout the text in this case. While the NIV aims for a smoother reading, for the most part it doesn’t add nearly as much interpretation as it does here. The editors are trying to make the consensus interpretation of the otherwise somewhat confusing text apparent: Paul is apparently quoting the Corinthians and then responding to their ideas or questions, so the NIV adds, “You say…” throughout. This is a somewhat reasonable attempt to bring across the semantics of the text, but it’s not a choice I’m particularly comfortable with, because it adds a great deal that simply isn’t present in the original. To be sure, moves like this are inevitable; the question is simply a matter of extent.

On the other hand, the translators of the ESV made a few odd choices of its own. First, the way they chose to word the conclusion of the first paragraph (“Now as a concession, not a command, I say this”) is neither very good English nor even representative of the word order in the original Greek. (My translation represents the word order much more accurately.) In cases like this, the traditional—i.e. the King James Version—reading is usually to blame for odd wordings in modern English, but here the KJV worded it much more like we would. In short, I have no idea why the editors of the ESV made that move. Second, unlike my translation or the NIV, they chose to supply “it is written” before introducing the quote from Genesis—but for a translation that proclaims its aim as using, as often as possible, the same words in English for the same words in Greek, this is strange. The word is not “written,” but “said”; in this case, the NIV is more literal than the ESV.

Again, on the whole I prefer the ESV’s rendering here, but only by a hair. The NIV removes a lot of ambiguity that makes the passage more confusing, but it does so by adding in a great deal of extra material. This is the balance every translation has to juggle constantly, and again, we see that each does better in some areas than in others.

I’ve been busy plowing through my exegetical research paper on Romans 12:1–2 for my Greek Syntax and Exegesis class. Along the way, I’ve discovered some killer quotes from a variety of commentators. Since I still have a good three or four hours of writing to do tonight, I thought I’d share these with you instead of my own thoughts. Trust me when I say you’re coming out ahead on this.

Karl Barth, A Shorter Commentary on Romans:

Christians, it is true, live in the world and in time, but by God’s mercy it has been made impossible for them to adapt and to accomodate themselves to its form and charcter or to give their lives once more the form and character of this world. It has been made impossible for them because, thanks to their participation in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, they have already left this world behind them. Their share in the resurrection of Jesus Christ consists in a transformation which they have experienced. It consists in a renewal of their thinking which compels and also enables them, in the midst of the course of the world to which they too are subject, to distinguish between the law of the course of the world and the will of God, between that which is divinely and therefore truly good, agreeable and perfect and that which is the natural result of the process of the world. It compels and enables them, as men who have been sacrificed to God, and who belong to him, not to show in their lives a repetition of the pattern and character of this world but to erect a sign of God’s will, a sign of the order of his coming new world. (150–151)

C. E. B. Cranfield, The Epistle to the Romans, vol. 2, p. 594:

[The] obedience required of Christians is not just an obedience in principle. It is rather an obedience of thought and attitude, of word and deed, wrought out in the concrete situations of life—and an obedience, moreover, which has to be wrought out by Christians who are far from being fully sicere or fully serious in theri calling God ‘Father’. Exhortation is therefore necessary—an exhortation which does not stop at the abstract and general, but is concrete and particular. It is such exhortation that we find in Romans 12.1–15.13.

vol. 2, p. 595:

[The] Christian’s obedience is his response to what God has done for him in Christ, the expression of his gratitude. Given its full force, the οὖν makes clear right from the start the theocentric nature of all truly Christian moral effort; for it indicates that the source from which such effort sprints is neither a humanistic desire for the enhancement of the self by the attainment of moral superiority, nor the legalist’s hope of putting God under an obligation, but the saving deed of God itself.

Colin G. Kruse, Paul’s Letter to the Romans, p. 7:

Essentially, then, Paul’s thesis is that the power of God is revealed through the gospel for all who have faith. In succeeding sections of the letter he argues the case for this thesis, defends it against possible objections, and spells out some of its ethical implications.

Ben C. Dunson, “Faith in Romans: The Salvation of the Individual or Life in Community?” p. 35:

Romans 12 opens with perhaps the most sweeping use of a conjunction (οῦν) in the entire Pauline corpus: in light of everything Paul has said previously in the first 11 chapters of the letter, the Roman Christians are to present their bodies (τὰ σώματα ὑμῶν) as a pleasant ‘living sacrifice’ to God (12.1). This act of presentation entails both a refusal to live as the rest of the world (‘this age’) and a transformation that takes place through the ‘renewal’ (ἀνακαινώσει) of the mind, which in turn leads to an ability to recognize the perfect will of God (12.2). The corporate dynamic with which this new section of the letter opens is unmistakable: although each member of the church or churches in Rome has a distinct bodily identity, each o f them individually is to be formed into a single ‘living sacrifice’ (θυσίαν ζώσαν) to be presented to God. This sacrificial offering constitutes one of the pillars of the foundational work of God’s new creation, and plays an integral role in establishing the means through which the exhortations Paul will soon give are to be carried out.

Ernst Käsemann, Commentary on Romans, p. 327:

What was previously cultic is now extended to the secularity of our earthly life as a whole. Basically this means the replacement of any cultic thinking…. Naturally this does not mean any disparagement of worship and the sacraments. Nevertheless, these events are no longer, as in cultic thinking, fundamenetally separated from everyday Christian life in such a way as to mean something other than the promise for this and the summons to it…. Eiether the whole of Christian life is worship, and the gatherings and sacramental acts of the community provide equpiment and instruction for this, or these gatherings and acts lead in fact to absurdity.

p. 330:

Yet he does not mean what people find good and beautiful and can justify before their own consciences. Only God’s will is called good and acceptable and perfect. In a concrete case this may coincide with human ideals, but it neither merges into these nor is it to be equated with them without further ado.

p. 331:

Thus the claim is made that in the light of the new aeon Christians can do a better job with reason than the world in general does. Paradoxically they do this precisely at the point where, corresponding to God’s will, they oppose the trend of this world and do what seems to be irrational, as God himself did in sending his Son to the cross.

Douglas Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, p. 25:

Christology is the theological ground and starting point of the letter. Paul’s understanding of Christ is the only topic broad enough to unify his various emphases…. God’s act in Christ is the starting point of all Paul’s thinking and is so basic to the early church that he could assume that the Roman Christians shared this conviction with him. In this sense, while Christology is nowhere in Romans the expressed topic, it is everywhere the underlying point of departure.

pp. 744–745:

The gospel unleashes God’s power so that people, by embracing it, can be rescued from the disastrous effects of sin, being pronounced “righteous” in God’s sight and having a secure hope for salvation from wrath in the last day. But, as Paul has made clear in Rom. 6, deliverance from the power of sin is inseparable from deliverance from its penalty. Union with Christ in his death and resurrection provides both. For Jesus Christ is the Lord; and thus to believe in him means at the same time a commitment to obey him…. The “imperative” of a transformed life is therefore not an optional “second step” after we embrace the gospel: it is rooted in our initial response to the gospel itself. To eliminate this part of Romans would be therefore to omit an indispensable dimension of the gospel itself. The transition from Rom. 11 to Rom. 12… is not, therefore, a transition from “theology” to “practice,” but from a focus more on the “indicative” side of the gospel to a focus more on the “imperative” side of the gospel.

p. 746:

Through the renewal of the mind that the gospel makes possible, Christians can know and do the will of God…

p. 750:

In Rom. 12:1… the sacrifice we offer is not some specific form of praise or service, but our “bodies” themselves. It is not only what we can give that God demands; he demands the giver.

p. 758:

But Paul’s vision, to which he calls us, is of Christians whose minds are so thoroughly renewed that we know from within, almost instinctively, what we are to do to please God in any given situation.

Leon Morris, The Epistle to the Romans, pp. 433–434:

But we should bear in mind that the body is very important in the Christian understanding of things. Our bodies may be “implements of righteousness” (6:13)… [Paul] knows that there are possibilities of evil in the body but that in the believer “the body of sin” has been brought to nothing (6:6); sin does not reign in the believer’s body (6:12). Grace affects the whole life and is not some remote, ethereal affair.”

John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans, vol. 2, p. 111:

Paul was realistic and he was aware that if sanctification did not embrace the physical in our personality it would be annulled from the outset.

Thomas R. Schreiner, Romans, p. 640:

Romans 12:1–2 serve as the paradigm for the entire exhortation section… Give yourselves wholly to God; do not be shaped by the old world order, but let new thought patterns transform your life.

Paul: Apostle of God’s Glory in Christ, pp. 252–253:

The word service (latreian) also hearkens back to Romans 1:25, where idolaters are said to “worship and serve [elatreusan] the creature rather than the creator. Romans 12:1–2 captures the reversal of such idolatry. Surrendering one’s life to GOd is true worship, and the glory and thanks previously given to idols are now given to God (Rom 1:21). True worship is not confined to cultic acts, nor do cultic acts receive much emphasis in Paul. Worship involves honoring God by submitting to his sovereignty in every sphere of life.

N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, p. 264:

Paul is allowing part of his cluster of ‘resurrection’ language to make its way forwards from Jesus’ resurrection, and backwards fromt he promise of eventual bodily resurrection, into a foundational statement of what it means to live as truly human beings within the new age.