Dear Friends,
 

With the twelfth chapter of Romans Paul steps into the next step in his logical and tightly reasoned letter to the Romans.  He has worked to eliminate Jewish legalism among church members, he has warned Gentile believers against false pride.  He has affirmed a specific doctrinal belief that transcends race, culture, or any other superficial and external distinctions.  Now he begins to apply these truths to the daily life habits of the Roman Christians.  This letter appears in a form of teaching that is consistent throughout the New Testament.  First you affirm a right view of God and a right belief as to how God works.  Then you develop that belief and understanding clearly in your own mind and life.  Finally you grow so as to consistently apply that truth in your dealings with others.

May we learn Paul’s lesson well in our personal discipleship.

God bless,

Joe Holder

 Merciful Obedience 

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. ( Romans 12:1-2 ) 

            With this chapter Paul moves us to the next step in his appeal to the Romans to lay aside racial and cultural bickering and to unite in their faith and actions on behalf of the gospel.  After devoting significant ink and reasoning in the eighth chapter to God’s eternal purpose and work, including predestination, and in the ninth chapter’s focus on God’s election all of grace and mercy, Paul now moves to direct exhortations regarding the ethics of grace.  Often when we talk with people who do not believe in the doctrines of grace as set forth in the New Testament, we hear them protest that such a strong belief in grace leads to a compromised and immoral lifestyle.  While Paul’s accusers charged this problem to Paul, he categorically rejected it and proved both by his lifestyle and by his teaching that their charge was false.  ( Romans 3:1-9 )  Paul’s teaching regarding God’s predestination in no way eliminated the moral, voluntary, and righteous choices of regenerate believers in their energetic life of godliness.  In this chapter he in no way implies that divine grace puts us on auto-pilot, doing these things for us and in us apart from our personal choices.  A divine fiat that does not incorporate the believer’s conscious will in no way involves moral issues (Regenerate or not, an individual must make conscious and voluntary choices or actions in order for the action to be regarded as either “moral” or “immoral.”)  Since divine grace exclusively accomplishes regeneration in us, we cannot say that our regeneration is either moral or immoral.  It is an act of God apart from our personal moral decisions.  God doesn’t command us to become born again, holding us morally accountable if we do not do so and charging us with immoral action if we do not effect our new birth.  However, once God instills eternal life in us at the new birth, our choices and actions are measurable as moral or immoral.  God informs and directs us to righteousness.  The Holy Spirit bears witness to our conscience.  In contrast no unregenerate person possesses the ability to accomplish his/her regeneration.  No unregenerate person possesses the ability or interest to live a godly life.  However, when God writes His law in our hearts and minds, a specific change of our pre-regenerate disposition, He bears witness to our conscience and informs and leads us to make righteous decisions and conduct.  Leading does not imply coercion.  He never forces or causes us to do these things apart from our conscious, voluntary decision to do so.  In regeneration we are indeed passive, but in godly living, as outlined rather specifically in the twelfth chapter of Romans and elsewhere in Scripture, we are by no means passive.  We are rather quite active.  Our choices then become moral/ethical choices. 

As Paul’s example of unbelieving and disobedient “ Israel ” in the eleventh chapter exemplifies wrong ethical choices, his exhortations in the twelfth chapter exemplify right choices that lead us into the fruitful fields of the walk of faith.  As Paul’s reasoning in both chapters clearly exhibits, our personal, moral choices in either direction bring with them specific consequences.  We may live in the dazzling sunlight of divine goodness as we “…continue in his goodness…” thereby proving to ourselves “…what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”  Or we may fall from our steadfastness, fail to prove His good will, and thereby bring upon us the severity of God. 

I beseech you….  Paul in no way implies divine orchestration here.  Why would he beg (the meaning of the word “beseech”) people to do something if divine purpose had causatively ordained that they would or would not do the things that followed?  Rather he clearly informs us that our choices are ours.  Yes, our choices are informed and influenced by a quickened conscience, God’s law written within, and attested to by the Holy Spirit’s witness within, but divine energy does not coerce our obedience.  A wise man has observed that God never does for us what He has directed us to do for ourselves.  A sensitive and kind hand of divine providence provides us with fresh water and leads us beside those still waters, but He does not force us to drink the water.  He instills in us a thirst for them, gives us a new desire for them and directs us to drink freely.  Paul begs us to follow the influence of the Holy Spirit, the witness of the divine law written within, and his own preaching of the gospel to implement the graceful works that God commands us to follow in our daily lives. 

…by the mercies of God….  Often when we see chapter divisions in a passage we dismiss anything we read in the prior chapter and “start over” with the reading of the new chapter.  This practice is errant and robs us of the contextual flow of the passage.  In Scripture chapter divisions were added centuries after the text was originally written.  If we read a New Testament letter as it was intended, we will read it as a flowing contextual whole.  Do we find anything in the eleventh chapter of Romans that refers to God’s mercy?  If so, we need to link it with this reference that Paul makes as he transitions to the next section of the letter. 

For as ye in times past have not believed God, yet have now obtained mercy through their unbelief: Even so have these also now not believed, that through your mercy they also may obtain mercy. For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all. ( Romans 11:30-32 )

Paul’s exhortation to godly living directs us to God’s mercy.  God would be wholly within His righteous character to leave us in our sins and to withhold any privilege of service and the blessings that relate to our present service to Him.  However, He has not done so.  Instead, He has shown us mercy, both in terms of our eternal redemption through Christ and in terms of His opening the door of blessings and opportunities to us to serve Him here and now.  As we contemplate Paul’s surprising discovery to us in the eleventh chapter that a people exist who are both enemies to the gospel and beloved of God, we should pause for personal reflection.  Have we not at times acted so as to place ourselves in that very position?  Are we so filled with pride that we cannot see occasions when our own sins, driven by unbelief, at times placed us in this position of being enemies of the gospel, though yet beloved of God?  So how can we explain divine blessings in our lives today in light of such past failures, failures that offended divine grace and tried God’s patience?  The answer lies in a vivid remembrance of God’s present and past mercy to us.  If past failures or sins wholly excluded us from present opportunity to serve God and walk by faith, all efforts to believe the gospel and to serve God would be futile! 

…by the mercies of God….  The active motive and opportunity for our obedience does not lie in our own merit, but rather in divine mercy.  Under the Levitical priesthood, a man might realize a particular sin he had committed, or, for that matter, he might realize a special blessing in his life.  In either case he was directed to take a special offering to the Levitical priests.  He “presented” the sacrificial animal to the priest who, on his behalf, offered it to God.  The offering of the animal required the animal’s death.  However, in the case of New Testament believers, the sacrifice we are commanded to offer is a living sacrifice.  We must necessarily “sacrifice” the satisfaction of various sinful fleshly appetites and actions.  More important than the subjection and control of sinful inclinations is the active and energetic engagement of our lives in godly pursuits, something that we might rightly describe as the “walk of faith.” 

…holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.  We do not continue in sin and pray for God to sanctify and bless our sins.  Rather we turn from them and work toward the building of a holy, God-centered life that is, like this word “holy,” “set apart for God,” a life that is acceptable to God our Father.  Paul characterizes this life as a “reasonable service.”  Literally the intent of this phrase is to identify the Christian life as a logical or rational lifestyle for the regenerate believer in Christ.  Sadly Christians often think of serving God only in terms of emotions, but Scripture affirms that we must engage both our emotions and our rational minds and abilities to accomplish acceptable service to God.  Conversely, according to Paul’s point, it is wholly irrational and illogical for a Christian to choose any other lifestyle. 

            And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind….  With every choice we make, every action we take, every word we speak, we encounter a choice.  Do we think, say, or do what conforms to the compromised and fallen values of this world, or do we measure our actions by God’s will and pleasure.  Occasionally professing Christians will become so devoted to winning their way that they forget Biblical ethics and values, striving to win their way, not submit to God’s way.  Once many years ago a very sincere, if also very confused man said to me, “Sometimes we have to lie for the sake of the kingdom of God .”  I rejected his compromised logic then, and I do so today.  Later I observed this man actually engaging in a lie, but it was my observation that his motive was altogether for his personal gain, not in any way “for the sake of the kingdom.”  We may very well purse ideas or actions in our Christian activities from wrong motives, altogether compromised in our actions, with great sincerity.  We may actually convince other people that we are doing everything we do “for the sake of the kingdom,” but we must never forget that God knows everything about us.  We may deceive other people, but we cannot and shall not deceive God.              Engaging the influence of Scripture as enlightened and informed by the Holy Spirit never leads us to compromise our ethics.  Rather our following the Holy Spirit consistently and inevitably leads us to a transformed lifestyle that honors God. 

            The Greek word translated “transformed” in this lesson comes from the Greek root for the English word metamorphosis.  You probably encountered this word in high school biology.  It refers to the maturation process of a silk caterpillar inside its cocoon.  It weaves its cocoon over the body of a worm.  Upon maturity inside the cocoon, a beautiful moth comes out of the cocoon, not a larger worm.  Paul urges us in this lesson to become in action what we have been made by grace in our true and regenerate nature.  The Greek language used two different words that both described major changes.  However, one word referred to a temporary change, and the other word, the one that Paul used here, refers to a permanent change.  Paul urges us to acknowledge our spiritual or higher nature and to live out that nature in our choices and actions in life.  At the heart of Paul’s reasoning we must uncover the truth that in the new birth God makes a monumental change in our moral character, a change of moral preferences and desires that is in logical harmony with His own holy character.  It is an abominable error to think of a regenerate person as yet “totally depraved.”  Such a notion patently denies the work of grace that God has performed in and to us.  It builds on the premise that we are no different now than before the work of grace, that we are as fully engaged in and dedicated to sin as then, that the work of grace made no moral change whatever in us.  It shames the grace that saves us and the God of grace who performed that work in us.  Paul is not here appealing to such people.  He is appealing to people whose heart has been transformed by divine grace, and his appeal is for us to practice the ethics that divine grace has wrought in us.  Show your true life by your personal conduct.