Christmas decorations are out in the stores, so perhaps it is not too early to think about buying gifts for people.
Have you ever struggled with what to get someone who made a special contribution to your life? For those who have been most meaningful in our lives, no gift seems to really express the depth of our love, yet we want to appropriately demonstrate how we feel.
If you have ever wrestled with this challenge, you can understand Romans 12. The Apostle Paul helps us consider what an appropriate response to God looks like.
The first word in the chapter, “therefore,” summarizes all Paul has said to this point in the book. Considering the depth of human sinfulness and the even greater depths of God’s mercy, what is the appropriate way to respond to God? What would you give to God who has given so much for you?
Paul tells us that the only appropriate response to God is to offer our entire selves as an act of worship. I think it is important to note that Paul actually uses the word “bodies” (v. 1) here. He is not talking about a spirituality that is merely intellectual, and he is not speaking solely about the emotions of worship. He is talking about offering our selves to God in a way that includes not only our minds (v. 2), but also our physicality.
God wants our hands active in helping others. He wants our feet moving to go and make disciples. He wants our knees bending in prayer and service. He wants our shoulders helping others bear their burdens. To offer our bodies to God as living sacrifices is to offer the part of ourselves that experiences and influences the world around us. This is not privatized, internal religion. This is a continuation of the incarnational work of Christ.
In describing our appropriate response to God, it is no accident that he provides the illustration of a body (vv. 4-5). As Jesus was the embodied revelation of God, so we who are saved by grace through faith become the body of Christ on earth.
Worship is more than what happens in a sanctuary on Sunday morning. Worship occurs daily through the humble submission and faithful use of our physical bodies in obedience to God’s will.
Developing the body of Christ image, Paul reminds us that collectively we form the body, and individually we each have a part to play in it.
Consider first the role of the individual. In God’s graciousness, he has given to every believer the gift of the Holy Spirit, and that Spirit manifests itself in us in a variety of ways as God accomplishes his purposes through us (see also 1 Corinthians 12:4-7).
Every believer has a gift. The gifts will not all look the same, yet every gift is important to the work of the body. Here is a natural question that arises from this passage: How do I discover my spiritual gift?
In response to this question, it is important to remember that while God gives gifts to individuals, the gifts benefit the larger body. Consequently, the body of Christ may see how the Spirit is at work in you before you are aware of it. They will recognize the potential to teach. They will appreciate your acts of service. They will receive your words of encouragement, and they will praise God for them before you are aware of how God is working through you. If you want to know your spiritual gift, ask someone who is spiritually wise how they see the Spirit of God at work in you.
A second point to remember about spiritual gifts is that a discussion of gifts arises from a teaching about worship and obedience. We do not discover our spiritual gifts in a vacuum but in the arena of life where we are seeking to be faithful to the will of God. The best possible way to find how the Spirit of God regularly is shining forth from your life is to get busy offering your body to God. In so doing, you and those around you will have ample opportunity to observe the Spirit's work.
This last observation leads us to the last half of Romans 12, a section packed with numerous short commands, each of which could be commented upon. In the interest of time, though, consider how the whole of 12:9-21 emphasizes community.
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Our appropriate response to God may be personal, but it is not private. Offering our bodies to God in worship requires us to love those around us with a sincere love. It requires us to work in hope and to be patient. It requires humility and forgiveness and forbearance.
None of these virtues come naturally to us. We would much rather act with impatient selfishness, dismissing those who are unimportant to us, revenging ourselves on those who hurt us, and generally ordering our lives for our pleasure.
But a godly community requires godly virtues, and those virtues are not learned in isolation. Through the Spirit, God draws believers together into a body, and in that body the individually gifted members have the opportunity to learn and practice Christ-like virtues.
In response to the great mercy of God, have you surrendered your body in worship, committing yourself to a Spirit-directed life and to the community of Christ?
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