Scripture can be found here…
Our passage begins with a “therefore,” so let’s find out what that’s about.
At the end of the previous chapter, Paul has just finished a passage in which he is offering assurance to the people of the church at Rome: God has got you. You who are Jews. You who are gentiles. God’s got you. “The gifts and calling of God are irrevocable” (11:29). You are held in the palm of God’s hand. And, finally, he breaks into praise and prayer:
“O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are God’s judgments and how inscrutable are God’s ways! … For from God, and through God, and to God are all things. To God be the glory forever. Amen.” (11:33, 36).
Therefore.
God’s wisdom and knowledge and love are limitless. Everything begins in, and goes towards, and ends in God.
Therefore.
Offer yourselves back to God.
I beg you, Paul says, offer your bodies, your lives to God, as an ongoing, daily offering… because this is the reasonable thing to do. Our translation says “spiritual worship,” but what Paul wrote was “reasonable,” “logical.” It is the only appropriate response to the love of God.
He goes on: Step away from what the current culture is telling you is the way to be, and let your mind be transformed by God.
In first century Rome, the current culture was telling everyone that Caesar was not only the Emperor, but a god, whose will was absolute and whose word was law. It was a culture that created division at every level—between men and women, between Jews and gentiles, between slaves and free, between citizens and non-citizens; and wherever you fell in those divides determined whether you were considered a human being worth caring about.
Every one of these cultural pressures is present and accounted for in our contemporary culture. And they are exacerbated by the fact that 21st century technology permits us all near-instantaneous access to everything that’s happening everywhere at every moment—which, in some ways, is wonderful, and, in other ways, is deeply, disturbingly dangerous. When you get a chance, go to Youtube and search for something called “This Video Will Make You Angry” by C. G. P. Gray. My son recommended it to me, probably more than a year ago, as we were talking about the problem of online culture and how very divided we are as a people. The essential message of the video: Angry emotions on the internet are infectious, especially on social media. And we immerse ourselves in that anger at our peril.
Paul says, don’t give in to this. Let God transform your mind.
And… it’s important that we understand what Paul means, by “mind.” A popular personality test—one I always encourage engaged couples to take in the course of premarital counseling—distinguishes between thinking and feeling; between perceiving and judging; between emotion and rationality.
Surprise! Ancient people gathered all those concepts into one. They understood all those things under the umbrella of “the mind.” To allow our minds to be transformed, is to open every aspect of our personality to God’s healing, not simply the part we think of as rational or logical.
And in letting ourselves be transformed, we are opening ourselves, taking the chain off that inner door we so often keep tightly locked and guarded. When that door opens, we are allowing the Spirit to come in; we are giving ourselves the space that allows us to listen for God, and understand where it is that God is leading us: that will of God that Paul calls, “good, acceptable, and perfect.”
Perfect. That word. For some of us it is the goal. For some of us it is the enemy. For some of us it is the source of a little voice that tells us, we will never be it, because we think of it as without error, without fault. Perfect.
Surprise! Hear, now, the voice of Inigo Montoya, saying, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
The original languages of scripture are Hebrew or Aramaic, and Greek. In the original Greek? The word they’ve translated “perfect” means mature. In the Hebrew that is the ground of Paul’s and Jesus’ religious upbringing, the word we translate “perfect” means whole, complete.
Paul is too good a student of human nature to ask that we be flawless. Flaws are part of the design. But Paul is asking us to grow, to mature. And Paul is asking that we seek, not perfection, but wholeness, the wholeness we find when we let God in.
“Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.”
And now for the reason behind our need for transformation. This next part is among the top five most challenging things you will read in the Bible.
Paul asks us to tame our egos, because, we are not in it only for ourselves now. There is a popular notion out there that our faith is primarily what some have called “divine fire insurance.” It’s all about us. Whether we make the cut, manage to slip into those pearly gates. Paul begs to differ.
Following Jesus has nothing to do with rugged individualism. It is about recognizing our connection to one another, and through that connection, treasuring all our gifts. Paul writes,
“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 we are members one of another” (12:4-5).
Though many, we are one. Not in the way a team is one, as the shortstop scoops up the ball and shoots it to the second baseman. Not in the way a corps de ballet is one, with a dozen nearly identical bodies moving through space in perfect synchronization. Not in the way an assembled jigsaw puzzle is one, with a pleasing picture for all the world to see. We are one in the way a body is one.
And that means that we are connected to one another more intimately than most of us can even get our heads around. We are connected to the people we love and the people we barely know. We are connected to the ones across the street and the ones on the other side of the planet. We are connected to the ones for whom we feel real affection, and the ones who drive us crazy. That is what it is to be one in Christ. It is not a comfortable arrangement. And it is only possible if we, as Paul politely requests, tame our egos. And it is possible only if we allow Christ to be the head of the body.
And if we do… if we can… oh my. The gifts that will flourish among us! Years ago I read an article that asked, What if you believed that you have exactly the people in your church who God wants there, right now? That you have everything you need… every spiritual gift and calling you need?
What if we believed it? What gifts might be unleashed among us?
Fun fact: I was reminded this week that the word for “gift” in Greek is charismata. Literally, grace-effects. Gifts are the effects of grace.
The gifts we have to share are the effects of God’s overwhelming and undeniable and, yes, irrevocable love.
Oh the depths, of the riches, and wisdom, and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are Gods judgments! How inscrutable are God’s ways!
We are called. We are called to transformation. We are called to offering ourselves back to the One who loves and calls us. And we are called to encourage, to empower one another to share the particular gifts—the grace-effects!—with which God has blessed us.
To God be the glory forever!
Amen.