17. Our relationship to God: consecrated bodies and renewed minds
Therefore, I urge you, Paul begins, probably conveying by the verb parakalēo a mixture of appeal and authority. He then goes on to indicate the people to whom he is addressing his appeal, the ground on which he bases it, and what it consists of.
The people the apostle is about to exhort he calls brothers and sisters (1), and we can hardly doubt that his choice of this word is deliberate. Throughout the letter’s earlier chapters he has been conscious of the tensions between Jews and Gentiles in the Roman church, and in chapters 9–11 he has been describing the roles of Israel and of the nations in the unfolding historical plan of God. He will return to them again for the last time in chapters 14–15. But now, as he develops his appeal, the distinction between the olive tree’s natural and grafted branches fades into the background. Now all believers, irrespective of their ethnic origin, are brothers and sisters in the one international family of God, and so all have precisely the same vocation to be the holy, committed, humble, loving and conscientious people of God.
Second, the ground of Paul’s appeal is indicated by his use of the conjunction therefore and by his reference to God’s mercy, literally his ‘mercies’ in the plural, a Hebrew way of expressing the many and varied manifestations of his mercy. For eleven chapters Paul has been unfolding the mercies of God. Indeed, the gospel is precisely God’s mercy to inexcusable and undeserving sinners, in giving his Son to die for them, in justifying them freely by faith, in sending them his life-giving Spirit and in making them his children. In particular, the ‘keyword’ of Roman 9 – 11 is ‘mercy’. For salvation depends ‘not . . . on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy’ (9:16), and his purpose is ‘to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy’ (9:23). Further, as the disobedient Gentiles ‘have now received mercy’, so too disobedient Israel will ‘now receive mercy’ (11:30f.). ‘For God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all’ (11:32).
It is, then, in view of God’s mercy (1a) that Paul issues his ethical appeal. He knows – not least from his own experience – that there is no greater incentive to holy living than a contemplation of the mercies of God. It is no accident that in Greek the same noun (charis) is used for both ‘grace’ and ‘gratitude’. God’s grace, far from encouraging or condoning sin, is the spring and foundation of righteous behaviour.
Third, having considered the objects and the ground of Paul’s appeal, we note its double nature. It concerns both our bodies and our minds, the presentation of our bodies to God and our transformation by the renewal of our minds. First, our bodies. I urge you, he writes, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship (1b). In order to maintain the sacrificial imagery throughout the sentence, Paul uses five more and less technical terms. He represents us as a priestly people who, in responsive gratitude for God’s mercy, offer or present our bodies as living sacrifices. These are described as both holy and pleasing to God, which seem to be the moral equivalents to being physically unblemished or without defect, and a fragrant aroma. Such an offering is our true and proper worship. The offering of ourselves to God is seen as the only sensible, logical and appropriate response to him in view of his self-giving mercy.
What, however, is this living sacrifice, this true and proper worship? It is not to be offered in the temple courts or in the church building, but rather in home life and in the marketplace. It is the presentation of our bodies to God. This blunt reference to our bodies was calculated to shock some of Paul’s Greek readers. Brought up on Platonic thought, they will have regarded the body as an embarrassing impediment. Their slogan was sōma sēma estin (‘the body is a tomb’), in which the human spirit was imprisoned and from which they longed for its escape. Still today some Christians feel self-conscious about their bodies. The traditional evangelical invitation is that we give our ‘hearts’ to God, not our ‘bodies’. But Paul is clear that the presentation of our bodies is our true and proper act of worship. It is a significant Christian paradox. No worship is pleasing to God which is purely inward, abstract and mystical; it must express itself in concrete acts of service performed by our bodies. Similarly, authentic Christian discipleship will include both the negative ‘mortification’ of our body’s misdeeds (8:13) and the positive ‘presentation’ of its members to God.
Paul made it plain, in his exposure of human depravity in 3:13ff., that it reveals itself through our bodies, in tongues which practise deceit and lips which spread poison, in mouths which are full of cursing and bitterness, in feet which are swift to shed blood, and in eyes which look away from God. Conversely, Christian holiness shows itself in the deeds of the body. So we are to offer every part of our bodies not to sin as ‘an instrument of wickedness’ but to God as ‘an instrument of righteousness’ (6:13, 16, 19). Then our feet will walk in his paths; our lips will speak the truth and spread the gospel; our tongues will bring healing; our hands will lift up those who have fallen, and perform many mundane tasks as well like cooking and cleaning, typing and mending; our arms will embrace the lonely and the unloved; our ears will listen to the cries of the distressed; and our eyes will look humbly and patiently towards God.
If the first part of Paul’s appeal relates to the presentation of our bodies to God, the second relates to our transformation according to his will: Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will (2). This is Paul’s version of the call to nonconformity and to holiness which is addressed to the people of God throughout the Bible. For example, God’s word came to Israel through Moses: ‘You must not do as they do . . . in the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you. Do not follow their practices. You must obey my laws.’ Another example is found in the Sermon on the Mount. Surrounded by the false devotion of both Pharisees and pagans, Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Do not be like them.’ ‘We are not to be like a chameleon which takes its colour from its surroundings.’ And now Paul issues the same summons to the people of God not to be conformed to the prevailing culture, but rather to be transformed. Both verbs are present passive imperatives and denote the continuing attitudes which we are to retain. We must go on refusing to conform to the world’s ways and go on letting ourselves be transformed according to God’s will. J. B. Phillips’ paraphrase catches the alternative: ‘Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God re-mould your minds from within.’
We human beings seem to need a model to copy, and ultimately there are only two. There is this world, literally ‘this age’, which is passing away, and there is God’s will, which is good, pleasing and perfect. Because the two verbs contain a different word for ‘form’ (schēma in syschēmatizomai, ‘conform’, and morphē in metamorphoō, ‘transform’), earlier commentators used to argue that schēma meant ‘outward appearance’ and morphē ‘inward substance’. But because these nouns are often used interchangeably, there is now ‘a large consensus strongly of the opinion that the two verbs . . . are more or less synonymous’.
More important for our understanding of the transformation which Paul urges is the fact that metamorphoō is the verb used by Matthew and Mark of the transfiguration of Jesus. And although the evangelists vary in saying that it was his skin, his face and his clothing which shone, Mark is clear that he himself ‘was transfigured before them’. A complete change came over him. His whole body became translucent, whose significance the disciples would not be able to understand, Jesus implied, until after his resurrection. As for the change which takes place in the people of God, which is envisaged in Romans 12:2 and 2 Corinthians 3:18 (the only other verses in which metamorphoō occurs), it is a basic transformation of character and behaviour, away from the standards of the world and into the image of Christ himself.
These two value systems (this world and God’s will) are incompatible, even in direct collision with one another. Whether we are thinking about the purpose of life or the meaning of life, about how to measure greatness or how to respond to evil, about ambition, sex, honesty, money, community, religion or anything else, the two sets of standards diverge so completely that there is no possibility of compromise. No wonder Karl Barth called Christian ethics ‘the great disturbance’, so violently does it challenge, interrupt and upset the tranquil status quo.
How then does the transformation take place? Be transformed, Paul replies, by the renewing of your mind. This is because only a renewed mind can test and approve, that is, discern, appreciate and determine to obey, God’s will. Although Paul does not here tell us how our mind becomes renewed, we know from his other writings that it is by a combination of the Spirit and the Word of God. Certainly regeneration by the Holy Spirit involves the renewal of every part of our humanity, which has been tainted and twisted by the fall, and this includes our mind. But in addition, we need the Word of God, which is the Spirit’s ‘sword’, and which acts as an objective revelation of God’s will. Here then are the stages of Christian moral transformation: first our mind is renewed by the Word and Spirit of God; then we are able to discern and desire the will of God; and then we are increasingly transformed by it.
To sum up, Paul’s appeal is addressed to the people of God, based on the mercies of God, and concerned with the will of God. Only a vision of his mercy will inspire us to present our bodies to him and allow him to transform us according to his will. In particular, his will embraces all our relationships, as Paul now goes on to show – not only to God himself (12:1–2), but also to ourselves (12:3–8), to each other (12:9–16), to evildoers and enemies (12:17–21), to the state (13:1–7), to the law (13:8–10), to the day of Christ’s return (13:11–14) and to the ‘weaker’ members of the Christian community (14:1 – 15:13).