(This blog is based on Romans 12:1-8. If you aren’t familiar with this passage, it would be worth your time to read this short section before continuing with this blog. Scroll down to the bottom to read it.)

Romans 12 starts a new conversation for us. We’re going to talk over the next few weeks about what it means to be the church, one body, many parts, living our faith together. But before Paul gets to the body, he starts somewhere else. He starts with sacrifice.

In the Old Testament, sacrifice meant death. You brought an animal to the temple to die. That was the whole point. But those Old Testament sacrifices were never the end of the story. They pointed forward to Christ’s sacrifice. The book of Hebrews explains this plainly: the old covenant was becoming obsolete, ready to vanish, because it had done its job.

There is something critical to know about the Old Testament sacrifices. Even back then, those sacrifices were never supposed to be transactional. They were not a way to earn God’s favor or get him to do what you wanted. Whenever Israel drifted that direction, the prophets called them back to repentance in their lives and relationship with their God. Psalm 51 says it best: “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” Even in the Old Testament, sacrifice was always about the heart. 

So now, on this side of the cross and the empty tomb, our whole life becomes the sacrifice – the thing given to God. But it’s not a dead one this time. Christ’s followers are living sacrifices. Dead to ourselves, alive to Christ. Our will, our time, our talents, our treasures, our thoughts, whatever we offer up to God — the self that we turn over to God for service in his kingdom — that’s living sacrifice.

That’s really a definition of faith too: trusting God enough to let him be in charge instead of us. Think about Jonah for a minute. Jonah believed God was real. He talked with God, argued with him, ran from him. He had the faith, in that sense. But he didn’t want what God wanted for Nineveh. He didn’t trust that God’s will toward his enemies was right. That’s the difference between having the faith and having real faith. Real faith doesn’t just believe God exists. It trusts what God wants.

Be Transformed

Paul’s next line is easy to read past, but don’t. He doesn’t say transform yourself. He says be transformed. The difference is critical. One way is doing something. The other way is something being done to you. Paul says, “be transformed.”

Long before Paul wrote Romans 12, the prophet Ezekiel told us how this works. God says, “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you.” God does the transforming. It’s the same reason step one in AA or NA is admitting you need a power greater than yourself. You don’t grit your way there. You come to him and let him do what only he can do.

What gets transformed is our mind, our way of thinking, the way we see the people and the world around us. That’s what lets us actually discern God’s will instead of guessing at it. And that happens through the word of God, through the sacraments, through the community of believers around us.

Live Like a Body

Which brings us to the body. Paul kept coming back to this picture because it presents such an understandable metaphor for the interdependence of the body of Christ. A body has a lot of parts, and each one has its own job, but none of them work in isolation. The eye needs the hand. The head needs the feet. The liver isn’t the kidney, but they need each other to keep the whole thing running.

The metaphor can extend beyond the functions in the body to different types of dysfunctions. Bodies get sick, and there is more than one way that happens. The same is true for churches.

Sometimes it’s one single part not working right. Something in you specifically is off. That’s the disease we usually think of, one part malfunctioning on its own. Liver disease. Kidney problems. Colon issues. These are problems in one specific part. Spiritually, every one of us is susceptible to being a single part of the body of Christ not functioning properly. Sin gets into our thinking, our decisions, our own private brokenness. The church is a place where God is healing that in us through his word, his sacraments, and our fellowship with each other.

But sometimes the problem isn’t so much the individual parts as it is how the parts are working together. 

Nerve diseases interrupt the flow of information between parts of the body. Nerve disease is analogous to losing truth as a priority in the life of the church. When we’re less than truthful with each other, the body suffers the same way it does when the nerves stop sending good information between body parts. 

Blood and artery problems starve parts of the body of oxygen and nutrition that they need. Love is that nutrient in the church. When we’re less than loving, the body starves, even if nothing looks wrong on the outside. 

And then there’s autoimmune disease, when the very thing meant to protect the body turns around and attacks it. That’s what happens when the people who should be protecting each other turn on each other instead, trying to sideline, to diminish, even to destroy others. That is not what God has in mind for his church.

So what do we do with all this? Paul gives us a simple answer: we grow as the body of Christ by speaking the truth in love. Truth carries the information. Love carries the nutrients. Together they’re what let the body actually function, grow, and build itself up.

Being one healthy body isn’t just good advice. It’s Jesus’s own prayer for us. In John 17, Jesus prays that we would all be one, just as he and the Father are one, so that the world may believe the Father sent him.

We are not independent. We’re dependent on Christ, the way a branch depends on the vine, apart from whom we can do nothing. And we’re interdependent with each other the way parts of a body need each other to survive and thrive. When a part breaks down, or when the parts stop working together, the body gets sick. But when we speak the truth in love, we grow up into Christ, who is our head.

There's a lot more to say about this. We'll get there over the coming weeks.

Romans 12:1–8 (ESV) 

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. For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness. 

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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Pastor John Rallison
Redeemer Lutheran Church | Salem, Oregon
https://www.RedeemerSalem.org