True Worship Transforms (Romans 12:1-8)

I don't think that's what Paul is calling us to.

I don't know Paul is calling us to a sort of divorce from the world around us.

Let's keep in mind that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.

But there is a difference for Paul between being in the world, being conformed to the world, or pardon me, being in the world and being conformed to the world, being of the world, so to speak.

What's that line look like for us?

Well, I think what Paul points us towards is he points us towards a different kind of life.

The Christian life looks radically different from what we would expect to look at the world around us.

The Christian life is not a life that necessarily rejects the world as if the world is the problem.

The Christian life is a life that is being renewed, is being transformed.

See, I think the Christian life is a life that aims its worship, the trajectory of all of our lives towards its true source and salvation.

I think we all worship.

We all worship something, and what we worship forms us.

If we worship success and we worship comfort, if we conform to the patterns of this world, then we're going to find our values and patterns and habits and thoughts shaped by the object of our worship.

Maybe that's our career or money.

Maybe that's maybe that's good things like our family life that we place above all else.

Maybe it's ease or comfort, whatever that is.

The challenge for the Christian in front of us, the challenge that Paul has in front of us is to lay our lives down as living sacrifices.

Friends, this is a call to a radically new kind of architecture for our lives.

It's true worship, appropriate worship.

It is a laying down of the whole self on God's altar without any reservations, a growing in surrender.

And this true worship, spiritual worship, the ESV has, or appropriate worship, some other translation has, we might just call it true worship.

The real kind of worship, the real connection, where we're really aiming our lives.

This true kind of worship transforms us.

True worship transforms.

It will look radically different than the world around us.

And what does that transformation look like?

I think Paul gives us two places to start in our passage.

What does this kind of transformation look like?

It looks like the renewal of our minds.

We'll see that in the first two verses.

It looks like the renewal of our minds, but it also looks like a new relationship, a new relation to others.

We discover our place, we discover our call and our giftings.

See, I think we need to hear this word because it's just so easy to let conformity be well to be appealing to us, to settle for less.

To settle for less than the adventure of discipleship that God is calling us into.

To start to see the appeal of success or pursue uh worldly ventures, even those things that we consider to be good, when we place them at the highest priority of our life, we find that like those who are trying to save their lives in the gospel rings, we end up losing ourselves to it.

True worship transforms.

And this is the adventure of transformation that we're invited into by Romans 12.

We conform to what we worship.

So what do we worship today?

What is our life aimed towards?

And T.

Wright has this to say.

I think it's wise to heed these words as we dive in.

He says that we should refuse to let the present age squeeze us into its mold, to dictate how we should think and indeed how we should think, um, and indeed what we should think, and tell us how we can and can't behave.

Instead, we're to be transformed.

Our minds need to be renewed.

The basis for this, he goes on to say, is not what the surrounding culture expects of us, but what God in his mercy has done for us.

That's the transformation we're aiming at.

It requires our whole self.

But it's the adventure of a lifetime.

So what does this transformation look like?

True transformation, or pardon me, true worship transforms.

So you've been taking this journey through Romans.

We picked up where our lectionary led us off at the beginning of the summer on Romans chapter 5.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

We looked back a little bit on the first four chapters, which shows us how God reveals his righteousness and his wrath against the unrighteous, but how God in his mercy provides Jesus Christ as our righteousness on the cross, so that by putting our faith and our trust in him, we can be brought into a new family of righteousness, the church.

And being brought into this new family, the church, we can be brought into a new life, into a new right relationship with God through Christ.

And in him we can walk by his spirit and grow in righteousness.

That was chapters five through eight.

We've looked in the last couple of weeks at chapters nine through eleven, which explores this question which would have been on the Roman Christians' mind.

How does Israel, God's old covenant people, relate to the Gentiles who are being included in this new act of salvation that God is performing?

How do we relate together in Christ?

And now we turn to Romans chapter 12, and it continues through chapter 16.

Romans 12 · chapter mention

We're going to be finishing off next week as we continue with chapter 12, but here Paul turns towards an application of what we've been looking at, of the wild new life that we live by God's grace in Christ.

Paul explores the implications for our own internal lives, for how we live the Christian life at home, how we live the Christian life in community, how we live the Christian life towards our enemies or towards the state.

And Paul traces all these implications through to chapter 16.

So it's a remarkable reflection to have if you have time to read through those chapters and see how Paul, um, how see how Paul applies those principles of salvation in our relationship with others.

Good theology for Paul always changes our lives.

It doesn't just stay in an ivory tower or it doesn't just belong to academics.

It really changes us.

And because good theology changes lives, this principle that true worship transforms us holds true.

So Paul wants us to understand how this is going to change our inner selves and our relationship with others.

True worship.

True worship of the Lord transforms us.

It renews our minds.

That's the first thing Paul wants us to see.

I'm going to read NT Wright's translation of these verses because I think it gives us a bit of a fresh flavor here.

Paul is calling us to a radically new way of living our life, living a life that is not just for our own pointer purposes, but for the Lord.

So I've got this I've I've got the privilege of belonging to a small covenant group of some other pastors, and we get to, you know, walk life together a little bit and you know share ministry and highs and lows and everything else together and walk through life together a little bit over Zoom.

We know what that's like over Zoom right now.

And um and and sometimes we'll we'll turn and we'll read a uh a book together and we'll discuss it.

A book we recently read is called The Common Rule.

I'll hold that up.

I'm not doing this isn't a commercial, by the way.

But um but it's a really it's it's a wonderful little book and it's it's it's worth the read.

And uh and it talks about how um the author, Justin Whitmill Early, uh discovered the grace that comes with a uh with with um renewed, transforming, grace-based effort of habits.

We're formed by our habits.

We're formed every day by so many habits that we're unconscious of.

And it's it's it's remarkable to think.

So Justin shares a bit of his story to begin with.

He shares that uh, I mean, and and from every, well, from most points of view, it's a story of success.

He's a devoted father, he's a husband, he's uh he's a dedicated church member, he was uh a missionary in China for a while, top of his class and law school, and a very successful lawyer.

Early on, Justin shares how all of his life was oriented towards this idea of success, of coming out ahead, until his life and in his life experienced a sort of complete breakdown.

He couldn't function anymore.

Justin says that he had to consider, reconsider rather, the art, what he calls the architecture of his habits.

Justin writes this: he's he's reflecting back on his story.

Only in retrospect did I realize that while the house of my life was decorated with Christian content, that is, he's memorized his Bible verses, he's gone to Sunday school, right?

He follows the Instagram accounts of favorite pastors, whatever that might look like for him or for you and I.

While my house was decorated with Christian content, the architecture of my habits was just like everyone else's.

It was indistinguishable from the world around him.

And that life had not been had been working for me until it collapsed.

This idea of the architecture of life, I think, is so helpful.

And I think it plugs right into what Paul is talking about, about the renewal of our minds or the renewal of our inner selves, our inner architecture.

So I think sometimes we're willing to kind of slap up maybe some, you know, we'll we'll get some memory verses or we'll put some Bible verses up on the wall, and we surround ourselves with with Christian content when the architecture of our lives looks less like a cathedral consecrated for the life and worship of the Lord, and more maybe like a Walmart parking lot, which has function to it, right?

We might put up some Bible verses here and there, that's true, but does the do our habits, do our values, do our patterns of thinking look really all that different from the world around us?

See, Paul is calling us to the renewal of our minds, to be reconstructed and recreated from the ground up in Christ, such that the architecture of our lives looks considerably different than it would otherwise.

In Christ, we're being made into new creations.

So Paul can write this to the Ephesian church in Ephesians chapter 4.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

He says, you must no longer walk as the Gentiles or pagans do.

That is, you must no longer walk in accordance with uh with by conforming to the patterns of this world, to the values and habits of this world, but rather, he continues, uh Ephesians 4, verse 22, put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life, and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new self created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

Ephesians 4:22

This new self that Paul talks about plugs right into what we've seen in Romans chapter six.

When we've put our faith in Christ, we've been baptized into Christ, we've been brought from death into new life.

We have been made new creations.

The old is gone, the new is come.

Hallelujah.

How do we live our lives?

Do our lives reflect that new reality that's taken place in Christ?

Do we yield the Walmart parking lot areas of our life to be rebuilt into cathedrals consecrated for the Lord's worship?

What's our life aimed towards?

What do we value?

What do we build our lives towards and aim at?

See, if we allow the Lord to reconstruct our lives, we surrender those parts of our hearts that we're so keen to hold so tightly onto, we'll discover a whole new way of life.

We'll discover a grace-based way of life.

We'll discover that the architecture of our lives sets us apart from the values and habits and inclinations of the world.

And suddenly we'll discover that by testing we can discern what the will of God is, what is good, acceptable, and perfect.

That's what Paul says in verse 2.

Do you ever have trouble discerning what the will of God is?

Do you ever wish God would just send you a text message to tell you what he wanted in any particular moment?

I find myself in that situation more often than I'd like.

I think what Paul is talking about with the renewal of our mind is a new way of being.

We're suddenly maybe a little less occupied with what God would have me do in this situation and more what with what God would have me be.

He wants me to be a new creation.

He wants me to be in Christ.

He wants my life to be built around Christ, to be offered as a living sacrifice.

Suddenly I'm not at the center of my life.

It's built around who Christ is.

So if the architecture of my life looks radically different, then suddenly I'm going to be falling in accordance with God's will.

And when I'm not, I'm going to repent and I'm going to receive God's forgiveness, and I'm going to walk in newness of life.

That's the hope of the Christian.

So, friends, maybe this is an opportunity to consider are there areas of my life that I just refuse to surrender over to the Lord?

I'm really quite content with my Christian content when at my core I know that I'm still in charge of my own life or this area of my life.

Friends, our Lord is interested in renewing the whole of us, completely, from start to finish.

And so maybe we start by considering what our life's architecture looks like and handing that over to the Lord.

Because true worship transforms, it renews us from the inside out.

Suddenly the patterns and characteristics of our life look radically different.

And this means that we get to relate different to others.

We discover our place in the body and work and our calling to serve others.

Paul goes on to say this, verse 3 I say to everyone among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment.

He's already said this in chapter 11.

He wants to say it again, because it's important.

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 of one another.

So if the architecture of our lives is being remade into a cathedral set aside for God, and not just whatever kind of structure we're content with, if that's true, the architecture of our life is being remade in Christ, then that means we're going to discover a new relationship to one another as we're being remade together as his body.

Suddenly, life is not about us anymore.

Suddenly, life at the center of our lives is Christ.

And the purpose and point of our lives is not what we determine for ourselves, but is what our Lord and Master points us towards.

See the world, in one sense or another, tells us that it can be all be about you, that we can curate our best life, that we can change the settings and you know, see the.

I mean, even in our Facebook setting now, we can choose which news feeds we see and everything else.

We can curate the life that we want for ourselves, and yet the call of a Christian is to lay our lives down completely on the altar and see our lives conform with the likeness of Christ into whom we're being built up.

And as we're being built up in Christ, so now we share that life with one another in the church.

Friends, these Romans Christians needed to hear it because there was such a strong temptation in their day to simply conform to the way of thinking in and around them.

We've talked a lot about how this is a church intention between Gentile, non-Jewish believers and Jewish believers who've come to faith in Christ.

There's this tension about what the church should look like or how it should behave.

And because Roman culture is so rife with anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism, it would be so easy for these Roman Christians, non-Jewish Roman Christians, to think of these Jewish Christians as something like second class.

And to see the church start to behave like a mirror of the culture around us when Paul sees the gospel as calling us to a whole new way of life, a whole new of relate way of relating to one another.

And I think what's true in Rome in the first century is just as true here at New Song.

Friends, we are called to an adventure that goes beyond what the culture looks like around us, and instead to be an epicenter of renewal and transformation.

That's why we gather to worship.

Even over Zoom, we gather to worship because true worship transforms us.

It renews and reorganizes the architecture of our life to conform with the pattern that God has had in mind for us since the beginning, the kind of new creation he is building us up to be in Christ.

So how do we relate to one another?

Well, we consider our place in the body.

And maybe we want to begin by considering our gifts.

Paul lists out seven here.

Some are a little bit more, we might consider flashier than others, but it doesn't matter.

God has given us gifts to use for the sake of others and for his glory.

What is it that God's given you a passion for?

What is it that God's given you a talent for?

Part of laying your life on the altar is offering yourself, your skills, your talents, everything for the sake of Christ and for the sake of his church.

Friends, service is not just an optional extra for those Christians who take it very seriously.

Service is the life we've been called to.

Service is a living as a as a life as a living sacrifice.

Serving others is following after the pattern of Christ.

And sometimes this blows our minds.

It blew Peter's mind in our gospel reading.

Did you catch that?

When Jesus is teaching his disciples about, you know, how he's going to go to Jerusalem, how he's going to suffer, and how he's going to die for their sakes.

Peter says, No way.

No way that's going to happen.

And why is that?

Because Peter in his mind is thinking, I know what the Messiah is like, and he's not like that.

He's not doing that.

That's a remarkable thing to rebuke Jesus.

The truth is, I wonder if I do it all the time in my heart of hearts.

Lord, there's no way I'm going to be doing that.

There's no way you're calling me to that.

I know you, Lord, and you're not going to lay claim to that, are you?

Don't conform to the patterns of this world, but be transformed as a living sacrifice.

So here, Jesus calls Peter out.

You're not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.

In other words, Peter, you are conforming to the patterns and expectations of the world around you.

Jesus is interested in transforming Peter from the inside out.

And over the course of the Gospels and Acts, we see that happen in Peter's life.

The architecture of Peter's life is being remade and renewed as he puts his trust in Jesus, as he's empowered by the Holy Spirit.

And that's true for us.

And the hope here, friends, is that if we follow after Jesus, if we deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow him, we who lose our life for Jesus' sake will find it again.

Just as Jesus gave us his life on the cross and was raised to new life on the third day, so too we who lose our life following after our Lord will find it once again.

We will find an eternal life, an enduring hope, and we will be renewed and recreated in his image.

All of this is because of everything that God has done for us by his mercies, which he has revealed to us in Christ.

And it's no uh mis or it's no accident that this word for transformation is the Greek word metamorphoo, which isn't just fun to say.

It's also the word that Matthew and Mark use to talk about the transfiguration.

We're being transfigured, renewed, shaped in accordance with the pattern of the life and resurrection of our Lord.

And so Paul can write to the to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians chapter 3.

2 Corinthians 3 · chapter mention

He can say, We all with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed, metamorphosized into the same image from one degree of glory to another.

That's the image of our Lord.

This comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

Friends, true worship transforms.

We worship what we build our lives around.

So what is the architecture of your life built around?

What do we worship?

What do we value above all things?

We are invited into an adventure of transformation, of being remade and renewed in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Are we willing to surrender those things that we value the most to be changed from one degree of glory to the next in Him?

So, Heavenly Father, we pray that you would renew us.

We invite you to do that.

We invite you to relate us rightly with one another in you as our head.

Lord Jesus, would our worship transform us?

Not for our sake, Lord, but to your name be the glory.

All of this we pray in Jesus Christ's name.

Amen.