Dr. Rodney Plunket

I want to begin this morning by reading some fairly short passages from the Bible.  All of these passages were written by the apostle Paul.  I want you to listen especially for the phrases that begin with the preposition “by.”  In the first passage we read, “For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think” (Romans [Rm] 12:3b).  The second passage has two phrases beginning with the preposition “by.”  It says, “I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to join me in earnest prayer to God on my behalf” (Rm 15:30).  In the third passage Paul writes, “I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divi­sions among you” (1 Corinthians 1:10).  In the fourth passage we read,

I myself, Paul, appeal to you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ—I who am humble when face to face with you, but bold toward you when I am away!—I ask that when I am present I need not show boldness by daring to oppose those who think we are acting according to human standards (2 Corinthians 10:1-2).

Now listen to one more passage.  From this verse comes the title for our lesson today.  In Rm 12:1 Paul writes,  “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a sacrifice––living, holy and acceptable to God––which is your spiritual worship.”

All five of the passages just read are appeal passages.  Paul is appealing to his readers with regard to something that he feels very strongly about.  He appeals with regard to their attitude.  He appeals for them to join him in prayer.  He appeals for them to be united.  And he bases each of these appeals on something that he believes should serve as an authoritative base for his appeal.

Notice the first four authoritative bases that Paul uses in these appeals:  #1) the special “grace given to [Paul]” as an apostle of Christ Jesus, #2) “our Lord Jesus Christ and . . . the love of the Spirit,” #3) “the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,” and #4) “the meekness and gentleness of Christ.”  These are all faith realities that Paul knows are firm and solid Christian truths that he can stand upon and from which he can issue powerful appeals.

In Rm 12:1 the firm and solid Christian truth that he stands upon is the truth of the “the mercies of God.”  And he stands upon that authoritative base as he makes an extremely important appeal.  You see, Paul in Rm 12:1 is beginning a new section of this letter.  He is opening a section in which he will tell his readers what kind of life they should live as men and women who have put their trust in Jesus Christ.  And he begins this section with an appeal based upon “the mercies of God.”

For the past two Sunday mornings the services here at Broadway have placed the spotlight on “the mercies of God” as those mercies are revealed in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  The power of those acts is so solid and so strong that Paul stands on those mercies as he begins this new section of the Book of Romans.

Feel the strength that God’s mercies generate.  Feel God’s love in sending the Son of God to die one of the most cruel deaths evil ever invented.  Feel the power of God’s love as it raises Jesus right up out of the tomb to live forever at God’s right hand.

“The mercies of God” are not some petty divine effort.  They are not some minor display.  They are the most incredible demonstration of power and love that the world has ever known, will ever know.  Paul can stand on it!  You can too!

What kind of an appeal does Paul build on the solid base of God’s mercies?  Listen to it.  Paul in Rm 12:1 writes, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a sacrifice living, holy, and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”  Paul’s appeal is clearly an appeal for a radical commitment from his readers.  Paul stands on God’s mercies and asks his readers to sacrifice themselves.  And it is hard to miss the similarity between what Paul asks his readers to give and what God’s mercies had already given.  God’s Son sacrificed His body; Paul asks his readers to do the same.  I suspect that Paul is subtly reminding his readers that Jesus Christ laid His whole self on that cross and is using that reminder to say, ‘Let’s lay our whole selves on the altar of life for Jesus Christ.’

But what does it mean for a Christian to sacrifice his or her body?  Well it clearly does not mean that Paul’s readers are to have themselves killed and their bodies set on fire; in fact, he says that the sacrifice they are to give is a “living” sacrifice.  I think the German commentator, Ernst Käsemann, is correct when he says that here Paul uses the word “body” to stand for “our being in the world” (Commentary on Romans, translated and edited by Geoffrey W. Bromiley [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980] 327).  That is, Paul is focusing on the physical aspect of his readers because the instructions which follow focus on the quality of their lives in the physical world.

I also think that Paul uses the word “body” because it is a way to refer to the whole being of the person in relation to the world.  Paul is calling on his readers to give their entire selves to the experience of living faithfully as disciples of Jesus Christ.

Paul says that such a sacrifice is a “living” sacrifice.  It seems unlikely that all Paul wants to say with this word “living” is that you do not have to die to do this.  Christianity had no practice of human sacrifice.  None of his readers would have needed the word “living” here to know that was not Paul’s intended meaning.  It is more likely that Paul is using the word “living” here to emphasize the contrast between the kind of sacrifice that he is calling for and the kind of sacrifices that dominated in Paul’s day.  As James D. G. Dunn puts it, Paul uses the word “living” here to stress the change “from cultic ritual to everyday life, from a previous epoch characterized by daily offering of animals to one characterized by a whole-person commitment lived out in daily existence” (Word, 710).  A “living” sacrifice was a radical change for most people in Paul’s day.  Paul, through the use of the word “living,” highlights the radical nature of that change to his readers.

Paul then says that such a sacrifice is “holy and acceptable to God.”  This is a very emphatic way of saying that this kind of sacrifice is exactly what God wants.  Whatever you may think God wants, this is really it.  Give yourselves fully to faithfully living out the will of God.

Paul’s statements about sacrifice likely do not seem very radical to us today.  Most of us have grown accustomed to the word “sacrifice” being used metaphorically, symbolically.  But the last phrase that Paul uses has not lost its radical ring.  Paul says that the giving of the body as a sacrifice is “spiritual worship.”  When most people today hear the word “worship,” they think of rituals accompanied by religious music that take place in a church building, a synagogue, a mosque, or some other special building.  Paul here makes clear that worship is a Christian’s life, the whole of a Christian’s life.  As Käsemann puts it,

Christian worship does not consist of what is practiced at sacred times, and with sacred acts . . . .  It is the offering of bodily existence in the otherwise profane sphere (p 329).

Christian worship is 24/7.  It is everyday.  It is the whole being.  It is an offering of one’s whole life to the living God whose mercies in Jesus have, to use Paul’s words in Rm 6, raised us up to “walk in newness of life” (Rm 6:4).

I said earlier that Rm 12:1 is the opening of a new section in the letter to the Christians in Rome.  But this new section’s opening also includes Rm 12:2.  Please listen to Paul’s words there, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.”  The point of Verse 1 is extremely positive; Paul gives his readers something to do.  They are to give their bodies as a sacrifice in worship to God.  Verse 2 begins with a negative; Paul tells them what not to do.  They are not to “be conformed to this world/this time/this age.”  People who believe in Jesus are not to have their lives shaped by the forces that dominate this world/this time/this age.  Instead their lives are to be shaped by a profound internal transformation.  They are to “be transformed by the renewing of [their] minds.”  And the Greek word that is translated as “be transformed” is the imperative form of the word metamorfo÷w which is the word from which we get our word “metamorphosis.”  And this Greek word quite literally means, “to change form.”  So Paul is calling upon his readers to change forms internally.

And notice that this command is passive in nature.  In other words, it is something done to you and not by you.  A person can resist it or Paul would not have to appeal to them to receive it.  But it is still not something they do.  It is carried out by another.  It is carried out by the Holy Spirit of God.

Paul then, in the second half of this verse, tells them what they will receive as a result of being transformed in this way.  Paul says they should be transformed “so that [they] may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.”  As people fully receive this internal transformation, they are able to know God’s will.  As God transforms our internals, we are more in tune with God’s purpose and God’s calling.  We know what God would have us say and do in more and more situations.  We, as a result, live the lives we were born to live.

I wanted to preach this sermon this morning to make clear that Christianity is not some “pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by” religion.  Christianity is a down-to-earth faith lived in the here and now.  And it takes hold of the whole of our lives.  It takes us and transforms us.  It transforms us from the inside out.

The morning of September the 11^th dawned upon nineteen men who expected to die before Noon.  They had planned to die.  They wished to die.  They believed that they had a cause worthy of death.  They were determined to fly passenger jets into buildings.  They were determined to kill themselves, the other passengers on those jets, and everyone in the buildings that they struck.  They wanted so badly to inflict death and destruction on others that they willingly died to make that happen.

We are called to a totally different cause.  We are never called to acts of hatred and terror.  We are not even permitted to take vengeance; that is the Lord’s job (Rm 12:9).  But we are called to give our whole selves to the cause of Christ and to the worship of our God.  Every morning should dawn upon Christians all over the world who are committed to sacrificing the whole of their earthly exis­tence to worship and service in the Name of Christ Jesus our Lord.

You have not heard a soft-soap gospel this morning.  Yes, we have high­lighted God’s mercies in Christ Jesus.  Yes, we have been reminded of all that God has done to save us from our sins.  But we have focused also upon the fact that the reception of God’s mercies generates a powerful appeal to give the whole of ourselves to God in 24/7 worship.

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