YOUR TRUE AND PROPER WORSHIP
Romans 12
“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.”
When you read Paul saying “this is your true and proper worship” you have to take notice because the implication is that everything else is secondary.
Worship is easily understood to be what we render to God and even what God would care to receive from us. True and proper worship would imply that this is the right response to God and, from God’s point of view, the acceptable one.
The word translated as worship here also means service. In other words, Paul is saying here that if we are ever going to do anything for God, if we are to offer up anything to him, this would be the true and proper thing to do.
What is this that Paul is telling us about? Paul urges us to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice and he adds the phrase “holy and pleasing to God”. A living sacrifice is rather unique because sacrifices are usually slaughtered. Simply, God does not desire our death or our erasure; he desires our lives. He does not want us to become nothing for his sake; he wants us to live for his glory.
However, that life lived is to be holy and pleasing to God. This is not about what we will give or services we will render, be they wealth, numbers of people who become Christians through our efforts, or even the establishment of a successful church that is well loved and praised by the community. This is about the person that we are, whom God is pleased with.
How can we do this? We can’t but God can; surely we cannot decide what is holy and pleasing to God. Our task is to allow him to transform us.
This is not a simple matter of going to sleep one night and waking up a completely transformed person. Paul puts it in this way, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Simply put, we are to be influenced by God as we get to know him and walk with him and obey him, and not by the world—a difficult thing because we are educated in this world, we are fully immersed in this world’s culture and we work to feed ourselves and our loved ones serving organisations that are successful in this world. But, “in view of God’s mercy” and in view of the fact that this is the path that God desires of us, Paul urges us to do so, doing our best in this world yet not allowing it to shape us but instead being shaped by God as he shapes our minds. There is no substitute to spending time regularly to be in fellowship with him to achieve this.
Paul promises that we will find, as we seek to please God, our experience will be one that will meet our approval, and much more; after all, God is no man’s debtor.
“Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”