A
Commentary of Romans 12:1–2 and Ephesians 4:17–20
Living Sacrifice
Romans 12:1-2
states, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you
present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your
reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed
by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable
and perfect will of God” (Rom. 12:1-2 [NKJV]).
The first thing
to notice is the use of the word “therefore” in first verse. In the earlier
chapters, the Apostle Paul wrote about how we had been slaves to sin but set
free through the death and resurrection of Christ and how Israel had broken
free from the yoke of the law. In the previous chapter, he explained how the Gentiles
had been grafted into the wild olive tree and brought in to the family of God.
The final verse in that chapter states, “For of Him and through Him and to Him
are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen” (Rom. 11:36). The use of the
word “therefore” signifies that in response to the mercies God has shown us and
since all things are of Christ, through Christ and to Christ, we are to submit
our lives back to Him as living sacrifices.
In the Old
Testament, the priests were the ones that offered up the sacrifices to God.
Peter writes in his epistle that believers are part of a royal priesthood and
have the ability to offer spiritual sacrifices to God (1 Pet. 2:9). Hebrews
13:15 states that God is well pleased with sacrifices of praises and thanks to
His name and doing good works. F.F. Bruce commented that, “the sacrifices of the new order do not consist
in taking the lives of others, like the ancient animal sacrifices, but in giving
one’s own” (Bruce 1985, 213). Our
lives should be a living sacrifice to God since we have Jesus Christ living
inside of us.
Verse 2 states,
“And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of
your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will
of God” (Rom. 12:2). With words like “conformed” and “transformed” the Holy
Spirit is telling us to not live our lives in the pattern of the world but to
allow our nature to be changed in the image of Jesus. This change is brought
about by an awakening of our Spirit that has been dead up until the point we
asked Jesus to live in us.
God will
transform us and make us spiritually minded by using His Word. As we spend time
meditating on God’s Word, memorizing it, and making it a part of our inner
person, God will gradually make our mind more spiritual (Wiersbe 1996, chap.
11, under “Right Relationships Mean Right Living”). Spiritual formation is
rooted in deepening our relationship with God as become more like Christ and it
has to begin with our minds. The word in verse two for “prove” is better
translated as “discern” meaning that unless our minds are transformed into the
mind of Christ, we will never be able to understand and reveal God’s perfect
will for our life. When we are freed from the control of the world, we can discover
what God has in mind for us. The renewed mind enables us to discern the will of
God (Mounce 2001, chap. 6, under “How Righteousness Manifests Itself”).
The New Man
Ephesians
4:17-20 instructs us to no longer live the lifestyle of the sinful. To fully
understand these verses, we need to understand the level of depravity of the
Ephesians. Ephesus was the home of the pagan temple of Diana (Artemis in the
Greek), which was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The Gentile
Ephesian’s worship of Diana involved in the worst kind of immorality of pagan
religion and left Ephesus a place of temple prostitution, crime, immorality,
idolatry and unspeakable sin (Anders 1999, chap. 10, under “The Calling to
Holiness”).
Paul is warning
them to “no
longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind”
(Eph. 4:17). The word for “futility” also means “emptiness,” warning them that continuing in that lifestyle
would lead to an empty life void of any fruit and lacking any rewards. Paul
gives a similar warning in Romans 1:21 where he states that the sinful were
futile in their thinking and their hearts had become hardened. In Ephesians
4:18, Paul says that their hardened hearts led to ignorance and a darkened
understanding. The hardened heart and darkened mind result in an unholy life
that is guided by sin and enslaved by the flesh. The apostle declares in the
second letter to the Corinthian church that the power of sin and Satan had
blinded the minds of unbelievers, keeping them from “seeing the light of the
gospel of the glory of Christ” (2 Cor. 4:4).
The believers
in Ephesus had become “callous” to the sins they were committing. This word
means that they had lost all sense of shame and had truly become lost in the
sinful acts they were engaged in. Paul warns them that this was not the model
set forth by Christ and not the way they should be living if they look to
Christ as an example.
The warning is
the same for us today. If we truly repent of our sins and turn to Christ, we
cannot turn back to the sin that we have been set free from. This leads to another
major key to spiritual formation: it is not enough to simply know about Christ,
we must live as Christ. Willard penned that we can become like Christ by
following Him in His overall lifestyle. He also added that we must engage in
the same activities that Jesus practiced and that by doing so, we would be able
to maintain a constant fellowship with the Father just as Jesus did (Willard
2009, preface).
When we think
of the word “formation,” we think of order, discipline and direction. If our
desire is to be more like Christ and to follow certain spiritual disciplines,
we have to first be disciplined enough to no longer live like we used to and to
turn and walk away from our sin. We have been rescued from the power of darkness and brought into the
kingdom of Jesus Christ as Colossians 1:13 declares but this is only part of
it. We have been saved by grace but have also been given new life and with this
new life we are to live differently from the world as part of a “different
world” (Willard 2009, chap. 3,
under “What the Resurrection Meant to the Friends of Jesus”)
Paul continues
in verses 20 through 24 to encourage all believers to put off their “old self”
and be clothed with the righteousness of Christ. He says that our minds will be
renewed and we will no longer be slaves to deceitful desires. We can embrace
the new life that has been given to us and walk in the example set by Jesus
Christ.
References
Anders,
Max. 1999. Galatians-Colossians. Vol.
8 of The Holman New Testament Commentary;
Holman Reference. Nashville, TN: Broadman
& Holman Publishers. Logos e-book.
Bruce, F. F. 1985. The Letter of Paul to the Romans: 213. Quoted in Robert Mounce, Romans.
Vol. 27 of The New American Commentary [Nashville:
Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2001].
Mounce,
Robert H. 2001. Romans. Vol. 27 of The
New American Commentary. Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers. Logos
e-book.
Wiersbe,
Warren W. 1996. The Bible Exposition
Commentary. Wheaton, IL: Victor Books. Logos e-book.
Willard,
Dallas. 1988. The Spirit of the
Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives. San Francisco: Harper
& Row. Kindle e-book.