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Discussion Notes
Romans study 8
Israel's pupose
Romans 12:1-8
Therefore brothers, I appeal to you on the
basis of God’s mercies, to stand together with your
bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and well-pleasing to God.
This is the worship that is worthy of you as thinking beings.
Do not allow this era to determine your human life, but be
transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you will
have the capacity to discern the will of God, that which is
good and well pleasing and perfect.
For by the grace given me I say to everyone
of you that you should not think too highly of yourself, but
to think with sober judgement, each according to the measure
of faith God has given you. For as in one body we have many
members, and not all the members have the same function, so
we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually
members of one another. We have gifts that differ according
to the grace given us: prophecy, in proportion to faith, ministry
in ministering, teaching in teaching, exhortation in exhortation,
giving in generosity, leading in diligence, compassion in
cheerfulness.
‘Don’t let the world squeeze
you into its own mould’
Paul has so far been talking about Israel,
about who is in and who is out. He has reminded Jews not to
turn their covenant promises into a reason for pride, and
reminded Gentiles that the same covenantal pride as befell
many Jews can just as easily befall them. If God is remaking
the universe through a humble people, it is Israel (as the
whole people of God, Jew and Gentile) that is to remain a
light to the nations.
The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, is the
God whose kingly power eclipses the pretensions to power that
are employed by the ideology and force of the Roman Empire.
So how do his people truly reflect his character? This is
the question taken up in chapter 12, which is why it begins
with the word ‘therefore’.
There are no two verses in Paul that are
more dense than the first 2 of Chapter 12. The key features
to be noticed are:
1 – Paul’s own authority is derived
from the mercies of God that are common to the whole community.
The basis of Paul’s appeal/exhortation, is the experience
of God that has been encountered by all.
2 – Paul’s urge is to ‘present’
your bodies (plural) as a living sacrifice (singular). The
word for present here is a word that commits the body to obedience
in all that follows. It was also a military command (rather
like the military command today to ‘present arms’)
It was used of a ‘body’ of soldiers to demonstrate
their one-ness. They have bodies (plural) but give their lives
before combat, to function as part of a body (singular). In
Latin, this gives the root ‘Corps’ to name many
nations’ military forces. The very rank ‘corporal’
speaks of the roll of forming the soldiers (plural) into a
single corps (body). It is in becoming part of the ‘body
of Christ’ that is, in itself, a declaration that your
own individual life is over even while you remain alive, a
pledge that your life is now in the hands of another, a ‘living
sacrifice’.
3 – Paul goes on to point out that
this sacrifice is our logical (not, as the NIV would have
it, our ‘spiritual’) worship. By logical is not
meant some reasoned academic decision, but rather requires
that we worship God with our minds as well as every other
dimension of our humanity. The word for worship is a word
that also meant public service. Paul could have used the word
‘orgy’ for worship, but this form of worship was
simply what took place in private mystery cults, for religions
that happened behind closed doors. Paul uses a word that requires
the people to be out in the public sphere, because Christianity
is never – despite modern beliefs – a private
matter of faith. It makes public demands, because it worships
a Christ who is not only lord of ‘my heart’ but
Lord of the whole Universe, including the world that was supposedly
ruled by Caesar. This is why Christians came into conflict
with the Empire.
4 – Verse 2 is a weighty observation,
followed by a weighty demand: do not conform; be transformed.
On the surface, it can sound as though we are simply being
told to be godly, not worldly, as though there were a simple
choice. But Paul rather uses the language of being ‘formed’
by the world, literally being ‘schematized’, allowing
the present age, its morals, its values, its beliefs, its
politics, to determine our Christian belief. Before any genuine
understanding of worship being ‘trans-forming’,
we must first appreciate what it means to be ‘formed’.
Discussion
Questions (corresponding to the 4 points
above)
1 – How should authority work in a
local community? Do we need ‘strong leaders’?
What is the basis of a leader’s authority?
2 – In an era of individualism, how
might we con ourselves into thinking we are part of a body?
Have you ever struggled to commit to a Christian community?
What is it that we might rightly be afraid of?
3 – The pagan distinction between public
and private was rejected out of hand by the earliest Christian
communities. In what ways do we simply endorse that distinction
today? Are there ways of being church that simply make our
worship more like a private orgy than a public liturgy?
4 – In what ways does the present age
‘form’ and ‘forge’ our whole identities,
in ways that we might not even be aware of? How do we become
aware?
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