A RADICAL CALL TO TOTAL COMMITMENT (Part 2 of 2)
God’s Invitation to Grace ❧ Part 53
Romans 12:1-2 ❧ Pastor, Dr. John Denney
Read these verses with me, will you? 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. 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 (Romans 12:1-2, NAS).
Many of us here have read or heard these verses many times. We’re very familiar with them – so much so, in fact, we don’t really hear them. This is a common malady many of us suffer from – and not just with the Bible. Husbands and wives are famous for doing this with each other. We become so accustomed to hearing our spouses that after awhile we don’t hear them at all. Husbands have become deaf in what are called the “wife-tones” and wives are deaf in the “husband-tones.”
A number of years ago a survey was made of 4000 laymen in 114 evangelical churches across the U. S. They were asked, “Do you feel the preaching on Sunday relates to what’s going on in your life?” Over 83% saw virtually no connection between what they heard on Sunday morning and what they faced on Monday morning. We can’t speak to the preaching of those 114 churches, but I can’t help but wonder how many of those who say they do not see a connection with what they heard on Sunday and what they faced on Monday had become so familiar with the hearing of God’s Word they had become deaf in the “God-tones”?
Romans 12:1-2 is an excellent test to see how well our hearing is in the God-tones. If we are listening, I mean really listening, we should find ourselves jolted by the enormity of what God is calling us to. He is calling us to: A Radical Call to Total Commitment. God is not just calling for commitment, but a commitment that is as radical as it is total. Jesus called for the same level of commitment when He answered the question: What is the greatest commandment? Jesus answered: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind(Matthew 22:37). The Gospel of Mark adds a fourth: and with all your strength(Mark 12:30). Paul is saying the same thing directly and indirectly in Romans 12:1-2 (heart, soul, body, mind, will). Paul is simply calling us to the same level of radical and total commitment to God that Jesus did.
There is one more thing we need to see as well. This level of commitment God is calling us to is not measured merely by our beliefs but by our behavior. You see, if we’re really listening, we’ll recognize Paul’s whole tone in Romans 12 has suddenly shifted from what we are to believe (Romans 1-11) to how we are to behave. Both Jesus and Paul are saying: The true test of right believing is right behaving. Or, as one person put it, Our theology must become our biography. It’s that simple.
A third grade Sunday School teacher was giving a Bible lesson on the commandment, Honor thy father and mother. “Now, does anyone know a commandment for brothers and sisters?” the teacher asked. One quick witted little boy spoke up, Thou shall not kill! The truest test of what believe is how we behave.
Just as Jesus says we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength, Paul is saying the same thing. In fact, I see all four of these at work in Romans 12:1-2. The first has to do with our heart and soul. We saw this a couple of weeks ago. This is the foundation of our commitment. Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God…Paul is appealing to our hearts. He is saying: Remember God’s many and lavish mercies He has poured into your lives. In His great mercy He flooded your life with His love and forgiveness and grace when you turned from your sin and trusted in Him (Justification & Salvation). In His great mercy, God’s just wrath against your sin was eternally satisfied through Christ’s finished work on the cross (Propitiation). And He guaranteed it through His Son’s resurrection from the grave. In His great mercy, God gave you salvation that is eternal; one day you will be in Heaven. Think of it, you’ll be Home for the first time! (Glorification). These mercies are the food that sustains and nourishes our heart and soul for God.
The unsaved person doesn’t understand this because he does not have a saving relationship with God. 1 Corinthians 2:14 says, a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them(1 Corinthians 2:14). Their souls are not alive. The Bible says they are in fact dead in their sin (Eph. 2:1). But Christ in His grace has made us alive in Him through our faith (Eph. 2:5). Our heart and soul points to the central part of who we are. Our hearts were once cold and indifferent toward God and our souls were spiritually dead. Jesus said, What do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul? (Matthew 16:26, NLT). Our soul’s long for life and that life can only be found in Christ. When we have found Christ, we have found the very One our soul longs for. One of the most consistent things I hear people say after they put their hope in Christ is they have peace, real peace, for the first time. Why? Because they finally know the Jesus, the Prince of Peace (Isa. 9:6).
The second has to do with our bodies, present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship (12:1b). This has to do with the quality of our commitment. When a Priest or an Israelite made on offering to God in the OT it had to be top-notch. If it was a lamb, it had to be the Blue-Ribbon lamb. If was a bull, it had to be the prize-winning bull. If it was grain, it had to be the finest. No second-rate offerings were allowed. For a brief time my wife and I attended a Jewish Messianic service while we lived in Portland Oregon. The church was a solid group of believers. Near the end of each service fifteen or twenty people would gather to close the time in a Jewish folk dance. Anyone could participate, but you had to go through a series of folk dancing lessons first. One of the signature moves was stepping forward with hands lifted palms skyward. It represented giving our whole bodies to God. That’s what Paul means by presenting our bodies. Romans 12:2 has to do with the mind and will of our commitment.
- The mind of our commitment. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind (Romans 12:2a). Paul says don’t get caught up in the world’s system of values. Don’t let your life be shaped by social media or the latest fad. JB Philipps translates this verse, Don’t let the world squeeze you into its mold.
Have you ever felt pressured to do something just because everyone else was doing it? Peanuts cartoon: “I can resist any pressure except peer.” For centuries people believed that Aristotle was right when he said that the heavier an object the faster it will fall to the earth. Aristotle was regarded as the greatest thinker of all times and surely, he could not be wrong. All it would take is one brave person to take two objects of different weights and drop them an equal distance to prove his theory right or wrong. No one stepped forward until two-thousand years after Aristotle’s death. In 1859, Galileo summoned learned professors to the base of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Then he went to the top and pushed off two weights, one weighing ten pounds and the other one pound. Both landed at the exact same time. But the power of conventional wisdom was so strong the professors denied what they’d seen. They continued to say that Aristotle was right. We are by nature conformists. It is very tempting and easy to just fit in with the crowd even though we may not agree with them.
Jesus said just as He is not of the world nor are we because He chose us. Because of this, the world will hate us (Jn. 15:19). How can we relate to the world when we live in it, but are not of it?
Paul says we’re to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Transformation is something that God does in our lives from the inside out. The word in Greek is where we get our word for metamorphosis. God changes the very nature of who we are. Psychologists say that our basic personality is set by the time we are age three or four. But your personality can change. God is in the business of change. Like a caterpillar to a butterfly, God specializes in changing us from the inside out. He changes what we were in the past to make something beautiful of our lives in the present. Maybe you’ve had a bad past, mistreated, a lot of bad experiences in life. But, God says, I want to change your life. But here is the condition. You have to be willing to let go of the cocoon – it’s got to go. The cocoon is the old ways, habits, patterns.
How do you let go? You begin with changing the way you think. How you think will determine how you feel. How you feel determines how you act. I read once that a British psychiatrist named Giles Croft of the University of Leeds, did an experiment to find whether people who believed in the reality of the Monday morning blues are more likely to feel bad on Monday. Croft divided volunteers into three groups: one group he gave report that said Monday blues are for real. The second he gave a report that denied Monday blues. And he gave the third group nothing to read. What he found is that the first group was more likely to rate Monday as the worst day in the week. He concluded, how you think affects how you feel. You have to be willing to let go of the old patterns of thinking.
Next, fill your mind with God’s Word. Psalm 119:9 How can a young man keep his ways pure? By living according to Your word. I seek you with all my heart. Do not let me stray from Your commands. I have hidden Your word in my heart that I might not sin against You. The way you change your life is to fill your mind with the Word of God. The more you fill your life, your mind, with God’s word the more it transforms your life.
I grew up in a home where very little was known about the Bible. I couldn’t tell you that there was a NT and an OT. But something began to happen to me as I began seriously reading and studying the Bible for the first time. Every life experience seemed to remind me of something that God’s word said. I began to see the world through the lens of the Bible. My thinking was being changed. How I looked at life, felt about life, understood life, was being dramatically changed.
A radical and total commitment means letting God’s Word be the standard, the guide, the authority of what I think. How I respond to life’s hurts and disappointments. How I see myself and others.
- The will of our commitment. so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect (Romans 12:2b). Paul describes God’s will as good, acceptable, and perfect. God’s will is good. It’s not something to be afraid of, but you can greet it with positive expectancy. Jeremiah 29:11I know the plans I have for you, plans for good not for evil, plans to give you a future and a hope. Notice, this is God’s will, not mine. The greatest battle we will have as believes is letting go of our will and embracing God’s. But this surrender is a mark of a true follower (Matt. 7:21). God’s will is acceptable or pleasing. Sometimes we are afraid that God’s will is going to be boring, unsatisfying. We think, whatever God’s will is, it must be the opposite of what I want to do. The word here is literally satisfying. Whatever God’s will is for your life, you will be satisfied. But Paul qualifies what kind of satisfaction he means with the next word. God’s will is perfect, complete. It is the best. Literally what this means is that God’s plan for your life is tailor-made. It’s uniquely designed for you. It fits. It’s like a suit that’s been tailor-made; it fits you perfectly. It doesn’t fit anybody else; just you. It’s a custom fit, an original. One of the things that getting in the center of God’s will does is it releases you from comparison. That’s why he says don’t follow the ways of the world because how can you follow what everybody else is doing when God’s will is tailor made for you. If you’re doing what everybody else is doing, it’s not tailor-made. Doing God’s will brings a level of joy and confidence, satisfaction and peace you won’t find doing someone else’s. Nothing can improve on God’s will for your life. 1 John says The world and its desires pass away but the person who does the will of God abides forever(1 John 2:17). If you want to know God’s will, you don’t get your ques from the world. You get them from listening to God.
Let me close with this. What does God want from us? What is He saying? Commit your total life to Christ. The secret to knowing God’s will is to be willing in advance to do whatever it is – before you know what it is. Some of us say, “God, You show me what your will is and I’ll let you know if that’s what I’ll do.” God doesn’t work that way in our lives. If you want to know God’s will you decide you’re going to do His will whatever it is.
An Arab chief tells the story of a spy captured and sentenced to death by a general in the Persian army. The general had a curious custom of giving the condemned criminals a choice between the firing squad or what was known as “the big black door.” The moment for execution drew near, and guards brought the spy to the Persian general. “What will it be, asked the general, the firing squad or the big black door?” The spy hesitated for a long time. Finally he chose the firing squad. A few minutes later, hearing the shots ring out confirming the spy’s execution, the general turned to his aide and said, “They always prefer the known to the unknown. People fear what they don’t know. Yet we gave him a choice.” “What lies behind the big black door?” asked the aide. “Freedom,” replied the general. “I’ve only known a few brave enough to take that door.”
God says to you and me, Are you willing to make a radical and total commitment to Me? It means accepting My will for your life even if you don’t know what it is. Are you willing to go through the door of the unknown? It may look like you’re giving up your life, but in fact you’re gaining freedom. Are you willing to be so dedicated to God to say “Yes” to Him for your life, your family, your work, your future? Are you willing to commit your total life to Christ? When you do this, it is your spiritual act of worship.
