Original Meaning

ROMANS HAS THE reputation—well deserved—of being one of the most theological books in the Bible. Unfortunately, this reputation has led many Christians and even some commentators to wonder why Paul bothers with all the practical stuff at the end of the letter. He has finished the theology section at the end of chapter 11. Why say any more?

Such an attitude betrays a basic misunderstanding of theology and its significance. All theology is practical, and all practice, if it is truly Christian, is theological. Paul’s gospel is deeply theological, but it is also eminently practical. The good news of Jesus Christ is intended to transform a person’s life. Until individual Christians own and live out the theology, the gospel has not accomplished its purpose.

Paul has briefly touched on the practical significance of what he writes throughout Romans 1–11 (see, e.g., 6:11–13, 19; 11:18, 20). But beginning in chapter 12 Paul turns his full attention to the ethical implications of the gospel. The “therefore” at the beginning of the chapter gathers up all the teaching of chapters 1–11 and confronts us with the all-important question: “So what?” Granted the manifold mercy of God as set it forth in the letter, what are we to do? Paul answers that question in 12:1–15:13 by touching on several key areas where Christians need to display the reality of God in a new way of living. This larger section divides into two smaller ones, with 12:1–13:14 going over several general areas of Christian obedience and 14:1–15:13 concentrating on the dispute between the “strong” and the “weak.”

Why does Paul include the subjects he does in these chapters? Some interpreters think he is writing quite generally, providing a brief summary of the key areas of Christian obedience. The many parallels between Romans 12:1–15:13 and the ethical sections of Paul’s other letters might suggest there is something to this idea.1 But Paul’s rebuke of the strong and the weak in 14:1–15:13 is almost certainly directed to a real dispute in the Roman community. Moreover, as we will see, several of the topics Paul takes up in 12:1–13:14 have particular relevance to Rome. Therefore we should probably take a mediating view on Paul’s purpose in these chapters. He wants to give a general outline of what commitment to the gospel looks like in real life, but he fashions that outline in such a way that it relates especially well to the problems facing the Christian community in Rome.

Romans 12:1–2 is one of the best-known passages in the Bible—and deservedly so, for we find here a succinct description of the essence of the believer’s response to God’s grace in the gospel of Jesus Christ. It functions as the heading for all the specifics Paul will unpack in the subsequent chapters. Our response is rooted in God’s grace. The NIV’s “God’s mercy” conceals the fact that the Greek word for “mercy” is in the plural (“mercies”). Paul is reminding us of the many displays of God’s mercy he has touched on in chapters 1–11. “In view of” probably modifies “urge”; Paul exhorts us in light of the manifold mercy of God. Our obedience is the product of what God has done in our lives, not something we can manufacture on our own.

The command to “offer” ourselves to God reminds us of Romans 6, where Paul used this same verb (paristemi) to express the basic response of believers to God’s grace to us in Christ (see 6:13, 16, 19). Indeed, all of Romans 12:1–15:13 is an explication of this basic demand in chapter 6. As new covenant Christians, we no longer offer animal sacrifices; we now offer ourselves as “living sacrifices.” “Living” perhaps has a theological meaning: We offer ourselves as people who have been brought from death to life (see 6:13).2 This may, however, be reading more into the word than we should. Paul probably wants us simply to contrast ourselves with the dead animal sacrifices of the Old Testament (see also John 6:51).3 But God demands sacrifices that are “holy,” that is, apart from profane matters and dedicated to his service.

This offering of ourselves to God constitutes, Paul concludes, our “spiritual act of worship.” “Spiritual” translates a word (logikos) over which there is much debate, as the varied renderings in English translations suggest: “spiritual” (NIV; NRSV; NASB); “reasonable” (KJV); “true” (TEV); “offered by mind and heart” (REB); “intelligent” (Phillips).4 But when the background is considered (see Bridging Contexts), we think “informed” or “understanding” is the best single equivalent in English. We give ourselves to God as his sacrifices when we understand his grace and its place in our lives. We offer ourselves not ignorantly, like animals brought to slaughter, but intelligently and willingly. This is the worship that pleases God.5

Verse 2 tells us how we can carry out the sweeping demand to give ourselves as sacrifices to the Lord. Building on his “two-era” concept of salvation history (see Bridging Contexts), Paul demands that we “not conform” to “this age” (lit. trans.). The NIV’s rendition as “the pattern of this world” captures the general sense well enough. The old age to which we belonged in our pre-Christian past still exerts influence on us, enticing us to follow its “pattern” of sinful and ungodly behavior. Rather than “conforming” our conduct to that age, we must be “transformed” in our behavior. The neat contrast of these two words in English is not found in the Greek, which uses two different verb roots (syschematizo and metamorphoo). But the English rendering is true to the sense of the Greek and certainly makes the verse easy to remember.

The means by which we accomplish this transformation in conduct is the “renewing of your mind” (for a close parallel see Eph. 4:23; cf. also 2 Cor. 4:16; Col. 3:10; Titus 3:5). A new orientation in our thinking leads to a new orientation in behavior. Here Paul touches on the heart of New Testament ethics (see Contemporary Significance section), for the result of this transformation is that we will be able to please God by doing his will.

Bridging Contexts

AN INFORMED SACRIFICE. With pardonable exaggeration, some scholars claim that, in the ancient world, religion was sacrifice. In the modern world, especially in the West, we tend to think of religion in terms of a system of belief or a way of living. But ancient people were obsessed with sacrifice. The killing and offering of animals (and even occasionally humans) to their gods was the focal point of their worship. Thus, when Paul uses the metaphor of sacrifice in Romans 12:1, he is picking up an idea that all his readers understood, not only from the Old Testament but from their everyday lives as well.

The popularity of sacrifice in ancient religion, however, could lead to abuses. People could think that all they had to do to please their god was to offer the sacrifice, without regard to their own attitude or sincerity in doing so. The Old Testament prophets, of course, railed at the people of Israel for just this offense, insisting that God would only honor sacrifices that came from a pure heart (e.g., Hos. 6:6; Mic. 1:6–14). Both Jewish and pagan authors in Paul’s day also warned about the same kind of attitude.

These warnings probably lie behind Paul’s use of the word logikos to describe worship pleasing to God in verse 1. Arguing that God and human beings have logos (“reason”) in common, some Stoic philosophers insisted that only logikos worship is truly acceptable to God. They contrasted this “rational” worship with what they considered to be the rank superstition of so many people. This general tendency is captured well in the comment of Epictetus: “If I were a nightingale, I should be singing as a nightingale; if a swan, as a swan. But as it is, I am a rational being [logikos]; therefore I must be singing hymns of praise to God” (Dis. 1.16.20–21).

The Jewish philosopher Philo made a similar point, arguing that “that which is precious in the sight of God is not the number of victims immolated but the true purity of a rational spirit [pneuma logikon] in him who makes the sacrifice” (Special Laws 1.277; see also 1.272; cf. T. Levi 3:6). Paul, then, is making a similar point. Worship that pleases God is “informed”; that is, it is offered by the Christian who understands who God is, what he has given us in the gospel, and what he demands from us.

The theological framework for 12:2. Earlier in the commentary, we sketched the salvation-historical “two-age” structure that informs so much of Paul’s teaching in Romans (see Bridging Contexts section on 6:15–23). A modification of the worldview prevalent in Jewish apocalyptic theology, Paul’s scheme divides all of history into two eras, the one “before Christ” and the one “after Christ.” The “B.C.” world is dominated by sin and death, set loose in the world through Adam; the “A.C.” (or, to Latinize, “A.D.”) world is dominated by righteousness and life, secured by Christ.

When a person comes to Christ, that person is “transferred” into the new age or new realm. He or she is no longer under sin’s dominion (see ch. 6). Yet sin still affects the believer. Although we belong to the new era introduced by Christ, the old era is still with us. We still live in a world strongly influenced by sin and ungodly ways of thinking and behaving. We are not magically set apart from that world when we believe. Indeed, God wants us to stay in that world so that, as “salt and light,” we may redeem it for him.

It is this grand salvation-historical scheme that informs Paul’s passing reference to “this world [age]” in verse 2. Though ever-present, pressing in on us from every side, that age must not “press us into its mold” (to adapt J. B. Phillips’ famous paraphrase). Remembering that we belong to the new age Christ inaugurated, we must seek to live out the values of that new age, allowing the Spirit to transform our innermost thoughts and attitudes.

Contemporary Significance

“INFORMED” WORSHIP. The contemporary church is in a ferment over worship. Musical styles have been the lightning rod for the debate: organ versus guitars, traditional hymns versus contemporary choruses, hymnals versus overhead transparencies. Some churches have maintained a traditional style of worship, but many more have adopted, to a greater or lesser degree, a contemporary approach. A few others have thrown up their hands in despair and decided to try to please everyone, with both a traditional and a contemporary service.

Sometimes missing in the heat of this battle has been attention to a more fundamental issue: What is worship? Fortunately, more and more people are recognizing the need to address this basic question. Several excellent books have been written, seminaries are adding courses in this area, and pastors and laypeople alike are having to think through issues that might otherwise never have surfaced.

I am no expert in worship. I have not seriously studied the issue, I do not lead worship, and I probably have as many uninformed prejudices as anyone (give me an organ, every time). But I do think that Romans 12:1 sets out two fundamental values that should inform all our discussion about worship.

(1) Worship is the way we live, not what we do on Sunday morning. The title of Ernst Käsemann’s essay on this passage says it well: “Worship in Everyday Life.”6 We worship God, says Paul, by giving ourselves in sacrificial service to our Lord. We are to serve him every day, every hour, every minute.

Paul deliberately uses the word “body” (soma) to describe what we are to offer to God. This word focuses on the “embodied” nature of our persons, reminding us that we are physical beings, interacting with a material world. By using this word, the apostle emphasizes the degree to which our worship should involve even the very prosaic parts of life. As we eat our food, we worship God by thanking him for what he has given us, honoring him with our conversation, and providing for the bodies he has given us. As we sweat on the treadmill, we worship God by seeking to be good stewards of the body he has given us. As we seek (speaking for myself, sometimes in vain) to avoid driving with the same egotistic aggressiveness as others, we worship God by displaying the fruit of his Spirit. We do our work to the best of our ability, worshiping God by giving our best to our employers.

One of the greatest temptations in the Christian life is to bifurcate the “spiritual” world from the material, to begin thinking that only certain parts of our lives have eternal significance. All of our life is to be a continuous worship of the God who created and redeemed us.

(2) The worship we offer corporately in a worship service must be “informed.” Nothing we said in the last paragraph takes away from the importance, indeed, the requirement, for believers to meet together regularly to worship God. What happens during that time will vary enormously, depending on our location in the world, our cultural and social context, and our denominational heritage. But verse 1 makes clear that God-pleasing worship, however expressed, must engage the mind. It must be logikos worship, worship appropriate for rational creatures, worship that arises from understanding something about God and his truth.

I do not think that God ultimately cares how we sing, but he does care about what we sing. The words we sing must be true, expressing something about what he has told us about himself. By reminding ourselves of such truth in our singing we are moved to the praise and worship that pleases God.

I am afraid that what passes for worship in some churches goes little beyond an emotional reaction to a certain form of music. Some writers of music and certain kinds of worship leaders know how to get people excited, but I am not always clear that they are getting people to worship. Emotions must, of course, play a role in worship. But it is both easy and tempting to focus too much on an emotional reaction to music, bypassing the mind entirely. Yet if I read Romans 12:1 rightly, this is not the kind of worship that truly pleases God. Worship that pleases him and that truly leaves its mark on a believer always engages the mind.

Renewing the mind. While we are on the subject of the mind, we should note a similar emphasis emerging from verse 2: By the “renewing of [the] mind” we transform ourselves and prove in practice God’s “good, pleasing and perfect will.” When we change the way we think, we change the way we live. Two elements here deserve comment and application.

(1) It is a process. The fact that Paul calls on believers to engage in this renewing of the mind shows that it does not automatically happen to us when we believe. God’s Spirit comes to reside in us, and he provides a whole new orientation to our thinking. But our thinking itself is not instantaneously changed. The ruts of the old life are not always easy to get out of. Some of our ways of thinking are deeply ingrained, and they will not disappear overnight.

I came to Christ as a twenty-year-old college student, and, almost thirty years later, I am still fighting against the mental habits I developed in my first twenty years. Through his Spirit, God wants to reprogram my thinking. But I must respond to the Spirit’s work and actively engage in the process if it is to happen.

The key question then becomes: What are we feeding into our minds? Most Christians have little choice but to spend forty or fifty hours of every week in “the world,” making a living. It is hoped that most Christians also seek to spend time with unbelievers as a means of ministry and evangelism. But if we spend all our discretionary time watching network television, reading secular books, and listening to secular music, it will be a wonder if our minds are not fundamentally secular. Our job is to cooperate with God’s Spirit by seeking to feed into our minds information that will reprogram our thinking in line with the values of the kingdom.

(2) Renewing the mind is, by definition, an internal process. In a certain sense, this concept is Paul’s response to a possible criticism of his gospel. If, as he has taught, Christians are no longer “under the law,” that is, bound to the law of Moses (cf. 6:14, 15; 7:4, 6), then what basis can there be for morality? What will direct Christians to live in a way pleasing to God? Paul’s answer is that God is at work in us, changing from within the very way that we think. This is a far better alternative than any law, for no law can conceivably cover all the issues we face in life. No matter how detailed, “law” will always fail to cover some situations. We need to face squarely this limitation and its consequences.

Many preachers, intent on getting their people to obey God, fall into a legal approach to Christian ethics. They focus on commandments, sometimes drawn from the Old Testament, sometimes from the New, and sometimes from contemporary Christianity. By doing so, they give the impression that Christian ethics consists in conformity to those commands. As a result, Christians tend to lead a double life: “Christian” in that behavior for which they have been taught laws, but essentially secular in those areas of life not touched by those laws. A Christian may not abort her baby, because she has been taught not to do that. But she may harbor racist attitudes or cheat on her taxes without batting an eye. If renewing the mind is as important as Paul says, then the goal of ministry should be to form Christian minds in people. This will require preaching that goes beyond teaching people what is right and wrong and that inculcates a worldview in people.

Is law then wrong? Are commandments of any kind to be dispensed with by believers? No. In Galatians, Paul makes some of the same points we have been making here. He tells believers that they are no longer “under the law” (e.g., Gal. 3:25). He insists that God is at work, transforming people from within by his Spirit, who produces “fruit” pleasing to God (5:16–26). But he also insists that Christians are still bound to “the law of Christ” (6:2). Scholars debate the reference of this phrase, but I think it is Paul’s shorthand for the new covenant standard of conduct. That standard is exemplified by Christ, focused on the demand of love (see 5:13–15), and illustrated in the teaching of Christ and the apostles.

The point I wish to make here is that this “law of Christ” includes commandments that are still obligatory for Christians. When New Testament writers deal with believers who are behaving in ways contrary to God’s will, they are prepared to emphasize the need to obey commandments (see, e.g., 1 Cor. 7:17; 1 John [much of letter]). Thus, our emphasis on internal transformation must not exclude the continuing role of commandments in the life of the Christian.

We need to understand the roles God wants internal transformation and commandments to have in our sanctification. The heart of the matter is clearly the work of God’s Spirit changing the way we think from within. But because we still live in a world hostile to God and are still prone to interpret God’s Spirit for our own selfish advantage, we need commandments to indicate when we misunderstood the Spirit or failed to internalize his values.

Perhaps an illustration will help. Modern airliners are guided by their onboard computers. Pilots are told where they are and where they are to go by those computers. But airports still have runway lights. Pilots check the accuracy of the computer by visually watching those lights. So also the Christian. We are guided by our minds, in the process of being renewed so that they perfectly reflect God’s will. But because that process will never be complete in this life, we still need the external guidance of God’s commands. Put the commands at the heart of ethics and we end up with a superficial and incomplete obedience. But exclude the commands entirely and we end up with self-centered and erratic obedience.