¹I 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. ²Do
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.

“I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of
God . . .” I appeal to you therefore . . .”
That is, I appeal to you on the basis of what has gone before in
the first 11 chapters of this letter. I will now call you in
chapters 12-16 to a kind of life that is built on something. It
doesn't come out of nowhere. It has roots. This new Christian life
is built on chapters 1-11. Build your Christian life on Romans
1-11. Sink your roots here. And your fruit will be Christian
fruit.

And he sums up the foundation with the phrase, “the
mercies of God.”I appeal to you therefore, brothers,
by the mercies of God. . . .” That's the sum of
Romans 1-11: “the mercies of God.” God has been
merciful to us through the death and resurrection of Jesus
Christ. Because of Christ those who believe in him are justified by
faith, and reconciled to God, and have the hope of everlasting joy.
There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ
Jesus. “Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who
died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right
hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us” (Romans
8:34).

A Life of Mercy

Build your lives on this mercy. Sink your roots in this mercy.
And your new life will flow out with mercy. That is, Romans 12 will
become a reality in your own life. Romans 12 oozes with mercy.
“Show mercy with cheerfulness. . . . Let love be genuine. . .
. Give to the saints. . . . Bless those who persecute you. . . .
Weep with those who weep. . . . Associate with the lowly. . . .
Repay no one evil for evil. . . . Never avenge yourselves. . . . If
your enemy is hungry feed him.” Build your lives on mercy and
become merciful. ^[1]

But First, a Life of Worship

But today we notice something very significant in verse 1:
before Paul describes our new life in Christ as merciful
he describes it as worshipful. Before you think that the
Christian life has everything to do with being merciful to people,
realize that it has everything to do with being worshipful
toward God. “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.” Before we give ourselves away in mercy to man,
we give ourselves away in worship to God.

This is crucial to see. We must never let the Christian life
drift into a mere social agenda. I use the word “mere”
carefully, because if God is left out, our mercy will be mere
social agenda. We do no one good in the end if we are not
worshipping and leading them to worship in the acts of mercy that
we do. If our good deeds are not expressing the worth of God, then
our deeds are not worship, and in the end will not be merciful.
Making people comfortable or helping them feel good on the way to
everlasting punishment, without the hope and the design that they
see Christ in your good deeds, is not mercy. Mercy must aim to make
much of Christ. For no one is saved who doesn't meet and make much
of Christ. And not to care about saving is not merciful.

Therefore, it is absolutely essential that Paul put worship
before mercy and that he define the Christian life as
worshipful before he defines it as merciful. Or
to put it more carefully, Paul defines the Christian life as
worship so that it can be merciful. If we are not
worshipping in our behavior—that is, if we are not making
much of God's mercy in Christ in and along side our
behavior—we are not giving people what they need most. And
that is not merciful. A merciful lifestyle depends on a worshipful
lifestyle. So before Paul defines Christian living as merciful, he
defines it as worshipful.

So let's look more closely at what Paul means by a lifestyle of
worship. Verse 1: “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.” What is this “spiritual
worship”?

Spiritual Worship: A Presenting of a Sacrifice to God

First, Paul says it is a presenting of a sacrifice to God.
“Present your bodies as a sacrifice . . . to God.” This
is the language of worship from the Old Testament. In coming to God
the worshipper brought a sheep or a bull or a pigeon and sacrificed
it on the altar as an offering to God. There were different kinds
of sacrifices but at the heart of it was that sin demanded
punishment, and the slain animal represented God's willingness to
accept a substitute so that the worshipper might live and have an
ongoing relationship of forgiveness and joy with God.

But all the Old Testament believers knew that the blood of bulls
and goats cannot take away sin (Hebrews 10:4). They pointed beyond
themselves to Christ, who was the final sacrifice for sin. Paul
said in 1 Corinthians 5:7, “Christ, our Passover lamb, has
been sacrificed.” That was the final sacrifice for sin,
because it was perfect and sufficient for all who believe. Most
clearly of all Hebrews 10:12 says, “When Christhad offered
for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at
the right hand of God.” So Christ brought to an end the Old
Testament sacrifices for sin. He finished the great work of
atonement. His death cannot be improved on. All we have to do now
is trust him for that great work. We do not add to it.

So when Paul says that our worship is to present our bodies as a
sacrifice he does not mean that we die and atone for our sins. Well
what does he mean? Let's take the four words he gives and see what
each contributes to understanding a lifestyle of daily worship:
bodies, living, holy, acceptable to
God.

1. Bodies. “Present your
bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God,
which is your spiritual worship.”

The point here is not to present to God your bodies and
not your mind or heart or spirit. He is going to say very
clearly in verse two: “Be transformed in the renewal of your
mind.” The point is to stress that your body counts.
You belong to God soul and body, or you don't belong to him at all.
Your body matters.

Someone might think: Why would God be interested in my body?
It's overweight, or underweight, wrinkled, blotchy, achy, diseased,
impulsive, nervous, unattractive, lazy, awkward, disabled,
near-sighted, hard-of-hearing, stiff, and brittle. What kind of
sacrifice is that? The Old Testament demanded a flawless sheep. I
don't measure up.

That kind of thinking totally misses the point. The sacrifice of
our bodies to God is not a sacrifice for sin. That is done already
in the sacrifice of Christ. Which is why bodies like ours are
acceptable. Peter makes this really clear in 1 Peter 2:5 where he
says something similar to Romans 12:1: “Offer spiritual
sacrifices acceptable to God”—then he adds these words:
“through Jesus Christ.” It's because of Jesus
that our sacrifices to God are acceptable.

So put out of your mind any thought that your body will ever
deserve acceptance with God. It won't. If you are acceptable, it is
“through Jesus Christ.” Through his perfection, not
your perfection.

But that kind of thinking misses the point in another way: The
offering of our bodies is not the offering of our bodily looks but
our bodily behavior. In the Bible the body is not significant
because of the way it looks, but because of the way it acts. The
body is given to us to make visible the beauty of Christ. And
Christ, at the hour of his greatest beauty, was repulsive to look
at. Isaiah 53:2-3 describes him: “He had no form or majesty
that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire
him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows,and
acquainted with grief.” The beauty of Christ is the beauty of
love, not the beauty of looks. His beauty was the beauty of
sacrifice, not skin.

God doesn't demand our bodies because he wants models for
Mademoiselle or Planet Muscle. He demands our
bodies because he wants models of mercy. I think we should pray
that God's perspective on our bodies become imbedded deep in our
sons and daughters—and in ourselves—as one very
powerful antidote to the kinds of eating disorders that plague so
many young women, and even now some men today. What God wants from
us is a body that does mercy, not the body of Britney Spears or Mr.
World.

God
wants visible, lived-out, bodily evidence that our lives are
built on his mercy. Just as worshippers in the Old Testament denied
themselves some earthly treasure (a sheep, a goat, a bull), and
carried their sacrifices to the altar of blood and fire, so we deny
ourselves some earthly treasure or ease or comfort, and carry
ourselves—our bodies—for Christ's sake to the places
and the relationships and the crises in this world where mercy is
needed. It may be your own home, or it may be Senegal.

2.
Living.“Present your
bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God,
which is your spiritual worship.”

A life of visible, lived-out, physical actions of mercy might
result in the death of a believer. There have always been martyrs.
But that is not mainly what Paul has in mind here. Here he has in
mind a lifestyle. Present your bodies a living sacrifice.
It is your living that is the act of worship.

Let every act of your body in living be an act of worship. That
is, let every act of your living body be a demonstration that God
is your treasure. Let every act of your living body show that
Christ is more precious to you than anything else. Let every act of
your living body be a death to all that dishonors Christ.

3. Holy.
“Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and
acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”

Probably the best explanation of holy bodies comes from Romans
6:13 where Paul said almost the very same thing he says here, using
the very language of “presenting” our bodies to God,
only he refers to our bodily “members” and not just our
bodies. “Do not present your members to sin as instruments
for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who
have been brought from death to life [i.e., a living
sacrifice], and your members to God as instruments for
righteousness.”

“Present a living holy body to God” means give your
members—your eyes, your tongue, your hands and
feet—give your body to do righteousness, not sin. That's what
would make a body holy. A body is holy not because of what it looks
like, or what shape it's in, but because of what it does. Is it
physical “instrument” of a hunger for righteousness? Is
it the physical instrument of meekness and mercy and peace?

Here are three examples where the body being used as an
instrument of righteousness and mercy is called a
“sacrifice.” In Philippians 4:18 Paul says, I
“have received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent, a
fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to
God.” Your work and giving and Epaphroditus' bringing
this gift to me is a sacrifice of worship to God. It shows God's
worth in your heart.

Hebrews 13:15, “Through [Christ] then let us continually
offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the
fruit of lips that acknowledge his name.” When the lips
join the heart in praise to God, the body becomes a holy, living
sacrifice.

Hebrews 13:16, “Do not neglect to do good and to
share what you have, for such sacrifices are
pleasing to God.” When you do good, in Jesus' name, with your
mouth or your hands or your presence, your body becomes a holy,
living sacrifice of worship. A body becomes a holy sacrifice of
worship when it is devoted to God's purposes of righteousness and
mercy.

4.Acceptable to God.
“Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and
acceptable to God, which is your spiritual
worship.”

Does this add anything to the word “holy”? If the
sacrifice of our bodily life is holy, then it is acceptable to God.
So what do these words add? They add God. They make God explicit.
They remind us that the reason holiness matters is because of God.
They remind us that all of these words are describing an act of
worship—“which is your spiritual
worship”—and God is the center of worship.

So it's fitting that we end where we began and stress that
before Romans 12 is a call to live a merciful life, it is
a call to live a worshipful life. Or better: In calling us
to live a merciful life (built on the mercy of God in Christ), the
aim is that it be a worshipful life. The aim of showing
mercy is showing God. The aim of having bodies is to make the glory
of God more visible. And he does not shine through our muscles and
curves, but through our merciful behavior.

Closing

I close with two statements from the apostle Paul. First, his
own testimony of desire: “It is my eager expectation and hope
that . . . Christ will be honored in my body, whether by
life or by death” (Philippians 1:20). Second, his exhortation
to us from 1 Corinthians 6:19-20: “You are not your own, for
you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your
body.”

In other words, “Present your bodies as a living
sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual
worship.” Show the worth of Christ by the way you use
your body. Amen.

[1] Notice in
passing that Paul models for us mercy even as he calls us to mercy
in verse 1. First, he uses a gentle and winsome word, “I
appeal” instead of “I command.” He says
explicitly in Philemon 1:8-9 that the use of the word
“appeal” is softer than the word “command”
and is an expression of love and mercy. Second, he calls them
“brothers” and therefore puts himself down with them
under the care and authority of God the Father, rather than over
them because of his apostolic authority. So even though his words
do carry God's authority he uses this authority in a gentle and
merciful way that models for us what he is about to command from
us.