Our Reasonable Worship

Romans 12:1-2

This is how Paul urges Christians to act in response to the goodness, wisdom, riches and mercy of God described in the preceding text. In the verses before Chapter 12, Paul was pointing out that his fellow Christian brethren in Rome should not become conceited over their place in the church because they too were "at one time disobedient to God" (Rom. 11:30) and were thus in need of saving. Paul reminds them that their salvation came through the disobedience, trespass, and hardening of Israel (Rom. 11:11, 30). And he continues with good news, stating that Israel's disobedience itself will not last, since the Lord will give to them mercy as well (v 31). All of us, both Jew and Gentile, were imprisoned in our own disobedience, in order that God may show mercy to all kinds of people (Rom. 11:32), so that we do not ever think that someone is beyond the reach of God's grace.[1]

Paul then exalts the depth of God's riches, wisdom and knowledge, exclaiming: "how unsearchable are his judgements and how inscrutable his ways!" (Rom. 11:33). "For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen" (Rom. 11:36). 

Thus, in Chapter 12, when Paul says "therefore... present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service", he means that the only proper and reasonable response to God for all of the above is a giving up of our whole lives to the worship of Him, living not as the rest of the world does, but having our very minds conformed to the perfect will of God. This is particularly apt when we consider the last verse of Chapter 11: from God, and through God, and to God are all things (including ourselves). Since, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen. 1:1), it is God to whom all glory and worship belong (and not created things). 

It was the same with Israel in the Old Testament. They were called to be a "holy nation" (Ex. 19:6) - a peculiar nation set apart from all other nations. Before the Israelites entered the promised land, God, through Moses, warned them to "watch [themselves] very carefully... lest [they] act corruptly by making a carved image for [themselves]" (Deu. 4:15-16), or by worshipping the "sun and the moon and the stars" (Deu. 4:19) - which are created things. God was reminding them to worship Him alone, since He was the one true God of the Covenant, who "brought [them] out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be a people of His own inheritance" (Deu. 4:20). Yet, a hundred and fifty years after the reign of David, the kingdom of Israel had been divided in half and we see the people of Israel doing the very things which God had prohibited. 1 Kings 18 records for us a confrontation between the prophet Elijah and the people of Israel on their involvement with the pagan religion that worshipped Baal: 

1 Kings 18:21

Today, the world offers a different religion. St Augustine puts this clearly in his own autobiography: The Confessions. 

"I had an openmouthed fixation on professional distinctions, moneymaking, and marriage, and you were laughing at me the whole time. I experienced very bitter difficulties in the pursuit of what I desired - and you were more provident the less you let what wasn't you grow sweet to me. Look at my heart, Master, since you wanted me to remember this and render it as testimony to you. 

Let my soul now stick to you, since you stripped from her the glue of death's bird-trap. How terrible her anguish was! And you poked at her wound where it was most sore, so that she would leave everything else and turn to you, who are above everything, you without whom everything would be nothing, so that she would turn to you and be healed. 

How miserable that made me! And how you drove me to feel my misery on the actual day when I was preparing to deliver an encomium to the emperor, to include any number of lies, so that in the act of lying I could win the approval of those well aware of what I was doing. My heart was issuing furnace-blasts anxiety over this assignment, and seething with fever of the obsessive thoughts disintegrating me from within".[2]

Imprisoned in the worldly religion of professional distinctions, Augustine expresses gratitude to God for not letting this pursuit consume him. He thanks God for causing him to suffer greatly in this, with bouts of anxiety and turmoil, so that he would abandon his quest for a respectable name and later turn to God who alone is the fountain of life. God Himself, then, is the solution to the problem of idolatry. The religion of the world, conversely, brings nothing but misery and anxiety.

How then should we who are slaves to Christ live? Calvin writes:

"Scripture insists that we should resign ourselves and all we have to God, surrendering to him our dearest desires, that he might tame them and master them. Our fierce craving and our thirst for recognition and honours know no bounds; we are tireless in our search for power, for wealth or for anything likely to pander to our sense of pomp or grandeur. On the other hand, we have a prodigious hatred and fear of poverty, obscurity and disgrace, which is why we do our best to run from them. The result is that people who live according to their own counsel are dogged by constant anxiety: they will therefore try any stratagem, and put themselves through all kinds of torment, to attain whatever ambition and greed impel them to seek, and to escape poverty and loss of status. 

There is a path which believers must follow if they would avoid falling into this trap. First, they must cease to wish, hope or imagine they can prosper apart from the blessing of God. That is the only thing on which they can safely lean and rely. Although the flesh may sometimes seem to manage, unaided, to achieve its goals, as when it strives in its own strength after honours and wealth, or is helped by the favours of men, nevertheless these things amount to nothing, and our own cleverness and hard work get us nowhere, unless the Lord gives each of them success. The fact is that, when problems abound, only God's blessing will find a way through, and ensure a good outcome in all we do. 

Finally, even supposing we could obtain fame or affluence without God's blessing - as is daily the case with the wicked, who acquire great riches and large estates - none of us when subject to God's curse would have an ounce of happiness. Whatever we gained would be to our misfortune if God withheld his blessing. We would be worse than mad to want what can only make us miserable".[3]

Here Calvin's "good outcome" refers not to the successful acquisition of honours and wealth which "amount to nothing", but to that which is truly good - the same good that Paul wrote about in Romans 8: "And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose" (Rom. 8:28). The good that Calvin has in mind refers to our ultimate good: that we glorify God and enjoy him forever[4], single-mindedly, and with every fibre of our being. On this side of death, this will, no doubt, be a daily struggle. 

Yet, God prescribes for us a means through which we are to "put to death the deeds of the body" (Rom. 8:13). That is, "by the Spirit". Indeed, that is the only effectual way to life (Rom. 8:13). Reliance on our own exertion and will does not please God, for it only serves either to increase our pride and self-sufficiency; or to harden our hearts against Him (as it did for Luther in the period he was training to become an Augustinian monk. Luther was angry at God and the "impossible requirements" he "imposed" on human beings).

It is only by the Spirit of God, and by the grace of God that we are to put to death the deeds of the body. That is the only means available to us. Any other means is bound to fail. Calvin writes:

"... we are only too ready to exalt ourselves and to claim sufficiency in everything. Unless we have tangible proof of our weaknesses, we immediately get inflated ideas of our own abilities, and readily imagine they can prevail over every possible difficulty. So it is that we develop an empty, foolish confidence in the flesh, which then produces a supercilious attitude towards God, as if we could manage by ourselves without his grace. God has no better way of humbling such arrogance than by showing us by hard experience how weak and feeble we are. So he brings disgrace, poverty or sickness upon us, or loss of kin or other calamities which, try as we may, at once overwhelm us, because we are not strong enough to bear them. Thus, being humbled, we learn to plead for his power, which alone allows us to stand firm and to hold up under the weight of such burdens. Even the holiest of people, who know their steadfastness depends on God's grace and not on themselves, would still trust too much in their own strength and resilience if the Lord did not test them by means of the cross, and so bring them to a truer knowledge of themselves. David himself was prey to this kind of presumption".[5] 

[1] Ligonier Ministries, "Mercy on all" available at <https://www.ligonier.org/learn/devotionals/mercy-all/> (accessed on 5 Apr 2021).

[2] Augustine of Hippo, "Confessions" (Translated by Sarah Ruden, The Modern LIbrary, New York), at p 145-146. 

[3] John Calvin, "The Instituties of the Christian Religion", Book 3, translated by Robert White and republished by The Banner of Truth Trust as "A Guide to Christian Living", at p 45-46. 

[4] Westminster Shorter Catechism, Question 1.

[5] John Calvin, "The Instituties of the Christian Religion", Book 3, translated by Robert White and republished by The Banner of Truth Trust as "A Guide to Christian Living", at p 58-59.