To Rome With Love: Paul On The Basics Part Five—“The Putting It Into Practice With God”

July 28, 1991

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Scripture: Romans 12

“I appeal to you, therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”

If you want to be free, if you want to be fulfilled, if you want to live, that’s how you do it.

Today marks the last in our series of sermons on Romans. To Rome With Love: Paul on the Basics we’ve called it. We’ve spent 5 weeks here. The purpose has been to try to get back to the foundation of Christian belief, back to the essentials as held and expressed by the great Apostle in his summing up letter to the Church at Rome.

He hadn’t founded that church, didn’t know the members, had never visited them, had never even been to Rome, but wanted very much to line them up in his camp so they’d support him in his dream to carry the Gospel even further westward.... all the way to Spain, the far reach of empire.

I’m not going to review what we’ve already touched on in the first 4 sermons.... you’ll either have to read the book or wait until the movie version comes out. Obviously, we haven’t done justice to the immensity of the material, all that Paul has for us.

I took a course on Romans in seminary. It was taught by Dr. Albert E Barnett, no kin, so far as I know to the Barnett Bank, though he, too, had a high interest rate. Dr. Barnett spent the first 3 weeks of the course..(15 class hours!) talking about 6 words....the first 6 words of the first chapter---“Paul a slave of Jesus Christ”.

3 weeks on 6 words....You think you can cover a book like this in 5 measly sermons?

We’ve come now to the last part, the “practical” part, if you will, Chapter 12 to the end, and I’m really going to restrict myself to Chapter 12. I thought when I laid it out in planning that this would be the easiest of the sermons to handle....Well, maybe the 2^nd easiest, after SIN.

Sin is always a relatively easy topic to preach on. When you don’t have anything else to say, you can always rail against SIN----there’s so much material out there, and people know what you’re talking about as well....lots of experience.

But I really thought this one was going to be easy, too....practical, as opposed to the more theoretical stuff in the beginning, concrete, as opposed to the more abstract, down to earth, as opposed to the more theological. Theology can be pretty muddy sometimes, and theologians even more so. In this part of the book Paul gets right down to cases, behavior, conduct, specific acts of comportment. Doesn’t that sound easier to deal with than SOTERIOLOGY? It sure does to me. You can just line it up....Do this, do that, don’t do this.....Simple.

Ah, but here’s the catch. You can’t make that kind of distinction between the theological and the practical without distorting both. You can’t hack ‘em up that neatly. They go together. THERE’S NOTHING AS PRACTICAL AS GOOD THEOLOGY, and nothing as thoroughly theological as good Christian practice.

Paul knew that. It’s why he plunged into this section of the letter with that word THEREFORE. What a magnificent Pauline word.

I appeal to you, brothers, THEREFORE. Mark it down. Wherever you see the word “therefore” in Paul, you know he’s about to dress up his theology in work clothes.

But it’s still theology whether it’s in the clouds or on the street, and I want to spend just a minute on that before we pass on. For 11 chapters Paul has been “theologizing”, and what that means is nothing more or nothing less than “thinking about God.” That’s what theology means, THINKING ABOUT GOD.

There’s Christian experience, what happens to me in a religious sense, and there’s theology, thinking about what happens to me in a religious sense.

Theology without experience is, of course, sterile, or DEAD, the heart is snatched out of it....But experience without theology may be no more than an emotional high. You could get that from drugs.

For 11 chapters Paul has been theologizing, about the human problem, about what God has done about the human problem, about our proper response to what God has done about the human problem.... NOW he begins to draw implications from it-----THEREFORE.

Don’t make the mistake of dividing this from the rest of the book. There are always those who want to say, “Oh, I don’t understand all the theological business. Don’t talk to me about that. It only confuses me. Just give me the bottom line. Give me something to hold on to. Just give me Romans 12 which tells me how to live as a Christian.”

That would give Paul apoplexy. Those are the same people usually who like to think that in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus gave a set of rules for Christian living, which you can paste on your mirror and which allows you to bypass all the profound questions of Christian belief.

“Here it is; just follow the blueprint.” They want a simplified version of Christianity. What they really want is a new code, a new set of rules that they can follow and check off to see where they are at any given moment. That would make it easy, wouldn’t it? There’s an admitted appeal about that.

But that’s exactly what we DON’T have here. Look at the material closely. Romans 12 may well be the finest brief compendium of practical theology ever written, and yet the  astonishing thing about it is its DISORGANIZATION. That’s a surprise, isn’t it? It’s an application of everything that has gone before, all that stuff about grace and faith...yet, startlingly, there’s almost no system to it. It’s a THEREFORE which emerges from all the previous WHEREAS’s, and yet there’s almost no order, no plan, no logical arrangement of the material.

If you want to give somebody a headache, ask them to outline the 12th Chapter of Romans. I challenge you to try it. I heard somebody say one time he reckoned that about the height of confusion would be a termite in a yo-yo. This is not quite that bad, but it is, to say the least.... DIFFUSE. It goes off in all directions, and you wonder why. We know Paul was eccentric, but scatter-brained?

There’s a reason, and the reason is because IT’S NOT A CODE OF ETHICS AT ALL. That’s

the point. Ethical, yes, theological, you bet, but a code of ethics...no way. A new principle of motivation is operating now.

Paul has just finished demolishing the idea that there is a code of ethics, a set of fixed principles, an iron-clad standard to fit all situations, a LAW that we’re called to live

up to, and that we HAVE to live up to be acceptable to God. He’s not about to say, “O.K.,

gang, here are the new regulations.”

The whole point of His great doctrine of “justification by faith” is that our acceptability to God is not determined on the basis of what we do. It’s determined on the basis of what we allow to be done IN us and TO us. It doesn’t mean that behavior is not important, or that anything goes, but it means that you can’t deal with behavior in ISOLATION.

CONDUCT IS NOT THE CRITERION FOR COSMIC CONFIRMATION. You don’t get there that way; you CAN’T get there that way; BUT, THANK GOD, YOU DON’T HAVE to get there that way.

We are approved, not by works, not even by a long strong of good works, but by.... you know the word----FAITH. That’s the thrust of all he’s been preaching up to this point.

We are approved by.... how to say it.... SURRENDER, another word closely kin to faith. We are approved by surrender to God’s sovereign grace, which, wonder of wonders, is kinder than our wildest imagination, gentler than our highest dreams. We are approved, reconciled, welcomed home, made whole.... use whatever term you like.... SAVED--there’s a good term-simply by COMMITMENT, the commitment of body and soul to the forgiving and transforming love of God in Christ. THAT’S THE GOSPEL, the replacement of a STANDARD to which we have to strive, by a SAVIOR, out of gratitude for whose deliverance we are set free to strive.

Read the chapter.... Be genuine, hate evil, be patient, contribute, practice hospitality....and on it goes. No system. What holds it together is not the compatibility of the parts, but the new heart at the center of the parts. Ethics in all its manifestations is simply the acting out of love in concrete situations.

In place to place, from time to time the particulars may vary; what remains constant is the SOURCE. THE MOTIVE FOR CHRISTIAN BEHAVIOR IS NOT FEARFUL ADHERENCE TO A LAW, BUT JOYFUL REACTION TO A LIBERATOR. You don’t behave a certain way to get something; you behave maybe even the same identical way as the RESULT of something.

This is just as theological as any of the rest. It’s the motivation that sets it apart.

Here’s how I think Paul felt about behavior, ethics, conduct. It was very important to him. Of course what people did was important, but just as in the case of sin, he was more concerned about the motive than the deed, more concerned about the tendency, the inclination than its manifestation.... He was more vitally interested in what lay behind the conduct than the conduct itself.

He knew just as Jesus knew that it was what was inside that mattered. Everything comes

from that. “Out of the heart are the issues of life.” He knew that if people wanted the right things, they would follow through on those things and make the right choices.

Don’t CONFORM....BE TRANSFORMED....there it is. That’s an inner change. “Present your bodies as a living sacrifice” ....That is, give your very selves...and let a new board of directors take control. Then your conduct will take care of itself.

Do you know how Augustine put it? St. Augustine was the Bishop of Hippo in North Africa. Great mind. Great spirit. He died near the first part of the 5th Century, A.D., long after Paul, but he was very Pauline in outlook. Augustine said, “the sum total of ethics is ‘love God and do as you please.’”

Wow! That sounds wide open, doesn’t it? Is that it, were there to be no restrictions, no bars on behavior at all? Was he a libertine....he had been in his early life. Did this represent a carry over from the days of his wild and woolly youth? It would seem so at first glance, but, you see, WHEN YOU REALLY LOVE GOD, when you truly love Him when God really is in control of your life, then what you please will be what pleases God. “Out of the heart are the issues of life.”

Isn’t it fundamentally and essentially a matter of freedom? Isn’t that what we’re talking about. Isn’t it what Paul was dealing with?

Who are the truly free people you know? Are they the ones who recognize no outer authority over their lives, the ones who live for the moment, devote themselves to the pursuit of pleasure, are committed to the satiation of desire?

Those people aren’t free. They’re slaves to their own passion, and pretty soon, it has them. What looks at first like the glorious expression of absolute uninhibitedness quickly takes over and before you know it, the master is the victim.

When does the moment come when the casual, social drinker becomes an alcoholic? How free is the compulsive Don Juan, or the man who can’t resist taking one more chance on the lottery, even if it means using grocery money set aside for the kids? I heard somebody say just the other day, “I don’t smoke cigarettes. Cigarettes smoke me.”

FREEDOM? Maybe the most shackling kind of “freedom” you can have is the bondage to whim, caprice and obsession.

A step upward, but only a step, is subservience to a law. Call it conscience, call it a code of ethics, call it even Christian principles, or give it any name you like, it can exalt behavior, to a degree, it can shove it upward, but it can’t truly set free.

No law, or code, not matter how complete, can cover every situation. You’re always worried about the loopholes, the exceptions. Did I meet every requirement? Did I leave something out? I wonder how many people there are, even Church people.... maybe especially Church people, who go to bed at night wracked with guilt over something they did, or didn’t do, during the day that fell below code requirement. Someone has called this the “tyranny of the should”, the awful self-berating of unmet expectation.

There have to be some rules...certainly there have to be, there have to be some regulations, and standards. Whether there’ll be traffic lights, or fines for overdue books in heaven, I don’t know, but in THIS world, pending total evangelism, we’ll expect them for a while.

But laws essentially don’t liberate; they CONFINE. The trouble with laws, at least laws of conduct, it seems to me, is that they objectify what is by nature Subjective; they make rigid what should be fluid....They don’t leave room for special cases. They anchor what needs to be mobile. They can’t, by definition penetrate to motive, and so even the noblest intent may be held back from expressing itself by a legal inflexibility.

How silly that a trained medical doctor hesitates to offer help to an injured car accident victim for fear of litigation.... but it’s the law. Who’s in charge?

Paul wasn’t free prior to the Damascus Road experience, nor was Wesley before Aldersgate. They were bound to a system which, though good and moral as far as it went, incessantly put them on trial. And it was especially restricting because THEY were moral. The higher the demand, the harder they worked; the harder they worked, the farther behind they fell; and the farther behind they fell, the more trapped they became in the tentacles of their own exertion. How many others must be in that same fix?

“Oh,” cried Paul, desperately, “who shall deliver me from this bondage.....?”

The answer was Christ! Not by a new law, an even higher and more stringent law, but by

making Paul into a new creation, wherein the need constantly to prove himself was replaced by the knowledge that he was already APPROVED, and could therefore respond to opportunities not out of duty, but out of gratitude. He was FREE.

“I, yet not I, but Christ who dwelleth in me”, he said, practically in delirium.

It’s a paradox, isn’t it, a real paradox. The only people who are truly free are those willing to give up their freedom.

You are controlled by something. You have to be.... everybody is.

If your passion, your lusts, your desires control you, you’re not really free. If you are constantly driving, pushing yourself to be good, to do the right thing, to maintain an image, to make an impression, to follow the rules, you are not really free.

Paul says there’s a way to be free. TURN THE REINS OF YOUR LIFE OVER TO CHRIST. Just DO it. Let Him come in and take control....by faith. Present your body as a living sacrifice.... and Christ has the chance to drive out the old forms of control and make you slave only to His largeness of spirit. THAT’S WHEN YOU’RE FREE.

The 12th Chapter of Romans is not a new code of ethics. It’s Kingdom ethics, as the Sermon on the Mount is. It’s servant ethics, the ethics of the changed heart. It’s the ethics of people who  are no longer their own masters but have surrendered themselves to Christ and received from Him His Spirit, the Spirit of self-effacing love.

THEY ARE FREE, to be, to do, to respond, to serve, not out of brittle obligation, but out of a glad recognition that the Lord God of the universe has brought them and has turned them loose in the world to be His agents of mercy and peace.

They are not held in thrall by an earthbound way of seeing things, not constrained by merely human legalisms, but are liberated to see event and need through the eyes of God, and to respond with splendid abandonment.

Let me tell you the story of Teresa Solorzano from Spain. I got the story from Albert E. Day, who recounts it in one of his books.

When she was only 15 years old, this young Spanish girl shared the plight of civilians in

Torremolinos who hid in a cellar, waiting out the battle between the Loyalists and the army of General Franco in the Spanish Civil War. It was a time of hunger, thirst, and terror for all. At long last Franco’s battalions withdrew, leaving one of their wounded soldiers at the entrance to the cellar. Those inside were all Loyalists. Here at their mercy was the hated enemy. He was in their hands. Should they give him aid, or let him die?

On the human level, after all they had suffered, there were strong feelings, and strong

arguments why he should die.

Suddenly, recalled the girl many years afterward, “I had the impression that the ruins over our heads had ceased to exist, and that from heaven God Himself was watching to see how we were going to pass through this ordeal. Would we consider only a uniform, and allow a human life to flow away, drip into oblivion, cease to exist under our eyes?”

Can a law, even a noble law, cover situations like that, and every situation that might arise? Says Dr. Day, when God is allowed to reign in a heart, and a person begins to see people and situations as God sees them, it makes all the difference. It did in that cellar that day. The enemy soldier was not left to die.

I like J. B. Phillip’s brilliant translation of the 2nd verse of Romans 12. It’s the verse right after our text.

The Revised Standard Version begins, “Be ye not conformed to this world.” J.B. Phillips translates the whole verse, “Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its mold (isn’t that good?), but let God remold your minds from within, so that you may prove in practice that the Plan of God is good, meets all His demands, and moves toward the goal of true maturity.”

That’s the basis for Christian behavior, not allegiance to particulars, but to a PERSON....or as H.H. Butterfield says in the final sentence of his monumental book Christianity and History, “We can do worse than remember a principle which both gives us a firm Rock and leaves us the maximum elasticity for our minds: the principle:  Hold fast to Christ, and for the rest be totally uncommitted.”

Do you want to be free? Do you want to be fulfilled? Do you want to live? Paul knew the way. “I appeal to you, therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God which is your spiritual worship.”

Make that your first aim, and the rest will take care of itself.