[Transcript may not match broadcasted sermon word for word, and contains extra material that was cut from the broadcast due to time constraints]

       Now we come to Romans chapter 12. Arriving at chapter 12 today, the Apostle Paul is going to start to move us more up into the higher level Christian living. We could look at Romans chapters 5 through 8 as the basic aspects of who we are in Christ, the fundamentals, or perhaps elementary school for the believer. Well, now we are moving up into middle and high school. What we are going to learn throughout the rest of Paul’s Letter to the Romans is a bit further in-depth, and some aspects can seem particularly complicated for newcomers to the faith, and perhaps could even turn off some folks. That’s not our goal, however. I believe as we study these texts everyone will realize that there is nothing to be concerned about. Paul will take us here into the more nit and gritty parts of our faith, into further detail and elaboration, and I think that we are going to have a good time studying it.

       We spent the last three chapters, four sermons actually, studying Romans chapters 9 through 11. And there, Paul discussed his love for the Jewish people, his fellow Jewish brothers and sisters, and how they need to come to Christ. That was a sobering look at the current state of the Jewish people, but we did note how many can still come into personal faith in Jesus Christ. Things certainly aren’t hopeless for the Jews. Yes, many have hardened hearts, but God is still calling a remnant to be saved by his grace. That’s was Paul’s desire, and for sure that is God’s desire. It is also important for us to treat the Jews kindly, and to share our faith with them at the time we have opportunity. We don’t know who God is going to call for sure, so it is good for us to shine our lights before everybody.

       Anyhow, go ahead and turn in your Bibles, or tap in your Bible apps on your mobile devices, to Romans chapter 12. Starting in verse 1: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”

       This is probably one of the most misunderstood verses in the whole entire New Testament, and it’s one that systematic Christians frequently flock to. For some people, this is their banner—this is their whole defense for their way of living. Yes, and they might throw a couple verses from Jesus also in the mix, like the ones where he talks about denying ourselves and taking up our crosses. But I wish to explain today what this verse truly means, and what it does not mean. I will say this verse certainly is not a call to be a monk, and Paul absolutely is not going into killjoy, or pro-sacrificing and suffering mode here. The verse is often read like this: ““I appeal to you, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” See what happened there? Two words got deleted, and both of those words are critical. The words “therefore” and “living” got removed.

       So, we know that when Paul presents a “therefore,” that it is there for a reason. What have we been touching on in the last three chapters? Well, as I already mentioned, we’ve been discussing the Jews, and how they think they’re right before God already. They don’t believe they need Christ. But Paul is saying here, in light of the current state of the Israelites, that we are not to be like them. He is saying they are a ‘dead’ sacrifice to God, but we are to present ourselves as a “living sacrifice.” The living sacrifice is obviously quite different from the dead one. Currently, if a Jewish person were to offer an animal sacrifice to God for his or her sins, as the Jews did in the Old Testament, that sacrifice on the altar is dead. On the contrary, for us as believers, we offer ourselves too, but what’s the difference? We are living. We are alive in Christ.

       Thus begets the second word that’s regularly deleted—that’s usually overlooked—and that is the word “living.” Yes, we are a living sacrifice to God, not a dead one. A sacrifice to God out of obligation would be like a Jewish sacrifice without Christ; it is a dead sacrifice.

       About a year and a half ago I was driving up around the Mount Vernon area in Ohio. I was with my Dad, and we I had skipped church that morning (let’s keep that between you and me) to go to a car show up in Utica, one that I go to every year around Memorial Day. Anyhow, after leaving the show, we came up on an Amish horse and buggy riding on the roadway. Apparently, the guy was driving home from church. After passing the horse and buggy, I got to thinking, “You know, I’ve really never studied the Amish before.” Having just finished the fourth season of Peace to Live By shortly before this time, I had some extra time on my hands. So, I decided to purchase a book that was a guy’s firsthand account of his Amish neighbors, and I read that book.

       I became so interested in reading about the Amish, that I ended up buying another book, and then another. Six months later, I had probably read eight to ten books on Amish culture—most from different authors. These ranged from textbooks to personal accounts, and even people who had left the Amish. I never intended at all studying the Amish for six months, but it was so intriguing to me that that is what ended up happening. In any event, one thing you can note from Amish life is that, obviously, the Amish are extremely legalistic. Next to a monk, they are the most systematic of all brands of Christianity I’ve seen. They don’t know anything much at all in regard to grace. They also don’t have much power from God flowing in their lives. Does God still work in their culture? Certainly he does. Are Amish saved? Yes, some of them are, but definitely not all of them.

       Regardless, in all my reading in respect to the Amish, there was one author that I came across and his writing ended up being the most fruitful part of my study. His name is Jerry Eicher, and he wrote a book called Transforming the Believer. I almost didn’t even order the book, but in seeing the author was ex-Amish and giving his theology, I couldn’t resist. And, boy, I’m glad I did order a copy (I believe it is currently out of print, but there are still copies available on places like Amazon). Nevertheless, there are some things I want to quote from his book in order to help us better comprehend what we are studying today here at the beginning of Romans chapter 12. Mr. Eicher said, “When we come to the New Testament we find the old concept of sacrifice gone. The apostle speaks now of a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1). That is different. The new living sacrifice is like a bird in the morning sitting on his tree limb pouring out his song. The bird does not have to strain or struggle to offer his morning song, but from deep within of what he is, a songbird, he offered a joyous tune of joy to the world. That is a living sacrifice. When we do our religious service to God such as that, then we will know it is a living, and not a dead, sacrifice” (Eicher, pg. 113, 2002).

       Consider with me two verses from the Old Testament in regard to this study of a living sacrifice, both these brother Eicher talks about in his book. I will consider them from The Living Bible. Jeremiah 6:20, this is the Lord God speaking to the Israelites at that time: “There is no use now in burning sweet incense from Sheba before me! Keep your expensive perfumes! I cannot accept your offerings; they have no sweet fragrance for me” (TLB). Next, let’s look at Jeremiah 7:21-23. It says: “The Lord, the God of Israel says: Away with your offerings and sacrifices! It wasn’t offerings and sacrifices I wanted from your fathers when I led them out of Egypt. That was not the point of my command. But what I told them was: Obey me, and I will be your God and you shall be my people; only do as I say, and all shall be well!” (TLB). What can we observe from these verses? What is God’s focus here, what is his concern? Ah, he cares about our heart attitude, what is on the inside of us, in our hearts, and not our externals, not what we do and don’t do.

       I will go ahead and quote Mr. Eicher again, because what he says here is so perfect: “The Church ought to be one place where there are no sacrifices—a place where men do not bow in fear. Sacrifice, as man has made it, belongs to cowards at heart. It is to appease an angry deity so much that heathen offer their children on altars of fire. The heathen sacrifice to get rain and dew on their crops, and much of Christianity is little better. How tragic that much of church organization is geared toward sacrifice and not obedience, making little differentiation between the two and presenting sacrifice as obedience to God…. The timid and cowardly sacrifice because they are not obeying. Sacrifice is man’s solution to a heart that has failed to obey. Wherever you find a man sacrificing, you will find a man who is disobeying…. Timidity is a driving force behind sacrifice. Saul planned to let the people disobey and spare the best animals” [he’s referring to 1 Samuel 15 here], “but then have them sacrifice the animals to God. Many church leaders in being afraid to require the will of God of the people in obedience, plan to later require the will of God in sacrifice and expect that to be the same thing…. Doing things our own way in obeying God is just as much sin as doing things our own way in the world.” (Eicher, pp. 105-107, 2002).

       Enough said. I rest my case. Continuing on in Romans 12. Verse 2: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

       I think we just got our minds renewed. Anyhow, let’s consider The Living Bible here again, since I believe it will better help us understand this verse: “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but be a new and different person with a fresh newness in all you do and think. Then you will learn from your own experience how his ways will really satisfy you.”

       This is how I’ve been talking about the fact that we desire to see a difference in a person who has come to Christ, the difference in that now the person doesn’t do things the way the world does. For myself, I’m not near as concerned with the presentation of a person here in how they look. I think what Paul is getting at is that a believer doesn’t do things the same way the world does anymore. He or she doesn’t fornicate. They don’t go get drunk somewhere on Friday and Saturday nights. They don’t cuss every five sentences. They are not frightened anymore by trials. Worry doesn’t consume their minds. They don’t follow the world’s behavior in thought, words, and deeds.

       And here, in the testing of our lives, in the experience of our lives, we are aware, or should be aware if we’ve been in the faith a long time, that our character is often developed by different life experiences. For some things, it seems that’s the only way that God can teach us. It would be nice if we could read the Bible and a couple Christian books and get everything we need for life out of them. But we realize that’s not how it works. Like with our careers, at our workplaces, we can be trained a good amount of things. It’s also true at work that a lot of things can only be learned through experience. We have to be hands on in order to get whatever it is—we have to be in the middle of it. That’s simply the way we really learn.

       The point in all of this is that God’s ways are the ways that really satisfy us. That’s how we actually come to enjoy our lives since we are doing things how God wants us to do them, and not the world’s way or in a duty-bound way. Instead of living with a significant other before marriage, we stay pure and eventually get married to the person. If we drink alcohol, we don’t drink too much. We say things that encourage others, believers or unbelievers, and not to discourage them. Or, take patience for example. How much our lives are bettered through using patience! In waiting on things, we know that a lot times we need up with something better than what we had even been waiting for. If we were to do things the world’s way, we wouldn’t have patience. We would demand things right now, and we would obtain whatever it is right away, and we wouldn’t have the best thing we could of had because we refused to be patient and wait. I mean, think about even in the short-term, say in traffic. A person is sitting in traffic. How many times does this individual blow his stack because he’s too impatient, when if he’d of just waited another two-minutes, the traffic would have picked up and he could have prevented himself from getting all upset. Even in the little things we shouldn’t be living as the world lives.

       Verse 3: “For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.”

       God has given us all faith then to accomplish the work the desires us to accomplish for his kingdom. And he has given us each a different amount of faith when it comes to fulfilling these tasks. So, Paul tells us that we are to think in parallel with the faith that we have. Some of us God is requiring more from, and some of us God is requiring less. God calls some people to big ministries, or he works them up to that. Others he calls to no particular ministry at all. He calls people to be normal individuals, living quiet and peaceful lives. We will all do church work at one time or another, whoever we are. Whatever our calls in life, whatever are careers in the world, our faith should work in conjunction with that. We each have individual, unique responsibilities, and none of us can do something the exact same way another individual does it, no matter what we are doing. Each of us helps others out within the body, whether that’s big help or small help; we all help. And our gifting by the Spirit works to benefit the world.

       I was thinking about these gifts that God gives us, that there is no mention to these gifts being limited to church-work or church-use only (nor are there gender roles attributed to these gifts). If one is part of a larger church, say, over 1,000 members, it can be easy for them to consider that their gifts by the Spirit would only be used for church work. Within bigger churches there are more opportunities to utilize the gifts. But, it can seem frustrating or disheartening to people who read this passage who attend smaller churches, say of 50, 100, 200, or even 500 members. There aren’t near the amount of opportunities within the church walls to practice one’s gifting by the Spirit. And this would have been the case even during Paul’s day, as not every church was large undoubtedly. This being the case, we have to assume that our gifts serve the common good, both believers and unbelievers. If our gifts only worked to help believers, in smaller churches they would scarcely be used due to a lack of opportunity. If we understand the spiritual gifts only to work within the body, then most people are going to be walking around with their heads down a lot of the time. Especially with our American setup of church, were we only meet once or twice a week with other church members. There is no living ‘community’ per se to practice the gifts.

       Anyhow, Paul lists some example gifts that we have. He lists prophecy, service, teaching, exhorting, contributing, leading, and acts of mercy. Let’s go through these one-by-one. The believer who prophesies: sometimes a person will give us a word from God. They’ll say exactly what we need to hear. They also seem to say the right thing at the right time; well, that’s the gift of prophecy. It can benefit either a believer or unbeliever. It can also be true that an individual with the gift of prophecy tells of something that will happen in the future. The person will give a promise from God or a warning perhaps. Next, I think the gift of service is pretty self-explanatory; the individual goes about serving the church and others in varying ways, hands on. That’s what the person is good at. We understand what teaching is. Who is a believer who exhorts? What is exhortation? That means encouraging. Boy, we need some encouragers, don’t we? Everyone needs encouragement. And I believe this gift can commonly work in conjunction with teaching. Then there is the person who gives more monetarily than the norm. God has blessed the believer financially, or with a greater heart to give and perhaps sacrifice more than usual in this area. We know what leading is, and acts of mercy I think are people who provide comfort for others, like visiting the elderly, widows, or children waiting to be adopted; visiting hospitals, or praying for people, to name some examples.

       Verse 9: “Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.”

       I’m not going to go over every one one of Paul’s points here, but let’s go over some of them. Notice that love is not a legalistic thing. We are to love with a genuine love, and not unwillingly or begrudgingly. We all love different people, and it’s actually not our responsibility to love every single person within our church. Truly, that would kill us if we tried. We are to call sin for what it is, sin. That doesn’t mean we are faultfinders among church members. That’s not what we’re called to do. We don’t like sin, especially the big sins, and we don’t tolerate those sins within our own lives. We show honor toward each other in such a way that he try to view others with high esteem and give them honor when the opportunity arises. I want to say here, for I really think this needs to be said, that it is sin to not show honor to people who deserve it. Yes, you can sin by what you don’t do. If God is promoting you to give someone honor, you better do it. Ignoring a good work or a person doing that work is sin.

       We are to rejoice in hope. If we are to rejoice in hope, we have to have hope in the first place. A lot of folks I’ve come across certainly don’t have hope. They are too negative and full of fear to have hope. Some people have been burnt so many times in their lives that they are afraid to utilize hope. I know, I use to have that kind of attitude myself. But everyone needs to have hope. It’s not wrong to have faith for the future, and even on the occasion that what we desire to happen doesn’t work out or come to pass, then we should start anticipating good in something else. Just because hope doesn’t work one, two, or even three times, that doesn’t then mean that we are to give up hope altogether, as I have witnessed many people do. I have seen people abandon a faith-filled attitude and instead take on a naturalistic, what they call ‘realistic,’ and what I call a ‘deistic’ perspective in life. These are the type of people who say, “Oh, God may do this or that. He may make this come to pass, or he may not. We simply don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see.” Instead, they should be saying, “I believe God is going to do this good thing” (whatever it is). “I believe he is on my side and wants to do it.”

       If you’re a person who has realized you need to change the way you think, to go from negative to positive, from expecting the worst to expecting the best, then you’re heading in the right direction. Understand, however, that this change in your thought-patterns is going to take time; it’s not something that’s going to happen quickly. Don’t let your struggle to make the change discourage you. The important thing is that you decide within yourself that this is going to be your new way of thinking from now on. The thing of it is, we know that how we think and speak, whether that is hopeless or hopeful, those thoughts and words affect what really happens in our lives. Yes, they matter. This is for a couple reasons. Our thoughts and words, what we believe, affects God’s ability to help us, or Satan’s ability to hurt us. And too, we can sabotage ourselves by thinking wrong thoughts. I mean, just think. If you don’t believe you will succeed, that good is going to happen for you, how can it? If you don’t believe you are good at something, there is no way you can succeed at doing it. And God can’t help you with whatever it is because you don’t believe he will. You don’t have hope. So, we have to change the inner workings of our minds from the negative to the positive in all things in order to really see successes in life. God will give us what we need to do whatever it is he wants us to do, but we need to believe that fact.

       Lastly, let’s discuss being constant in prayer. I have put it this way before: we are to stay in continual conversation with God. We are to keep God in the forefront of our thinking. Clearly, if we are doing that, it makes it much more difficult for us to sin, right? If we always are walking around talking to God in our minds, we’ll find that we are closer and closer to him and we won't wish to sin. We’ll be praising him and thanking him for this or that, and we’ll feel better in general. It wards off demonic activity around us as we are now God-centered.

       Moving on. Verse 14: “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.”

       The best way for God to win an unbeliever to Jesus Christ is for us to always love the individual, even when it can be hard for us to do so. If we walk off and curse some unbeliever who has done something hurtful to us, that surely isn’t going to help the person. Nah, love is what will cut through the turmoil.

       With the people at our church, or any Christians we have relationships with, we are rejoice with them, weep with them, live in harmony with them, associate with everyone (that is, we shouldn’t show bias based on popularity, money, or anything else). We shouldn’t be suck-ups with leaders in the church. We are to communicate with others (and not be making decisions without advice at times). Or, we could say we aren’t to think we are right about something questionable and act on it without a discussion with someone. Remember what I said about demons filling in the blanks for us (back during the second discussion on Romans 8). We aren’t to repay anyone for a wrong done against us (and trust me, this will come). We are to consider what others think, and not do anything that might offend them (more on this in chapter 14). We are to have an honest, respectable reputation. We shouldn’t have a habit of finding fault with one another. Rather, as much as we possibly can, we are try to live in peace with everyone.

       Let me say this: offense is going to come from time to time. There are going to be multiple opportunities for you to become offended, even with fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. If you think you should never get offended by a brother or sister, you better think again. We need to learn how to deal with offense at the moment it comes to us, most of the time letting it pass right by us. Indeed, becoming offended is a trap, and it will cost us dearly in life if we are not careful. Being continually offended at someone can make us truly miserable. I believe one of Satan’s favorite things to do is to get us angry at people. He loves it when we are offended as we can take so much time thinking about the thing, the offense that was done against us, and we can become bitter at the person, or even group of people, who has done us wrong.

       Let me share a story that happened some time ago with me and one of friends, as regards to this topic of offense. A friend of mine had invited me and a couple others friends over to his house to watch a miniseries on TV. Now, two of us were there with him, and the other guy was coming later. We were feeling hungry and decided to order pizza. We got a couple of large pizzas, which, at the time we were ordering them, seemed like enough for four guys. Choosing to be kind, I decided to pay about two-thirds of the bill. So, the pizza came and the three of us all got a plate. And my two friends each finished their first plate before I did, and they each got a second plate. Then I got up to get my second plate but there wasn’t enough for me to eat anymore of the pizza and still save some for the last guy who was coming. My friend even said to me (the one who had invited us over) that I better not get anymore and save the rest for the guy who was still coming. Now, this was quite the situation. I had payed two-thirds of the bill, and my other two friends had each gotten two plates, but I only got the one. I had reason to be upset. Nevertheless, I decided right at that moment that I wasn’t going to say anything. I remember putting the big picture in perspective at that moment. I chose to let the offense pass even though it was tuff and I lost my pizza and money. I could have gotten all upset at my friend but I didn’t. And sure enough, we’ve been friends for years after this and he hasn’t done anything like that again. By overlooking the offense, I was able to save myself and everyone else the argument and uncomfortable vibes, which could have even dented our friendship.

       Sometimes we have to just let an offense pass, and say nothing. That’s just the way it is going to be in dealing with others in our world. There will be times we offend others, unintentionally, and they are going to have to let us pass. This produces peace, keeps relationships moving along, and overtime builds stronger relationships.

       Verse 19: “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

       Unfortunately, as I just talked about, it is true that not only can unbelievers offend us, but probably more frequently it is going to be the case that a believer has offended us. Yup; that’s the unfortunate truth. This being said, what is fortunate for us is that we get to choose how we are going to respond to people who hurt us. Notice Paul said we are to leave our offenses with God. It’s not that God isn’t concerned when others do things against us. He doesn’t sit up on his throne and say, “I don’t care about your problem. You need to get over that and move on.” No, on the contrary, God does care. He will take care of any vegence that is necessary toward anyone with whom it is necessary. We have to turn any resentment over to God, and that can in certain instances be a very difficult thing for us to do. Especially if we are a person with a sense of justice, a person who desires to see justice always done, it can be particularly hard to let a person go. However, as I said, God will enact the due punishment that we want for the person in his timing.

       What we can do for people who have hurt us is to simply to be nice to them. I believe it is easier for us to be nicer to unbelievers at the times they hurt us because we can easily say, “Oh, they didn’t know any better. They’re not saved and don’t know the truth.” So, it can make it easier for us to excuse their bad behavior and treat them kindly. Now, with Christians who do something harmful to us, it can be a whole different story. We think in our minds, “That woman should have known better than to do that to us. What was she thinking!” And we get more and more angry inside our minds. Then it can become difficult for us to be nice to the person as we are always bringing up the offense inside of us when we see the person. We make an association, a conditioning—see that individual, remember that offense. This incorrect thought pattern works to harm us. Again, what we need to do is trust God with the situation, to turn it over to him. If we need to confront the person, he’ll lead us to do that. I think that more often than not, we don’t even need to do that. When we’re trusting God, we can let the offense go, be obedient by being nice and kind, and let God take care of it. As Paul said, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

       So, that ends this chapter, chapter 12. Before we wrap up, I would like say that anyone out there who doesn’t have a relationship with God today, and would desire to come into fellowship with him, can do that right now. By trusting in Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross for any sins you’ve done, and his resurrection from the dead, you can gain real life now, and life that doesn’t have to be lived alone. There are many of us who have already made that choice, and we would like to welcome you into Christ’s family today. Yes, anyone can come to God today. Simply go to God in prayer, and tell him you want to trust in him, and have a personal relationship with him through Jesus Christ.

-Daniel Litton

References

Eicher, Jerry S. (2002). Transforming the Believer. Farmville, VA: Gospel for the World.

Scripture quotations marked (TLB) are taken from The Living Bible copyright © 1971. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.