Beginning with chapter 12, Paul picks up a somewhat different emphasis in his letter to the Romans. There are some who tend to divide all of Paul’s letters into two parts, a “doctrinal” section followed by a “practical” section. These people would say that chapter 12 starts the second major part of his letter, the practical portion dealing with sanctification, or Christian living.
Such a division is not necessarily wrong or even inappropriate. Paul here is indeed picking up the practical subject of sanctification. That, however, is not exactly a new topic. Recall that Paul spoke of sanctification—righteous conduct in the life of the believer—already in chapters 6 to 8. There, however, he spoke of it in more abstract terms. He treated it in its doctrinal aspect as the counterpart to the doctrine of justification, that is, how the sinner obtains the righteousness that avails before God.
At this stage in Paul’s letter, after finishing the three-chapter digression dealing with Israel’s place in God’s economy of things, Paul now directs the Romans’ attention to the important matter of everyday Christian living. As a broad outline of the material to be treated, one could say that the apostle first asks his readers to take a look at their use of the gifts and talents God has given them (chapter 12). Then he directs them to examine their attitudes toward government and authority (chapter 13). And finally, he addresses the always delicate matter of how strong Christians are to treat their weaker brothers and sisters (chapters 13 and 14).
Use of gifts and talents
Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. 2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Paul concluded the previous section with a statement about the amazing scope of God’s mercy. He made the bold assertion that God had “bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all” (11:32). This mercy of God has reached into the lives of the Roman readers. If they are Gentiles, it was God’s mercy that transferred the gospel from disobedient Jews to them as undeserving Gentiles. God richly blessed the preaching of the gospel to Gentiles so that Jews in turn, when they saw God’s boundless mercy to Gentiles, would themselves also turn to the gospel and thus become recipients of the same mercy God had shown to Gentiles.
To all his readers, Jew and Gentile, Paul now says, “I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God.” Their motivation is not to be that of fulfilling any legal requirements in order to gain favor with God. Rather, their motivation is to be one of grateful response to what God’s mercy has done for them.
In Old Testament times, God asked his people to bring him animal sacrifices in a variety of settings and situations. These animals would be ceremonially killed and formally presented to the Lord. The sacrifices thus symbolically became the Lord’s property.
Paul now asks the Romans and us, as New Testament Christians, to bring ourselves as living sacrifices. Note the radical differences from the Old Testament: not something else brought as a substitute, but Christians bringing themselves; not a dead sacrifice, but living sacrifices that are able to respond to God’s mercy with service that is “holy and pleasing” to him. Such service, done from the heart and not just in outward motions, Paul calls our “spiritual act of worship.”
An initial attempt on the apostle’s part to identify and describe such service to God involves both a negative and a positive. First, he says, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world.” Conforming to the world is all that unregenerate worldlings know. It is their usual pattern to rebel against God and go their own way. And in their better moments, when they try to serve God, they do it badly, for they try to earn favor with God and influence him by buying their way into his good graces.
Like all unregenerate sinners, Paul’s readers had lived as such. But now Paul says, No more of that! Don’t conform any longer to the world but “be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Essentially, Paul is describing the new state of heart and mind that follows upon what we call conversion, or regeneration. It is the change of heart and mind that takes place when a person has come to know Christ as Savior and Redeemer. To the Corinthians Paul wrote, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17). That new creation, involving believers’ outlook and attitude, enables them to “test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”