Romans 12:1-8
In the letter to the Romans, Paul has two main aims. The first, in chapters 1-11, his aim is to explain God’s ultimate plan for the salvation of both Jews and Gentiles. The second begins here with one of the significant “Therefore’s” that always signals Paul is changing gears. From chapter 12 until the end of the letter in chapter 16, Paul is interested in the “So what?” that derives from the first 11 chapters. If God has transformed the world, if everything is cosmically different because of what Christ has done, if old divisions are healed and nothing can separate us from the love of Christ – what does that mean in our daily life? In today’s passage, there are two answers to the above question. The first (vv. 1-2) is that God’s transformation is not magic. We have free will, and He does not transform us automatically. We have to be willing to be transformed. We have to offer all of ourselves – bodies (v. 1) and minds (v. 2) – for grace to work on. In many Christian traditions, what happens in Romans 12:1-2 is what we know as sanctification. In the moment of justification, God counts us as righteous because of Christ, but in all the moments afterwards we need to submit to the hard work of actually becoming righteous. In Romans 12:3-8 Paul makes an application of this theme, and it’s the second answer to what Christ’s transformation of the cosmos means for our daily life. As we daily become sanctified, undergoing our own personal transformation and offering ourselves to Christ every single day, we will learn that each of us has a calling and that no calling within the body of Christ should be given pride over any other calling. This can sometimes be a hard passage for a pastor like me to hear, but I think it’s a necessary passage. I am called to a ministry of preaching the Word, administering the sacraments, and loving and serving God’s people and I need to fulfill that calling. But I can’t be everywhere, and neither can any other pastor. Nor do I have every gift. For the body of Christ to function as it should, everyone needs to exercise those gifts – in and out of the church building – so that the world is taught, healed, cheered, and ministered to. Since we’ve entered the pandemic, many of us have discovered exactly how essential it is that people exercise their gifts outside of the church building. Making technology function correctly. Teaching children remotely. Laboring in hospitals to help the sick. Calling those in power to account as we seek to quell the suffering. Exhorting others to carry on. We stand at a crossroads in society today—not the first or the only crossroads that Christians have ever come to, but the crossroads that has been given to us. From Tolkien’s “The Fellowship of the Rings” we get the following exchange: “I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” Are you willing to be transformed? Lord, we are so grateful that You have saved us and that nothing can separate us from your love. Now empower us to minister in our callings to help heal the world in this moment. Amen. Comments are closed.
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