Presenting Our Bodies and Minds to God / Romans 12:1-2

The Weight of Mercy

Well, if you would, pick up your Bibles and turn to Romans chapter 12. As you’re turning there, I want to ask you: what do you think about the character of God? How does it make you feel to think about the merciful God? I want you to be thinking about that because there are a lot of characteristics of God that we can leave with, but mercy is foundational.

A few years ago, somebody gave me a synonym for mercy that I really like. When I say the word, you’ll probably understand why it hits home. A synonym for mercy is pity. Now, when I think of God being merciful to me, I think, “Oh, good, that’s fuzzy and warm. He has mercy on me.”

But when I say somebody has pity on you, how do you feel? Personally, I don’t want your pity. I don’t need your pity. You know, when I was a little kid, I’d fall down and maybe scrape my knee, and somebody would come over and try to help me up. Sometimes I would whack their arm away because I didn’t want their help; I wanted to prove I could get up on my own.

Pity reaches out and does something for somebody who is totally helpless, hopeless, and powerless. To have someone have pity on us and do something for us out of that pity, we have to be very humble. It’s humiliating in a way, because it’s me admitting that I am completely helpless and I need this other person in order to get through it. We don’t like that. But that is exactly where we find ourselves with God.

Eleven Chapters of Mercy

When we look at the book of Romans, Paul spends eleven chapters building this case. Right away, it’s like he’s saying, “We know you don’t have the power, but God himself does.”

In chapter one, he tells us that the Gospel is the power of God for salvation. In chapter two, even before we were saved, when we were under God’s wrath, he showed mercy to us. He showed us kindness and patience to lead us to repentance. In chapter three, we see that out of mercy, he gave us the law so that we would be able to see how lost we were.

In chapter six, we see that we were helpless slaves to a master, and what has God done? Out of his mercy, he put us to death and raised us up with Jesus Christ to walk in newness of life and freedom from the power of sin. In chapter eight, we see that out of his mercy, he will eventually take us even apart from the presence of sin. We will never ever, ever be separated from the love of God.

In chapter nine, we find out that even though we are vessels of wrath, God reached down and made us into vessels of mercy. In chapter ten, we find out that by his mercy, we are commissioned to share Jesus Christ with everybody else. Out of his mercy, anyone who calls upon the name of the Lord has an opportunity to be saved. And in chapter eleven, God demonstrates more mercy on all the Gentiles and all these other people groups, promising that one day he will turn back to the people who rejected him and show them mercy as well.

The First Domino

If you notice, the letter doesn’t end in chapter 11. There aren’t a lot of commandments in chapters one through 11. It’s all about theology—who God is, what God has done, and what he will do. But then we hit chapter 12, and everything changes. It’s like a row of dominoes. You remember when you were a kid and you put a bunch of dominoes in a row? You knock over the first one, and it sets everything else in motion. Chapter 12 is that first domino for how we live.

Romans 12:1 (NASB)

Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, [which is] your spiritual service of worship.

Paul is saying, “Therefore, in view of all this mercy I just spent eleven chapters talking about, here is your response.” He calls us to present our bodies as a living sacrifice.

When we think about sacrifice, we often think about atonement for sin, like the sacrifice of Jesus. But in the ancient world, there were many sacrifices that were simply to show how valuable a God was to the worshiper. There were criteria that made something acceptable or unacceptable.

For instance, if I’m going to give an acceptable sacrifice of worship to God, would I go to my pen of goats and find the runt of the litter? The one that’s kind of wiggly and weak? No. Because if I offer that, I’m showing that my God isn’t very valuable. You take the best one. You take the firstborn. You take the one that’s going to cost you the most because you want to show how valuable your God is.

What shocks me is that you and I are actually considered an acceptable offering to God. Not because of anything we’ve done, but because of everything he’s done. We aren’t commanded here to make ourselves an acceptable sacrifice. We can’t! I’m too weak and powerless. But God has made us acceptable to himself.

The Primary Purpose

We often ask, “What is God doing in my life?” We want to know if he wants us to marry a certain person, stay at a certain school, or take a certain job. All of those are great questions, but they are secondary.

The first domino, the only one that really matters, is the same for every single one of us: God has done everything in your life to make you into a living, holy, acceptable sacrifice to him. The only thing we have left to do is to present ourselves.

Think about a bride getting married. She spends money on makeup and hair. A seamstress spends months making sure the dress is exactly right. On that day, she spends hours making sure she looks exactly how she needs to. Why in the world would she do all that and then not show up to the ceremony? Everything else is secondary until she does the primary thing she prepared for.

Paul says this is our “reasonable service of worship.” The Greek word there is logicos. You can hear the word “logical” in it. It’s just the one and only logical thing to do. When you keep in view all the mercies and all the work God has done to make you a sacrifice, there is only one logical response: present yourself totally and completely to him.

The Great Reconstruction

This presentation is a once-and-for-all commitment, but it’s also a continual thing we maintain day by day. Paul gives us two movements: one thing we stop doing, and one thing we do in its place.

Romans 12:2 (NASB)

And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

First, don’t let the world mold you. Stop handing your life over to a system you aren’t even part of anymore. Instead, be transformed. Paul uses the word metamorphosis, like a caterpillar changing into a butterfly.

This transformation happens through the renewal of the mind. The word “renewal” here is like a reconstruction. It’s not just redecorating; it’s a total renovation.

I used to love those home renovation shows. They would take a family’s house and whisk the family away on vacation. Then, the crews would come in. On the very first day, they would bring in bulldozers and just totally demolish the house. The only thing that remained the same was the property line.

They’d show the family a video of the bulldozers going through their old kitchen, and the people would be in shock. I always thought, “What did you think they were going to do? You know the show!” But then, they’d build a 5,000-square-foot mansion. When the family came back, they’d move the bus, and the people would see a completely different structure.

That’s what God wants to do with our minds. We come to him with all these preconceived ideas about what is right and wrong, what is good and bad. We need to humbly say, “God, I’m probably wrong about a lot of this because I got it from the world. Wipe the hard drive clean. Rewrite the entire program.”

When that happens, your worldview changes. When your worldview changes, your values change. When your values change, your choices change. And when your choices change, your entire life is transformed.

The Deed, Not the Lease

When you allow God to transform you, you “prove” the will of God. It’s like geometry class where you write out a proof to show an angle is correct. You prove to yourself that God’s way is where fulfillment is, and you demonstrate it to the people around you.

I think some of us struggle because we feel like our lives don’t look that much different from the world. We come to a baptism service, we hear someone’s radical testimony, and we clap because we don’t want to look out of place—but inside, we’re thinking, “I wish that was me.”

Maybe your life looks like that old house because you’re still holding back. We try to do this little dance where we give God most of our lives, but we keep certain areas for ourselves. We say, “God, do whatever you want in my mind, but don’t touch that couch. That’s been in my family for years.”

Years ago, my wife and I lived in a townhouse that we rented. We would say, “Come over to our place,” but we knew we couldn’t really do whatever we wanted to that house because it wasn’t ours.

Here is the thing: God is not a renter. You might be frustrated because you keep throwing a lease out in front of God, and he won’t sign it. He says, “I don’t want your lease; I want your deed.”

That’s scary because he’s a radical God. He’s going to knock down walls. He’s going to paint weird colors. He’s going to throw out your old stuff. He isn’t a decorator who just wants to change a few thoughts here and there; he’s a contractor who wants to rebuild the whole thing from scratch.

If there is anybody we can trust with the deed to our lives, isn’t it this merciful God? Trust him with his definitions of right and wrong. We can’t go any further in the book of Romans until we do this. You can learn more Greek words and facts, but you won’t be transformed until you give him everything.

Give him the deed. Let the renewal begin.

Prayer

Father, thank you for your incredible mercy to all of us who were desperately weak and hopeless. Thank you for doing everything in our lives to make us into an acceptable sacrifice. That blows me away. I pray that all of us would just do the logical thing tonight. Maybe for the first time, or maybe as a recommitment, we hand our lives completely over to you—every area, including our minds. It’s scary and it’s humbling, but God, we trust you. Do whatever you need to do with our bodies and our minds. In the name of your Son, Jesus, who gave us all mercy. Amen.