Dear Friends,

In the Daily Lectionary this month, we are reading Paul’s Letter to the Romans, and we come this week to a hinge point of the letter at the start of Chapter 12. Paul writes, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God…”

In reading the Bible, when you come to a “therefore,” you should ask, “What’s it there for?”

It turns out that that’s a really important question at this point where Paul is shifting his focus. In the first 11 chapters, Paul has been setting forth the Gospel in its fullness. He has explained God’s creation and our sin, our profound need. All of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We are dead in our sins and cannot save ourselves. But while we were sinners, Christ died for us. We who were enemies of God have been justified and reconciled to God by his grace. The Gospel of God’s love and grace has come, first for the Jew and also for the Gentile.

And no one but our infinitely wise God could have come up with this. How amazing is our God. Paul can hardly contain himself—he is so filled with wonder over the greatness of God. And so he ends Chapter 11 with this burst of praise: “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.”

But now Paul comes to the “so what?” Because of this Gospel, how do we live our lives? Not to earn salvation, but because we have already received it, how do we live for God’s glory?

In these final five chapters, Chapters 12-16, Paul teaches us about living as a Christian: about conflict and suffering, about civic life and governments, about how to have healthy relationships with sinful people who do stupid stuff (that’s a slight paraphrase). And how to do it all for God’s glory.

And it starts here, at the beginning of Chapter 12, with worship. Paul is saying that, in light of God’s mercy, we are to worship. Now Paul is certainly in favor of what we call “going to church,” but that’s not Paul’s point.

No, he says, “present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” Present your body, yourself, your whole life to God. Live for God. That’s the heart of real worship.

God had taught the people of Israel through the Law that central to their worship was the offering of animal sacrifices. They had sinned and a penalty had to be paid. But they could substitute an animal which would be offered and killed, the animal paying the penalty instead of the worshiper, who was the one who really deserved it.

This was not done because it actually did away with sin. No animal could ever really be an adequate sacrifice.

But offering an animal did teach God’s people the idea of a substitute paying their penalty for them. And that prepared the people to understand Jesus, who would offer his own life as the one perfect sacrifice that once and for all truly paid the price for our sin.

Therefore, no more sacrifices are needed for sin. No animal sacrifice. No human sacrifice.

So Paul isn’t saying we should bring a sacrifice, but rather we should be a sacrifice. We should be a living sacrifice; we should live for God.

Now, “living sacrifice” is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms, like “jumbo shrimp” and “reality TV.”

“Living sacrifice” is a contradiction in terms…everywhere except in the Gospel.

You see, a normal sacrifice goes from alive to dead. But in the Gospel, a sacrifice goes from dead to alive, from dead in our sins to alive in Christ.

We live for Christ, not just by going to church, but in all that we do: refusing to cut corners at work; humbly asking for forgiveness when we blow it at home; sacrificially giving of ourselves and our income for the spread of God’s Kingdom; taking risks to work for justice and reconciliation; reaching out beyond our comfort zone to share Christ with those in our neighborhood or in our own family.

True worship is the offering of self. It’s the offering of everything we do to be for God’s glory.

Even the mundane things can be done for his glory—the key is our motive, our attitude. I heard about a family that has a sign behind their kitchen sink so they can see it whenever they wash the dishes. The sign says, “Divine worship offered here three times daily.”

Where will you be at this time tomorrow? What would it mean for you to be able to say that divine worship is being offered there, then?

If someone were to ask you, “How is the worship in your church?” the Book of Romans’ answer would be not so much that the music is good, or that the liturgy is beautiful, but that our lives are being lived for God’s glory, that what we do at work, at home and in our communities honors God, witnesses to his goodness and draws others to him.

May God give us the grace to offer ourselves to him as living sacrifices, serving always for his glory and for the spread of his Kingdom.

Faithfully yours in Christ,
The Rt. Rev. John A. M. Guernsey