ALL OF LIFE AS WORSHIP
(Romans 12:1-2)
 

Neither in this Mountain nor in Jerusalem

In the first message on worship three weeks ago the main point was, first,
that in the New Testament there is a stunning indifference to place and
external form: "Neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship
God, but in spirit and in truth" (John 4:21-23). Not in Samaria but in spirit;
and not in Jerusalem but in truth.  And, second, there is a radical
intensification of worship as an inner experience, "This people honors me with
their lips but their heart is far from me" (Matthew 15:8).  Worship is real,
authentic experience in the heart with God, or it is nothing.
 

The Key to Praising Christ is Prizing Him

Then two weeks ago in the second message, I tried to show what the vital
essence of that inner experience of worship is.  And I argued from Philippians
1:20-21 that it is a cherishing of Christ as gain, or a being satisfied with
God in all that he is for us in Jesus.  Paul said that his expectation was
that he would magnify Christ by life or by death, because for him to live was
Christ and to die was gain.  So we magnify Christ in death and in life by
counting him to be more gain than anything the world can offer.  The key to
praising Christ is prizing Christ.  Christ is most glorified in us when we are
most satisfied in him.
 

Worship Service - Being Served by God

Then last week, over at Bethel you may not have thought we were continuing our
series on worship, but we were.  It is not insignificant that what we do on
Sunday mornings are called worship "services."  What do we mean, "services"?
What is a "worship service"?  And my point last week from Acts 17:25 and Mark
10:45 was that "God is not served by human hands as though he needed anything,
but he himself gives to everyone life and breath and everything."  And,
"Christ came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom
for many."  Whatever else a worship "service" is, it must first and foremost
be a being served by God.

This is simply a way of underlining the lesson from the week before. God is
magnified when we cherish him as gain above all things, and come to him tell
him that and to find more of him. God serves us by giving life and breath and
everything about himself that goes to the deepest recesses of our hearts.  We
worship first and foremost by thirsting and hungering after God above all
things. And that means that we worship first and foremost by being served by
God.  It is a worship service, because the service starts with God's serving
us what we so desperately need, namely, himself.

We will come back to that in the weeks to come.
 

Connecting All of Life with Worship

But this morning we are picking up on another point from last Sunday and the
Sunday before.  Namely this: if the vital essence of that inner experience we
call worship is a being satisfied in God or a cherishing Christ as gain above
all things, this accounts for why Romans 12:1-2 portrays all of life as
worship.  You remember that I asked last week, "Well, what is the Christian
life if God cannot be served by human hands but loves to serve us?  What does
life look like?"  And the answer would seem to be that we get up in the
morning and we get our hearts fixed on Christ.  We go to him and renew our
satisfaction in him through his word.  And then we enter the day seeking to
express and increase that satisfaction in all that God is for us in Jesus.

Let's look at Romans 12:1-2, which connects all of life with worship.

Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies
a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual
service of worship.  And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed
by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is,
that which is good and acceptable and perfect.
 

A Sacrifice that Lives and Moves and Does Things

So verse one says that presenting your bodies to God as a living and holy
sacrifice is worship.  Now what is this referring to?  A sacrifice was usually
a dead body, not a living one, so he says "living" to make sure we know he
doesn't mean literal human sacrifice.  A sacrifice was usually laid on the
altar and parts of it were eaten by the priests and that was the end of the
animal. It had no more existence.  But that's not what Paul means, because at
least three times in Romans 6 (verses 13, 16, 19) he speaks of presenting our
bodies or our members to God like this, and in every case it is so that our
members - our arms and legs and tongues, eyes and ears and sexual organs would
become instruments of righteousness.  So the sacrifice is not only living, it
is moving about and doing things in the world.

So how is it a sacrifice? And practically how do you present your bodies to
God as sacrifices?  I think the best answer is to see the connection between
verses 1 and 2. My suggestion is that verse 2 is the realistic explanation of
the more symbolic verse 1.  Verse 1 talks about sacrifices and worship.  Verse
2 talks about your mind being renewed and doing the will of God.

The explicit link to show you that Paul is thinking this way is the repetition
of the word "acceptable" in verses 1 and 2.  Verse 1: "Present your bodies . .
. holy and acceptable to God." Verse 2: Use your renewed mind to prove what is
the will of God, what is good, acceptable and perfect.  So there is probably a
close link between offering your body to God as an acceptable sacrifice to
God, and doing the acceptable will of God.
 

Not Conformed, but Transformed

So if verse 2 is likely a realistic explanation of the symbolic picture of
verse 1, let's look at it for a moment.  There is a negative command and a
positive one: negatively, don't be conformed to this world; positively, be
transformed.  Not conformed, transformed. Devote your life as a Christian to
being changed.  Don't settle in at the level of transformation you now have.
O how many Christians throw away their birthright by coasting.  Be
transformed!  It's present tense, on-going, continual growth in un-conforming
yourself to the world.

But how does this happen?  What is involved?  Does it mean we should just
study what the world wears and watches and listens to and buys and plays, and
then do the opposite?  Well there will be a difference at most of those levels
probably, but that's not what the text focuses on, is it? It says, "Be
transformed by the renewing of your mind." The focus is not first on getting
the outside of the cup cleaned up, but on getting the inside cleaned up.  In
other words, transformation and non-conformity on the outside must flow from a
new mind.  Be transformed in the renewing of your mind.

So you might say, OK that means we must learn to think differently than the
world thinks, and that will transform us from the inside out. Well, that is
true.  But there is a word in verse 2 to show us that it is not the whole
truth, and may not even be the main truth - depending on what you mean by
"thinking."

What is the function of the mind according to verse 2?  What is the goal of a
renewed mind? Right thinking is surely essential.  If you think illogically,
you will probably live badly.  For example, you might think something like
this: "Premise 1: Most TV ads entice me to want things that I don't need.
Premise 2: Watching more TV causes me to see more such TV ads. Conclusion:
Therefore the more TV I watch the less I will be enticed to want things I
don't need." That is simply illogical thinking and it will cause you to live
badly if you don't think better than that.
 

Prove and Approve

But that is not what verse 2 stresses. There is a very crucial word that we
have to get right.  The NASB says that our renewed mind is so that we may
"prove what the will of God is." The key word is "prove."  It is a
tremendously important word.  It has two implications: one is the idea of
testing and proving something's value.  And the other idea is the capacity to
assess it and approve of a value when you see it.  It is very hard in English
to bring out both these ideas with one word. The NIV does it in fact by using
two words. It refers to the renewing of your mind, then says, "Then you will
be able to test and approve what God's will is."  That is the full idea. Test
and approve.

So what is the root issue in verse 2?  The root issue is more than right
thinking.  It is right valuing.  Not just right proving, but right approving.
Not just right testing, but treasuring. Let me see if I can help you see the
difference like this.  It would be possible, perhaps to teach an uneducated
person to recognize some of the traits of gold without his knowing how
valuable gold is. So you might give him a job panning gold with you in a
stream and pay him a dollar an hour while he accurately tests the yellow
stones and tosses thousands of dollars worth of gold nuggets into your bag.

That is not the kind of renewal Paul is talking about.  He is not saying: read
enough books or listen to enough tapes or sermons so that you can spot a good
deed when you see it and then work up the discipline to do it. He is saying,
be renewed so deeply in your mind that you not only can test and spot gold
when you see it, but also love gold - approve gold, treasure gold. That's what
the word means. (See Romans 1:28;  14:22; 1 Corinthians 16:3.)

Now you can see that the renewal involved is more than a logic lesson. If you
want to find out if a certain material is sweet, you might reason logically:
it is brown, gooey, comes from a bee hive, crystallizes if you drop water in
it, and makes the eyes a two-year-old light up if you put it on toast.
Therefore, you infer, it must be honey, and honey is sweet.  That is not the
main way Romans 12:2 means for you to find the will of God. The way to know if
this material is sweet, is by the power of taste, not logic.
 

Renewed in the Spirit of Your Mind

Ephesians 4:23 has the closest parallel to this verse and there Paul says, "Be
renewed in the spirit of your mind."  That is a very strange phrase, "the
spirit of your mind."  I think it means something like the capacity of your
mind to taste the spirit of a thing. One of the reasons some simple,
uneducated people live much more holy and upright lives than some Christians
who are very educated is that their minds are far more deeply renewed.  That
is, they so renewed that they can taste, or you might say smell, the
rottenness of a temptation way before others and turn away before the least
contamination happens. And they can taste and smell a beautiful opportunity
for love before others see it coming.

In other words, mind-renewal is a deep spiritual change in how the mind
assesses things and values things. In Ephesians 4:18 Paul says that ignorance
(of mind) is rooted in hardness of heart. So if the mind is going to be wise
and discerning about the will of God, the heart must be soft and susceptible
to spiritual reality. In other words, the renewal Paul is calling for is
profound, and deeper than any mere mental effort can achieve.  This is why
prayer is utterly essential.  The constant prayer of the Christian is, "Open
my eyes that I may see" (Psalm 119:18); and, "Let the eyes of my heart be
enlightened" (Ephesians 1:18); and, "Cause me, O Lord, to taste and see that
you are good" (Psalm 34:8). In other words, God must do the renewing through
his word and Spirit.
 

A Profoundly Renewed Mind

Now let's step back and see what Romans 12:1-2 looks like with this insight.
The root of Christian living in verse 2 is a profoundly renewed mind.  It
doesn't just think clearly, but assesses truly and values accurately and
approves strongly and treasures passionately what is good, acceptable and
perfect.  This is utterly relevant to our daily lives because 95% of the
things we do during the day, we do without any extended logical reflection.
We just act spontaneously out of the spirit of the mind that is in us
(Ephesians 4:23) - or as Jesus said, out of the abundance of our heart
(Matthew 12:34).  So to live the Christian life with any authenticity we must
be in the process of a deep renewal deep beneath right thinking.

Then verse 2 says that this deep renewal of the way we approve and assess and
value reality leads us to a transformed life that is not conformed to the
world.  Now the non-conformity is not just external and forced, but internal
and natural and free.  It flows from our new values and assessments and where
our treasure is.  But it does change us externally and put us out of
conformity with the world.  We find ourselves doing things that Paul calls the
"will of God." God has a pattern of life that he calls us to live that accords
with new powers of approving what is good and beautiful and true, and new
values and new treasures.  There are good things, acceptable things, perfect
things - different ways of talking about what God calls us to do in different
contexts.

Now how does this relate to verse 1?  How does this relate to the living
sacrifice of our bodies offered to God, which is our spiritual worship?  I
think it is simply a way of describing what that offering of worship is.  What
verse 2 describes is a living sacrifice because in the renewal of our minds a
whole way of tasting and assessing and approving and valuing and treasuring
the world dies.  We are, as Paul says, "crucified to the world and the world
is crucified to us" (Galatians 6:14).  So the renewal is a dying of old values
and the coming to life of new ones.  It is the dying of old ways of treasuring
television and food and money, and the awakening of new spiritual taste buds.
 

God is My All Satisfying Treasure

So our spiritual worship is to come to God each day and say: "O God, there is
nothing that I want more than to approve what is most worthy, and value what
is most valuable, and treasure what is most precious and admire what is most
beautiful and hate what is most evil and abhor what is most ugly. I reckon
myself dead to all that is unspiritual and worldly and deadening to my soul.
Renew me, O my God. Awaken spiritual capacities of right assessment."

And then we say, "And take me, body and soul, and make me the instrument of
your glory in the world. Let the renewal you are working from within show on
the outside.  This is my spiritual worship. To show the world that you are my
all-satisfying treasure."

There it is.  Now we are back at the beginning. The essence of worship is a
being satisfied in God and cherishing of Christ as gain. Romans 12:1-2 are not
saying anything different. This is what it means to have a renewed mind. The
renewed mind perceives and approves and treasures and cherishes the will of
God (and thus transforms all of life), because it first and foremost
perceives, and approves and treasures and cherishes God.

And doing the will of God is the outshining of God in his glory. "Let your
light so shine before men that they may see your good deeds and give glory to
your father in heaven" (Matthew 5:16).  All of life is the outshining of what
you truly value and cherish and treasure. Therefore all of life is worship.
Either of God, or something else.

Therefore be transformed in the renewal of your mind.  Cherish God in all his
works and all his ways. Reckon the old mind dead and offer yourself to God as
a living sacrifice that he may put you on display by the outshining of his
worth and his value in your life. Worship him with your life.

Copyright 1997 John Piper