Therefore, I appeal to you, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. (Romans 12:1)
Most Merciful God:
Our brother Paul does not command,
though as Apostle he could (Philemon 1:8-9),
does not threaten or pull rank,
does not lay down a new Law,
as if all he has taught about grace
is for nothing.
Love makes its appeal.
Given the mighty mercies received from God
we are given the opportunity to respond,
to live in such a way that fulfills
the Law and brings honor to Jesus
in Whose eternal debt we stand.
By what mercies does Paul appeal?
That word "Therefore" means
look at what's just been said.
What comes before our duty?
There it is -- that doxology at the end of chapter 11
echoes with mercies galore.
Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!
"For who has known the mind of the Lord,
or who has been his counselor?"
"Or who has given a gift to him
that he might be repaid?"
Everything is from him and through him and to him.
To him be glory forever. Amen. (11:33-36)
Let me meditate on this.
Let me be lost in the wonder
of Your love.
Let me be moved from guilt to grace to gratitude.
Your mercy lays seige to the citadel of self.
You have beseiged my heart with mercies,
brought them in wave after wave,
built the seigetowers of your gracious promises,
kept up a steady barrage of blessings,
cannonaded me with kindness,
overwhelmed all resistence,
and carried me captive in Christ's victory parade to glory.
How can I resist such mercy?
How can I not hear the Spirit's plea
to put self upon the altar of grace
and there
declared holy blameless
by the righteousness from Christ
lose self and world to Jesus.
Amen.
So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. (Romans 12:1, The Message)
Heavenly Father:
Our borther, Eugene Peterson, renders Paul's exhortation exactly right.
Presenting ourselves as "living sacrifices"
means placing our daily lives before you
as an offering.
That's what I want to do today and every day.
It is not only our reasonable worship,
it is the oxygen of exisence,
the light by which we see
what is real in a world of shadows.
Since the Garden,
this world has been run by magicians and mindbenders,
snakes hissing false promises,
interlopers dealing in illusions,
mavens of manipulation and spin,
conjurers of a celebrity worldview,
idolizing sin and presto-chango
no more God! Ha!
That is why we thrive only on the truth of your Word.
That is why your Holy Spirit spends 11 chapters in Romans
explaining doctrine before one word of exhortation.
Lord God, You do not demand blind obedience.
Our faith is not the result a leap into the unknown;
our ultimate trust is not unreasoned;
what we believe is not rooted in ignorance
though conjurers contend it is
superstition.
Eleven chapters of doctrine before one word of duty
puts the lie to magicians' misdirections,
“Don’t talk to me about doctrine—
just let me live my Christian life!”
“It makes no difference what you believe,
just as long as you live right.”
People who accept such notions are most prone
to the shenanighhans of religious shysters.
Congregants who don't think through their faith
are bound to have trust abused.
Shame on those ministers who cut off dialogue claiming tradition or mystery,
when your Word explores each mystery of godliness
and warns against substituting man-made traditions
for the doctrines of God.
So help us by your Holy Spirit
to place our everyday living before you.
It is from gratitude that we obey,
not fear,
not to gain something.
Heathens sacrifice to gain mercy;
believers have gained mercies galore
and sacrifice.
The sacrifice of our selves is the only holy and acceptable
offering we can make,
since by your justification you have declared us
not guilty of sin,
made us holy before You,
all because of Jesus
and what He did for us,
and what He goes on doing --
consecrating us to God,
weaning us from conformity to the the world of magic
to live in the light of glorious truth and joy and peace
at the foot of Jesus' cross.
Amen.
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:2)
Transforming God:
Thank you that we may know Your will
that we are not left to grope for You
in this world of conformity and chaos.
We praise You that Your will is good:
that your tests are not meant to destroy,
but to strengthen us for glory.
We praise you that Your will is acceptable:
that it is not unknown or foreign to Your elect,
that by knowing Your character
we want to please You,
we want to crawl upon the altar
as living sacrifices.
We praise you that Your will is holy:
that Your plan for us
and for all your creation is redemptive,
restorative,
righteous.
We confess that too often we fail
to discern or prove Your will.
We are conformed too much to the world.
Our minds are more easily transformed
by shiny fast cars or sparkling jewels,
by power or money or status
than by Your will revealed in Jesus.
Help us to live in the world
from the inside out
and not from the outside in.
So often I want to live outside in --
I want to have it my way
and when things go awry
I can then try to blame Your will.
Outside in --
when we worship You through external forms and man-made traditions
and criticize anyone moved by Your Holy Spirit and Truth.
Outside in --
when we attempt to testify of our non-comformity
through how we dress, how we don't do this or that,
or countless legalisms
that would do a Pharisee proud.
Outside in --
when we compromise what we believe
to please people or to make an impression
or to get our way with a passive agressive smarm.
Outside in --
when we squeeze You into the mold
of our sin-driven passions,
seeking Your blessing for what we have already purposed to do.
Increase our faith that we may have courage
to live inside out.
That we conform our desires first to You
before we engage our self-centered wanters.
Inside out --
that we obey even when it is inconvenient,
or contradictory to worldly standards.
Inside out --
that our worship would be genuine and spontaneous,
giving ourselves to a Living God
and not a memorial service of the dead,
by the dead, for the dead.
Inside out --
that we would follow You in spite of safety or convenience,
as our dear Yvonne's granddaughter leaves today
on a two year witness for you
in places dangerous for Christians.
Keep her safe and may her faith be infectious
to all your elect yet to come to You.
She is our example today, Lord,
of the transformed mind
tested to prove Your good, acceptable, holy will
inside out.
Transform our minds,
that organizing center of identity,
that consciousness that perceives and evaluates,
that repository of thought and experience
where doctrine might impact behavior
more than our behavior seeks to shape our doctrine.
Oh Jesus, let us past the tests of transforming grace,
loving You from inside out,
transforming first our minds and hearts
by which we may do Your will.
Amen.
... be transformed by the renewing of your mind ...For I say, through the grace that was given to me, to every one of you, not to over-think yourselves, but control your thoughts according to the measure of faith God gives to you. Just like the body has many members, and all the members have different functions, so we, the many, one body are in Christ, and members each one of one another.
(Romans 12:2b-5)
Gracious God:
I think we over-think ourselves all the time.
You gave our brother, Paul, a word in this text
unknown in the ancient world,
never used before.
It's a word we translate "renew,"
a word quite common in a marketing age
when everything is new and better.
But it's a Holy Spirit word --
the picture of heaven-life itself
come down to the common clay of our humanity;
that life gets newer and newer.
But how can something new get newer?
That's what I mean -- Holy spirit word!
In this world everything runs down,
entropy,
getting colder, getting older,
from order to disorder
(for the life of me I don't have
enough faith to believe in evolution
contradicts the laws of thermodynamics).
But Your Spirit let loose in our minds
undoes the entropy of existence
with what scientists call an impossibility --
"free energy."
Ha! Grace and more grace making us
newer and warmer,
disorder coalescing at the feet of Jesus.
Wow!
Oh Lord, how do we renew our minds?
How do our thoughts become less disordered,
more transforming?
Here's the problem, Lord,
as You already know and have told us --
Your thoughts are not our thoughts.
Your deep Word undermines
so much my senses and experience tell me.
Love your enemies.
Deny yourself.
Jesus is King.
I cannot fathom Your many mercies
by the precepts of a conforming mind.
I want to understand.
I want faith to control my thoughts and conquer cynicism, but I over-think.
I cannot wean myself from that which my brain
does so efficiently -- patterning,
seeing in ink blots fierce animals and clowns,
overlaying my personal patterns
on the apparent chaos of the fallen creation.
But patterning let's me recognize danger.
Patterning let's me understand how one thing is like
or unlike another.
Patterning is my Law by which I attempt to earn Grace.
Is this mechanism by which I survive in one world,
blocking the free energy of Your Kingdom.
How can I renew my mind with a self-referencing brain?
Is this the difference between mind and spirit;
the mind over-thinks to bring an order out of chaos,
but a Roschach known only to me?
Does the un-renewed mind lead
ultimately to solitary?
In Christ we learn to walk by faith,
we live by grace,
and we know ourselves as part of a people,
chosen by You,
each being renewed in different ways,
yet never leading to solitary confinement,
but interconnectedness under Christ.
What a monstrous disservice to the Body of Christ
that we should demand uniformity of expression,
homogeneity of fellowship,
solidarity around such unsolid traditions
as are afforded by human patterning,
even the over-thinking of bygone saints.
Yay God! Gifts galore!
Newness being renewed!
Feet and mouths
spread abroad the Gospel.
Heart and hands unite in service,
perceiving the source of unity and renewal
beyond their solitary functions --
the mind of Christ,
the love of Christ,
the life of Christ --
Free Energy!
Free!
In today's Oxygen I interpret Romans 12:3 differently than most translators, using a literal translation of "over-think." Many translations use the derived meaning of being arrogant, thinking too highly of yourself. But in my study, I saw something different, an oblique reference to the phenomenon of the mind called "patterning." This is how the brain learns. The first pattern the brain sorts out is our Mother's face. From there other patterns begin to emerge from the otherwise confusing foregrounds and backgrounds of multi-colored, multi-layered reality.
Over-think doesn't mean to make something more complicated, although that may have been the outcome of my study. Paul's context takes a different direction. He's talking about renewal -- and the Apostle uses a word found nowhere else in all of the ancient world except in Romans 12 and in Titus 3:5. Something new gets newer.
I patterned the idea of things becoming newer and fresher instead of colder and slower from C.S. Lewis and The Great Divorce. I just couldn't write as deeply as my mind was thinking on this. So if it came out confusing, just consider turning Oxygen into Nitrous Oxide -- Laughing Gas! ;-) dkb
