11. “Growing Together as we Offer Ourselves to God” (Romans 12, Part 5)

For the past month during Lent, our focus has been on what we might call the central “hinge” of Romans. For 11 chapters Paul has been explaining the Christian gospel of what Jesus has done to rescue the world and what it means for us. And then, in chapter 12, we encounter a “therefore.” Once you understand God’s amazing love and salvation, here’s what you do: offer your bodies as a sacrifice to God.

Here is a summary of the Christian life. If you asked Paul, “What does it look like to live as a Christian?” he would first speak about faith, believing in Jesus. But then he would go on to say that in this faith it’s about learning to give ourselves to God. And so we’ve tried to dwell on this idea of giving ourselves to God for a few weeks so that we can understand it more deeply.

Toward that end, we’ve sought to address a number of possible misunderstandings. For example, it’s common to think wrongly about God in this. When we are told to “offer ourselves to God,” we are not to think of ourselves supplying God with something he needs, satisfying some want he has. God is not a black hole who just takes and takes and takes. No, God is an overflowing fountain of grace, and when God tells us to give ourselves to him, that instruction comes entirely out of kindness to us. What God wants for us is communion with him, where he gives himself to us in love and we give ourselves to him in love. 

Relatedly, it’s common to think wrongly about ourselves when we think of giving ourselves to God, where we see this self-giving to mean somehow losing ourselves or our freedom. The reality is that the life we are protecting and holding onto, the life of complete independence and control is actually the life that is destroying us and holding us captive. The great paradox of the Christian life is that only as we give ourselves away to God do we truly find ourselves. Only as we place ourselves under God’s authority do we truly find freedom. The pathway to being truly, fully, human is the pathway of giving ourselves to our merciful God, knowing that he takes pleasure in us.  

And it’s also common to think wrongly of worship, of what it looks like to offer ourselves to God. In our day, the idea of offering ourselves to God is often seen as something dramatic, passionate, and happening at a single point in time. But in reality it’s about day after day learning to entrust ourselves to God’s grace as we are being trained by Jesus and our mind is being renewed.   

This morning, as we conclude our Lenten focus, I want to address one final misunderstanding when it comes to this topic, and that is the belief that change, real change in the Christian life is not really something we can expect. 

Perhaps you’ve heard the fable of the scorpion and the frog. A scorpion sits at the bank of a river, needing to get to the other side. It sees a frog and calls out to it: “Hello there! Would you mind carrying me across the river?” The frog responds, “No thanks, I don’t want to get stung!” But the scorpion protests, “Of course I wouldn’t sting you. If I did that, we’d both drown!” The frog thinks about it for a moment, sees the scorpion’s point, and decides to help. About halfway across the river, the frog feels a terrible sting and realizes the scorpion has doomed them both. The frog gasps a simple question, “Why? This makes no sense!” And the scorpion replies, “I know, but I cannot help it. It’s my character.”

Is that how we are? Are we stuck so that we cannot help but act in certain ways, even if we know that it’s not good? Is our character permanent? 

There’s an interesting contradiction at work in society today. On one hand, scientists will tell us about neuroplasticity and about the brain’s amazing capacity to change. And yet at a cultural level, we often act as if change isn’t really possible. 

Think of how common it is to use psychological terms to label others. “He’s a narcissist. She’s neurodivergent.” Implied is the sense that this is fixed and unchangeable. Nothing can be done. Or think of how we speak of identities. It’s not just that someone has gender dysphoria, which implies the possibility of change. It’s that they ARE trans, a reality as immovable as a mountain.

Or think of how people speak of their political enemies. There’s little talk of seeking to persuade or bring others into a different way of viewing things. I simply need to defeat my opponent, because of course they will not change.

I know of someone with a beautiful family who began cheating on his wife. When he was confronted by a friend, “What are you doing? You’re ruining something valuable?” His response was basically, “I can’t help it. I do not love my wife—I love this other person.” In other words, “It’s what I am. I can’t change.”

In our day we can change our careers; our families; our bodies, but the one thing we apparently can’t change is what we are on the inside.

And if you look for it, you can find a similar instinct among Christians.

Have you ever heard seen the bumper sticker, “Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven?” The first part of that obviously is true: “Christians aren’t perfect.” Probably nobody needs to be convinced of that. But consider the second part: “Christians are JUST forgiven.” What that implies is that Christians are forgiven through Jesus, but they aren’t changed in any other way. That even though they now know Jesus, they’re pretty much the same person as they once were.   

Sometimes the way Christians teach implies that progress is not something we should really expect in this life. We are sinners, and that sin will be so much a part of us, a part of who we are that even after years of following Jesus, realistically, our minds won’t become much wiser; our hearts won’t become more filled with love of God and others; our actions won’t become any more pleasing to God: all of our works will still be like filthy rags in God’s sight, because sin just has too great of a hold on us. That’s what we sometimes hear. 

Let me ask you, is that how you feel? Deep down, are you skeptical that you can really, meaningfully change? Have you given up on becoming more loving, more prayerful, more joyful, more giving of yourself to God? When you find yourself failing, do you ever feel like the scorpion: “I can’t help it. It’s my character.”

If that’s you, then this morning, you need to hear God gently but firmly correcting you. He tells us that when you become a Christian, it’s not just that your relationship with him changes. You change. You become someone new who now has begun a lifelong process of being made new in your mind, your desires, your whole life. You should expect to change.  

Growing

Last week, we saw that the explanation of what it looks like to offer ourselves to God comes in verse 2: “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.” Consider what comes next.  As our mind is being renewed by Jesus, as we are learning how to resist the pull of our previous way of independence and are being transformed in how we live, then it says, “by testing you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.” A better translation, as the NIV has it, “by testing you may approve God’s will.” The idea is of putting something to the test and finding it to be good.

As some of you know—and this is something that Matt Potoshnick especially seems to like to tease me about—I once was not a dog appreciator. To me dogs seemed just like a bundle of responsibility, and why would I want to take on extra responsibility? But Jennifer and the rest of the family wanted a dog, and so, after many years of resistance, well, I caved, and for the first time in my life, I became a dog-owner. On the day our dog came home, I was no longer just someone imagining what it would be like to have a dog. I now was actively putting dog-owning to the test. And as I experienced what it was to have a goofy Australian Labradoodle named Emmi, I came to find it was pretty great. By testing I came to approve having a dog.

That’s the idea here. When we give ourselves to God and allow his renewing of the mind to change our lives, we are, whenever we act on that in obedience, putting God’s will to the test. We are trying it out to see what it’s like. And as we do, we find ourselves approving it. 

Now, this approval is actually something new in us. Back in Romans chapter 1 Paul uses this very same word to describe how faulty our minds had become through sin. He says that people in their sinfulness tested the idea of holding on to the knowledge of God and they decided it wasn’t worth it. Sin had taken away their capacity for the joy of knowing God, for the ability to discern the wisdom of God. They lost the ability to taste and know what was good.

But now, in Christ, something is different. He’s renewing our mind so that we now begin to have good taste. We begin to be able to enjoy what is truly good. And so Paul says that now, as we give ourselves up to the will of God and seek to obey him, as we put God’s will to the test, we are able to say, “I want this.” 

Notice the three descriptors at the end of this verse. We come to see that God’s will is good. His plan for this world and for us is beautiful. It brings about how things ought to be in justice and harmony.

His will is acceptable—that is, it’s well-pleasing. We come to see that God’s will isn’t just good like vegetables, where we know it’s good for us. It’s delightful, like cheesecake. God is not just seeking our holiness. He’s seeking our happiness: his plan is to bring us joy together with him.

And his will is perfect—that is, it’s complete, lacking nothing. When God’s plan for our lives and for this world comes to complete fruition, none of us will say, “God, you forgot about this. God, you missed this desire of mine.” No—God’s will is missing nothing.

This, Paul says, is what happens. As we learn to resist the pull of the old way, as we learn from Jesus and consciously seek to bring our lives in obedience to him, we discover, “God, what you want is good. Your will is what I want. Your will is what I need.” And as we discover this, we change.

What happens in this is what we might call a spiral of life.

Romans 1 described a spiral of death, something we’re all too familiar with.  We decide to do something we know to be wrong, because in the moment it feels like that’s what we want. Then we feel shame, even self-loathing, which drives us further from God. We want to avoid him. And because we are disconnected from God, we feel even emptier, longing for something, and so we try to fill that void, soothe that ache by doing something we feel will make us happy even if it’s wrong. And then that drives us further from God. Making things worse and worse, moving us further and further away from life. The spiral of death.

But Jesus brings us into a spiral of life. He reconnects us to life in God and renews our minds so that we begin to learn to love God and trust in him. And so, we take a step of obedience, maybe a small step or maybe a large one. Maybe we start going to church. Maybe we seek to stop drinking as much. Whatever it is, at some point after we begin to obey, we realize, “This is good. This is what I want.” And what was once a single step becomes a habit, part of our lives. And so we trust God a little bit more and our desires have become just a little more attuned to what is good. And so we take another step to take in obedience, and gradually, over time, we become more fully alive. We change.

To be clear, in the midst of sin and brokenness, this process isn’t linear. We can get sidetracked by distraction, for seasons we can fall backward into temptation before moving forward again. But we can and will move forward. As you and I learn to give ourselves to God, real change happens. 

Sometimes this can be dramatic. I have a friend who became a Christian as an adult. And his conversion made an immediate difference. It started changing how he responded to anxiety, how he managed his temper, his ability to be joyful. In fact, his wife was so struck by the changes she was seeing that she concluded that this Christian faith must be real, and so she ended up coming to faith as well. 

Other times, and this is more often the case, the change Jesus works in us is slower and more subtle—the kind of thing that you only really notice when you take a moment to look backward to what you once were. You come to see, “Hey, as I’ve sought to listen to God’s Word, I think I actually am wiser now. As I’ve tried to obey God, I really do think I’m learning to desire what is good for me.” Over time our actions we increasingly learn the way that is pleasing to God. The point is, you are not the scorpion with a fixed character—not in Christ. As you offer yourself to God through Jesus, you change. You grow. You become more alive: more prayerful, more loving, more the person you were meant to be 

Two more things about how this change happens before we conclude this little series.

First of all, this change process is communal.

Why do I say that? Well, to begin with, it’s worth noting that all of these instructions in Romans 12 are in the plural. To translate into southern, “All y’all, stop being conformed but transformed so that all y’all might by testing approve.” It’s a group project. And it’s clear Paul is thinking of the church community when he is writing, because right after verses 3 and following, Paul immediately speaks of how we are to live together as the body of Christ. 

But this point is clearest in Ephesians 4. As Paul is speaking about this change project, here’s how he describes it. He says that we grow together into the likeness of Jesus “as we speak the truth in love to each other, each of us together helping build us up.” This change spiral is communal.

When we’re talking about this spiral of life, we shouldn’t imagine something private, internal, on our own. It’s something that happens together. Which makes sense. My sense of what is good and desirable doesn’t just come to me on my own. It’s something I absorb from others. That’s how trends work, right? We pick up on what other people like, and we find ourselves liking it as well.

And so in the community of Jesus, the same thing happens. As some of you have learned something about following Jesus—maybe it’s something about the way you are generous with money, or faithful in prayer, or really hospitable to outsiders, and then I see it, and it resonates with me. This is good! And so I seek to be more like you. Meanwhile, perhaps you recognize something I’ve learned, and you seek to grow. Sometimes it’s stuff we explicitly talk about as we think together about our lives. Sometimes it’s just what we see. But as Jesus works in each of us, he also works through each of us to help our minds together to be renewed, our lives together to be transformed, our desires changed, all through each other in this virtuous spiral.

Which is awesome right? You don’t have to change alone. And you don’t have to just change for yourself. You are meant to do this with friends and with family. And you can be motivated by the knowledge that as God grows you and changes you, your growth is also helping those people that we love. This change is communal.

Second, this change only happens by faith.

Because the order here is not that first we experience how good the will of God is and then we choose to give ourselves and obey. Rather, it’s only as we obey that we come to know and experience the goodness of God’s will. Which means that it starts by choosing to trust.

There’s this moment when God speaks to Moses from the burning bush, God tells Moses that he has heard the cries of his people and he will rescue them. And then he says to Moses, “Okay, I’m sending you to Pharaoh, the most powerful man in the world, to bring my people out of Egypt.” 

Can you imagine the pit Moses would have felt in his stomach, the sudden way his heart would have been racing? “Wait, what?” He says, “Who am I that I should do this?” And that wasn’t false modesty: at this point Moses was an elderly shepherd who lived in the middle of nowhere far from his people. There was likely nothing Moses felt less qualified to do than somehow confront Pharaoh. He really didn’t want to do this. 

And here’s what God says in response. “I will be with you. And here’s how you know. You will worship me on this mountain with all the people you have brought out of Egypt.” If you want a sign, here’s what you will need to do. You will need to trust me and obey. And at the end of this all, when you’ve brought my people out to here, then you’ll see and know, “God did this!”  

This is how it works for us as we learn to give ourselves to God.

If you’re like me, the bigger and more important the decision you have before you, the more certainty you want. If it really matters, you want all the data before making a choice. You want nothing left uncertain. 

But the thing is, that’s not how it works for any of the most important decisions you face. When you take a job, or buy a new house, or when you become married, there is no way you can possibly know everything that is involved in that decision. You have to take what you know and make the best decision you can. Because really, only after, as you experience the decision you have made, will you really come to understand it. That’s true even in small things, like the decision to become a dog owner. 

In the same way, Scripture can tell you why it’s a good idea for us to offer ourselves to God, how only then are we human and complete. More than this, God can show us how utterly trustworthy he is, fulfilling every promise, giving himself completely in Jesus. But even with all of this, we can never possibly know at an experiential level the goodness of obeying God’s will until after we have taken steps of obedience. 

Step after step throughout all of life, you will find yourself facing moments when you will be called to entrust God with something that scares you, to take a step of obedience not knowing where it leads. And it will only be after—sometimes a good ways after, that you will be able to see clearly and say, “this is good.” Only after will you say, “This is what I want. This is what I need.” This is how we change.

And so as we conclude this Lenten series on Romans 12, we conclude with an invitation. Paul in these words is holding out to you the real hope of a changed life. He is saying that God in his mercy has drawn near to you and made it so that you can give yourself to him. Offer yourself, he says. As your mind is being renewed, allow that to change you, day in and day out. As God invites you to obey him, take a step in trusting obedience.  

What does that look like for you, to take a step? Maybe for some of you it means for the first time choosing to entrust your life to Jesus. Maybe for some of you it means surrendering to God something you’ve been holding back, an area you haven’t yet been ready to trust him with. For some of you it might mean simply asking the question, “What does God want for me?” And for some it might mean simply continuing what you are doing. Whatever it is, the only way you will know of the goodness of God’s calling for you is if you step in faith. And that is the only pathway to real change. 

As we conclude, let us again turn toward God in confession. In our confession we are not saying that we have made no progress or that we are stuck. In our confession we are acknowledging that we are not yet what we one day will be. We are acknowledging our sin, precisely because we know that as we bring them to God, he not only forgives, but he transforms.