Romans 12:1 says, I appeal to you therefore, brothers,
by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and
acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
To better understand the
context of this verse, we need to look back a little bit. The first 11 chapters of Romans contain some
great theological studies of our God. Even just backing up a few verses gives us a
great introduction into Chapter 12. Look
at Chapter 11, verse 33. It says,
33 Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and
knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his
ways!
34 “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or
who has been his counselor?”
35 “Or who has given a gift to him that he might
be repaid?”
36 For from him and through him and to him are
all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.
One great definition of
worship is that, “Worship is our response to God’s revelation.” That’s exactly what we see here. In Chapter 11 we read about the depth of His power
and wisdom and then we read our instructions for how to respond…
Romans 12:1-2….
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of
God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God,
which is your spiritual worship. 2 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.
We learn very quickly from
this passage that our bodies are a living sacrifice to God, so everything that
we do should be offered as worship to God.
But the other part that stuck out to me was that it starts with the
renewal of our minds. We won’t know how
to act or how we can worship God until our hearts and our minds are first
focused on the Lord.
WORSHIP REQUIRES A RENEWAL
OF YOUR MIND
In the Old Testament, God
was very concerned with how they worshipped.
In the New Testament and today, we now have direct access to God through
Jesus Christ. In John 4, when Jesus is
talking to the woman at the well, He states how we should worship in spirit and
truth. Unlike in the Old Testament, the
location and rituals of worship are no longer important. We should be able to worship God wherever we
go. And it’s the renewing of our minds
that should guide our actions.
Isaac Watts, who wrote
hundreds of hymns, also wrote these words,
“The Lord…has no regard for outward forms of
worship, if there be no inward adoration.”
John Piper put it this
way, “The key to praising Christ is prizing Him. God is most glorified in us when we are most
satisfied in Him.”
I also want to point out
here that the renewing of the mind has to start with salvation. We can’t worship what we don’t know and if we
don’t have a personal relationship with God, it has to start there. But after we come to know the Lord, we must
continue to grow. We don’t want to
settle at the level of transformation that we have right now.
Pastor Kevin has said
numerous times over the last couple months that we have been saved, are being
saved, and will be saved. It’s the same
idea here…we are being saved and want to grow more and more like Christ. To do this, we have to regularly be in God’s
Word…Joshua 1:8 encourages us to “meditate on God’s Word day and night, so that
we will be careful to do what is written in it.”
This is the point that was
the most convicting for me during this study.
I was hoping for 2 or 3 points of this is how you worship all week
long. But this study really reinforced to
me the importance of regular times in God’s Word. We need to focus on that inward renewing of
our minds, THEN we will know what God’s good and perfect will is in every
situation. That regular renewing of our
minds will guide our hearts and actions to worship God all week long.
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