Audio Transcript
Everyone wants to be better. We want to improve, we want to change, and we want to grow. If you are in Christ, you are a brand-new creation. That’s a radical change. But it doesn’t erase the fact that every single day you feel torn, pushed toward a new life and pulled to a past life. This agonizing tug between the old person you were and the new person you are trying to be is a tension that can sometimes feel impossible, like being both dead and alive at the same time. Today on Ask Pastor John: dying to live.
As Romans month continues, Maria writes in from Dublin, Ireland: “Pastor John, hello to you! In Romans 12 to 15, Paul offers practical guidance for Christians living in response to God’s mercy. He begins by urging believers to offer their bodies ‘as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God,’ in Romans 12:1, which seems like a rather obscure and radical calling. What does this mean to live as ‘a living sacrifice’ in our daily lives? Paul also calls us to ‘not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind’ in Romans 12:2. How does this transformation manifest in a Christian’s thoughts, decisions, and actions, especially when we face fierce social pressures to conform to anything but Christ?”
The fascinating thing is that when you put Maria’s two questions together, a third question emerges that sheds light on the other two. Here’s what I mean. Her first question is “What does it mean to live as a living sacrifice?” It sounds paradoxical: “a living sacrifice.” The second question is “How does the command to be renewed in your mind get worked out in the Christian life?”
Now, the third question, which I’m asking, is “What’s the relationship between those two imperatives in Romans 12:1 and Romans 12:2?” On the one hand, become “a living sacrifice”; on the other hand, “be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Romans 12:1–2). How does Paul see the relationship between living as dead people — living sacrifices — and living as transformed people? That’s my question.
Living Sacrifices
Here’s the text, just to make sure everybody has it in their mind:
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. Do 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. (Romans 12:1–2)
First, what does being living sacrifices mean? It’s clearly intended as a paradox: “living” means alive; “sacrifices” means dead on the altar, slain like a lamb. What does that mean? He said in Romans 6:6, “We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.”
Then he turned that death — that crucifixion of our old nature, experienced in conversion — into an ongoing imperative in Romans 6:11, which is why it links up so well with chapter 12: “You also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God” (Romans 6:11).
So, you have died; now consider yourself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. If you are considering yourself dead to sin, then there’s a you that is dead, and there’s a you that is considering yourself dead. That’s the paradox that Paul is referring to in Romans 12:1: “Present your bodies as a living sacrifice.” You are alive to God, and you are dead on the altar of sacrifice: a living sacrifice.
Renewed Mind
The closest parallel would be Romans 6:13, which says, “Do not present your members” — there you have the word “present” (like in 12:1) and “members,” which is the same as “body” — “to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God” — that’s just what Paul says in Romans 12 — “as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness” (Romans 6:13).
“You are alive to God, and you are dead on the altar of sacrifice: a living sacrifice.”
To be “a living sacrifice” is to experience the death of the you that is controlled by the desire for sin and to experience a life that is controlled by a desire for God and his righteousness — dead to the old man, who loved and was controlled by sin, and alive to the new man, who loves God and his righteousness. This is “your spiritual worship” because that’s what worship is — namely, the superior desire for enjoyment of God and his ways over anything else.
Then comes the second imperative in Romans 12:2: “Be transformed by the renewal of your mind.” Now, back in Romans 1:26 and 28, Paul had referred to unbelievers having “a debased mind” that hungers after sinful pleasures, like homosexual behavior. That was the context in Romans 1, and now our minds are to be renewed, which would include a new way of evaluating what is right and what is desirable.
So, you can see how closely related the transformation of Romans 12:1 is to the living sacrifice of 12:2. Both of them are referring to a kind of death to the old desires, the old evaluations of good and bad, right and wrong, beautiful and ugly, and desirable and undesirable. Now, when I ask about the question of the relationship between these two imperatives, it’s not surprising to find them connected in Colossians 3. This is why it was so illuminating to me to ask this third question, because as soon as I did, I thought of texts in Colossians and Ephesians that do what I’m doing — they bring the two together.
Renewed Spirit
In Colossians 3:1–10, you have both the death of my old self and the renewal of my new self. Here’s Colossians 3:3 and following:
You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. . . . Put to death therefore what is earthly in you [and let us be a living sacrifice]: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. . . . Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old [dead] self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed. (Colossians 3:3–10)
There is the link between the death (“living sacrifice”) and the renewal: “being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator” (Colossians 3:10).
Now, that sounds like Paul is limiting the renewal of the mind simply to what the mind knows. But I’ve been stressing and suggesting all along that it includes the way the mind evaluates and the way we desire or feel because of that evaluation. That is drawn out more clearly when we look at the same sequence of thought in Ephesians 4:22–24, where Paul again puts together the death of the old self and the renewal of the new self, just like in Romans 12.
Here’s what Ephesians 4:22–24 says: “Put off your old self [namely, your dead self], which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires” — that’s the key — “and . . . be renewed.” Instead of saying, “be renewed in your mind,” like Romans 12, he says, “be renewed in the spirit of your minds” — that’s so interesting, so provocative. “And . . . put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”
Conformed to Christ
The upshot is that these two commands in Romans 12 turn out to be virtually the same in our experience of them. The living sacrifice of 12:1 puts the emphasis on the old self that needs to die, and the transformation in renewal of 12:2 puts the emphasis on what is replacing the old self that dies. What I’ve been stressing is that both of these involve the new way that the mind evaluates and desires. “The spirit of the mind” is not just a thinking thing. It has a spirit. It has a way of evaluating and desiring. The new, transformed mind evaluates differently, values things differently, prefers differently, and that’s where it gets its power and freedom.
I think this goes a long way to answering Maria’s last question, which was “How does the transformation of a Christian confront the fierce social pressures to conform to anything but Christ?” The answer is that we confront those pressures with a kind of renewed mind that evaluates things differently, desires differently, so that the pressures of the world do not hold the same compelling power that they once did. We experience both power and freedom because we don’t just do the right thing — we love to do the right thing. We have been renewed in the spirit of our mind. We are living sacrifices.
