Good Book Club 2019--Romans 12:1-8

Whew! I will be the first to admit the difficulties of trudging through the last few chapters of Romans. There's much to glean from Paul's dense prose, and we also should have the humility to know that scholars for hundreds of years have struggled with Paul's words.

Today, however, we come to this brief passage which our guide has graciously given us two days to walk through. They are words so beautiful, that I feel justified in doing what every writing professor told me not to do and reproduce them here:

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect (Rom 12:1-2 NRSV).

If you look to page 376 of the Book of Common Prayer, you will find that these words are an option for the priest to read as the offertory sentence (the sentence that invites the congregation into presenting their money, lives, and joy to God in the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving that is about to occur in the Holy Eucharist).

I could pick apart these words for hours, and I think they transition beautifully into Paul's next section on spiritual gifts.

My the mercies of God--Paul recognizes the importance of our bodies, our lives, and our spiritual worship. We cannot divorce our physical selves from our spiritual selves because God mercifully made us as both. When we give all that we have of ourselves to God, we are united fully to God and can join all the heavenly host in worshiping our creator.

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed--Again, the created world in and of itself is not bad. It is God's creation. Humans, however, through disobedience and hardheartedness (review Romans 9-11) have turned to our own will rather than to God's will. When we align our will with God's, we are transformed and experience the creation as it was meant to be experienced.

That you may discern what is the will of God--This leads to our ultimate happiness and ultimate flourishing. Through this knowledge and conformity to the will of God, our spiritual gifts flourish. As we read in the next section, Romans 12:3-8, each of us has so much to offer the world, and the world is better--more the way God intended it--when each of us develop our gifts and share them with one another.

What gifts do you have?
What gifts do you see in others?
How might you join those gifts together for the betterment of the world?