Presenting One's Body
Romans 12:1-2 · Roger Henderson · Jan 26, 2025
Romans (2022-25), No. 108
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926193871369

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Well, good morning. So we're going to just cover verse 1 today, but we're going to go back a little bit in chapter 11. So we're just going to talk about presenting one's body. And actually, I'm going to kind of save some comments next week. In preparing for this, I listened to Merriman's tape on this. I listened to Macaulay's tape. I looked at Weiss, I looked at Constable, I looked at all my favorite guys.

And one thing I'm not going to talk much about is the misuse of Romans 12.1. I'll leave that for next week. Merriman especially, he went on for half an hour on how you can misuse this verse. Especially what he referred to as camp meetings. Present your all, you know. to put you under law to present yourself. So anyway, we're just going to talk about the verse today.

Maybe next week I'll talk about what I learned about the misuse of it. Okay. So in getting ready for chapter 12, I'm not going to do, I decided not to do an outline of the whole chapter. I found some comments here by Barclay I thought were appropriate.

And we're moving, we're changing from doctrine from doctrine to exhortation, you could call it, from our position to our condition, however you want to phrase it. So Paul's going to get very practical here. He's talking about things we should do based upon who we are, not just because you think, well, a good Christian does this or that. We base our life as a believer on who we are in relation to Jesus Christ and what he's done for us. That's how we base our life, or should base our life.

So Barclay says here, Speaking of the first 11 chapters of Romans, or actually the way Paul writes in most of his epistles, doctrine must always precede exhortation. Since in doctrine the saint is shown his exalted position, which makes the exhortation to a holy life a reasonable one, and in doctrine the saint is informed of his resources, You know, that's just so many great places.

You know, I like Chafer, so I considered studying that in Sunday school. But everybody voted for Galatians, so I'm good with that. But there's this whole study that Chafer does about the riches of God's grace, the 33 riches of God's grace. We studied that in the past here at Holly Hills.

But just some incredible amount of what a believer has, the moment he's saved. And to realize that, we base our life upon that. So that's what he's talking about here. The grace he the believer possesses, which is to obey, which is to obey the exhortation. So our position motivates our condition, if you will.

Okay, so let's hear the verses, the first verse here is for today. I'm gonna read both verses. 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, notice I bolded the and, one and two go together, so you really need to study one and two together to make it understandable, but we're gonna do it over two Sundays. 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.

And we'll get to perfect there, I agree with Jim, it's a lot more than just, it's a, Pretty neat Greek word there. We'll get to that next week. Okay, so I listened to Macaulay. He had, here's the big picture. It's always nice to have the big picture, right? We start off with presenting our bodies. That's verse one.

The rest of today's message is going to be on that. But next week, we're going to, using the Phillips translation, stop letting the world squeeze you into its mold. Don't let the world do that. Don't let this age squeeze you into its mold. Then it says in verse 2, be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

You know, we're going to find that the Christian life is lived in your mind, if you will. Your body carries out what your mind tells it, right? If I see something and my body carries it out. That's what Paul's admonition is going to be, presenting our bodies, but it starts in our mind. And then lastly in verse 2, with a purpose that you may prove what the will of God is, good and acceptable and perfect. So that's the big picture. So we're going to do one little section and then three next week. Hopefully that works out, we'll see.

I'll leave the rest for Mike, I always can do that, right? Just leave it for Mike. I know, there's a thing on the TV, let Mikey do it, remember that commercial? So I'll let Mikey do it. Okay, we start off, therefore I urge you brethren. So let's talk about therefore.

It's a conjunction, so it's connecting up what has gone before, you could say now, And some have said this is the biggest therefore in scripture. Remember what many say, many teachers say, what's the therefore therefore? So some say it's all 11 chapters. All 11 chapters are the therefore. And then some others, which I like this, Look at the immediate context. Context, context, context, right? The immediate context is what Jim read for us.

He talked about God is the source of all things, the sustainer of all things, and the goal of all things. And then based upon that, and then also he looks back, he's going to look back, he's going to talk about the mercies of God, he's going to look back at the mercies, and he's going to appeal to us through the mercies of God. God's character of being a merciful God. So he starts off, I, Paul, urge you, brethren, and he's urging the Romans he's writing to, of course, and he's urging all believers, everyone that's put their faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, he's urging. Not just the spiritual, not just the Sunday school teachers or whoever speaks up here, it's all believers.

And the word urge is this word in the Greek called parakaleo. That's how I pronounce it. Pretty close, hopefully. And the idea is to call upon someone to do something. And we're going to find it's a very tender term, actually. It seems a little strong with English. And it's coming beside someone, to beg someone, to exhort someone, is the idea. So some have said, The word urge or parakaleo lies between a command and beseeching. It's somewhere in the middle. Another has said it's one of the tenderest expressions in the Bible. And I kind of thought it's like writing your son or daughter at college.

Dear Johnny, dear Susie, please walk with the Lord. Don't leave the Lord out. You're away from home now. It's a very tender, very tender word. So Paul is urging us tenderly. This is what I want. He's not commanding us, he's urging us. Very tenderly. Parakalel. And we're going to talk about that a whole lot here. Okay, so we go on. I urge you, brethren, So more on parakaleo. So this is a cool verse.

Here we have parakaleo, and we have the word for order you, our command word. So here it goes, in Philemon it says, therefore, though I have enough confidence in Christ to order you to do what is proper, so he said I could order you, yet for love's sake, I rather appeal, parakaleo, urge you, beg you, please, and appeal to you. He would rather appeal to us. So Philemon, Paul's writing here, he's saying, because for love's sake I appeal to you.

And we're going to see here's a very similar construction. We're going to see this and a bunch of other ones like this. Very similar construction. And I'm taking time because this word, we're gonna see this, it's been used a different way. So this is a very parallel verse.

Therefore, I encourage you, parakaleo, to walk worthy of the calling which you were called. Therefore I encourage you, Pericles, to walk worthy of the calling which you were called. So here he's urging to walk. So we're gonna see that there are many words that are used for our Christian walk, if you will. And I believe presenting is one of those words. It goes along with walking, abiding, resting, and so on. Okay, so in both these verses, the idea of urging or encouraging the believer to do something.

And now we're gonna get a little bit into the tenses and stuff. The tense of this verb, urge, is present tense, indicative, active. So the main thing you want to take away from that is that in the Greek, the action's important. What's to happen is important. So he's telling us here, Paul is continually urging. This is not a one-time thing. He's continually urging them to do something. And that's key.

So we're going to, the first, the main verb here, this is the main verb actually of both verses 1 and 2. All the rest of 1 and 2 modify this verb I urge in some way. We're going to see that a good part of the remainder of verse 1 is a direct object. Then we're going to see that 2 kind of connects in.

If you were to look at, you can see these. I'm not good enough to do it from scratch. Our brother Hal Malloy was. But you could do a sentence diagram if you were a mind too. And you could diagram 1 and 2. Well, you'll see that I urge is the main verb. Everything else comes off of that. Anyway, enough of that. Let's go on.

And so Merriman says here, Paul could have ordered them, but under grace he chose to appeal them by the mercies of God. Okay, so let's talk about the mercies of God. So it has a slur, by, or dia, by the mercies of God. Mercies here is a noun. Actually, back in chapter 12, it was a verb. We'll go into that in a second. But it's a noun here.

It speaks of the character of God. God is a compassionate God. God is a merciful God. That's one of his characteristics. He's the God of all mercies. That talks about many, but he is merciful in his actions. That characterizes God. So, Zodiatis says, it is a pity or compassion which God shows for the suffering of mankind. You know, you can look in Ephesians, I can read it here, it talks about the flow, you have love, mercy, grace. Look in Ephesians 2, 4, and 5, it talks about love, mercy, grace. So they all, I was gonna talk about that, but it's kind of a different subject. God's love motivates his mercy, and his grace oversees his entire actions, he only operates in grace.

Okay, so we saw back in chapter 11, Paul told us about the events, his mercy, he was merciful, he saved a remnant of Israel, he'll save a remnant in the future of Israel, he saved of Gentiles, all Gentiles were saved because of his mercy. So he told us that back in 11, okay? So now he says, now I'm going to ask you something else. But now Paul says he's urging us by the means of God's attribute, mercy and compassion. Paul's urging is based on the mercy toward God's mercy toward men.

And here's a verse from the Old Testament. Even though, you know, I was reading a little bit, mercy in the Old Testament is not quite the same idea. It's more grace in the Old Testament. But anyway, here in this case it says, I, David, am in great distress.

Let us now fall into the hands of the Lord, for his mercies are great. But do not let me fall into the hands of man pretty wise guy right he says Intelligent guy he said I don't want a man's hands could be pretty bad, but God's hands I know I'm gonna be treated justly so he was pretty pretty wise in that statement all right, so let's carry on here Okay, so now we get to present so we have I urge you to please to present and this is para ristami To present is to offer, to put to one's disposal, yield as you use, translate me how you yield. And this is another Greek tense called, and this is like the English, infinitive is a verbal noun, and it has this special aorist tense, which hopefully I can give you an idea here in a second. Okay, so actually Merriman says to present is a positive faith attitude that God, God's will is best.

We are agreeing with God. He asks us to present. We say, I believe you're right, God. I'm going to present. That's what I'm going to do. Okay? We are presenting ourselves, and this is key. This is like where the doctrine and exhortation take effect. We're presenting ourselves, not just because, well, it's a good thing to do today, I'll present myself. No. We're doing it based upon who we are in Christ.

Based on the fact of our death, burial, and resurrection with Jesus Christ. We're doing it based upon that. urging okay now here here gets a little more complicated I'll show you a picture in a second but urging the main verb is receiving the action of the infinitive to present so I'll show you that in the picture for us to present is an event to do something since it's aorist tense so here's here's my picture I like pictures there here's the main thing therefore I urge you main part of our verse I urge you the first modifier by the mercies of God the next modifier to present I have a little double asterisk because in my studies I came across all It's an object, but it's a double object. I had never actually gone through that before. It's nothing rocket science like.

It just means that the first object is you. I urge you. You're the first object. But here comes along a second object. I urge you to present. What? Your bodies. So he's urging us to present our bodies. So let's see what that's. So let's do this. The next maybe 10 charts are all going to be focused on the idea of presenting and trying to compare it with other verses, especially Romans 6. We've been through this before about a long time ago, maybe six, eight months ago. So we'll see, I'm trying to have us understand what is to present our bodies mean. That's my goal, okay? So if you look in, you know, helps are great. Zodiates, as many of the people that look at scripture, they'll try to group things in groups of like expressions.

So actually, we'll find out that Romans 12.1 is like a bunch of other verses in the sense that it has a certain form, if you will. And they all use this I urge, parakaleo. And Paracleto again is a main verb, present tense. But it has this modifier, this direct object, this infinitive direct object.

Hang with me. So I'm going to give you some examples. Examples are worth a thousand words, right? Or pictures or whatever. And in the Greek it's called a complementary infinitive, which means it completes, it's completing the verb. It's telling us more about the verb. So I have five examples here. Hopefully the examples will help.

So we start off with our verse, I urge you to do what? To present your bodies. Next verse, mentioned before, I urge you to walk worthy. Third verse, I urge you to confirm your love to him. Each one of these verses is present tense, I urge, with an eris, which is an event. So actually he's urging us to do something, to do an event. He says, I urge you, I continually urge you to do something. He urged you to present our bodies, to walk worthy, to confirm. In Hebrews it says, I urge you to do this, to pray in the context. And then in Acts it says, I urge you to take food. This is where Paul, they were shipwrecked and the people hadn't eaten, he urged them to take food.

So there's five examples of the same structure, same verb tense, So the question is, and this is a question that has been around for years. So the question is, is this a one-time action in a believer's life, or is this an ongoing part of a believer's life? So I'm not gonna answer that quite yet. You probably see where I'm heading.

If you look at this, I would, you probably, from some of those examples, you'd say, boy, they take food. Paul only asked them to take food one time. So they're not gonna do that more than one time. But walk worthy, hmm, I think, don't we, that's your conduct, right? He's speaking about his conduct day by day. Isn't that going on more than one time? So you got maybe a mixed bag here. Some seem it's one event, some seem it's an ongoing event. So maybe at this point you say, well I can't tell you from that.

So let's go to Romans, back to Romans chapter 6. So here's the same word, peristemi, it's used at least five or six times in Romans chapter 6. So the first verse I have, first half of the verse, 13a says, Same presenting, same idea, parakaleo, that's used in 12.1.

Do not go on presenting, and this is present tense, continue presenting your members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness. So here the action is ongoing. So the idea is, stop it. Don't do that. Don't hang out with your sin nature. Don't get involved with that guy. We know from other parts of Romans 6, you've been separated from your sin nature. Praise the Lord. He says, don't go back there. Don't do that. Stop doing that. In the B part of the verse, he tells you what you should present yourself to.

And you'll notice that here we have this combination of present in the continuous mode, but the action is in the heiress mode, which is an event. So we have continually doing something, and then the heiress shows up to say, well, do something to change that. So it says here, this is a positive change, right? But present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members of your body as instruments of righteousness. So that's my, and then I have some comments about that. So in this case, the believer's response, he was continuously hanging out with his sin nature, right?

And now he's told, I want you to stop doing that. I want you to present your bodies to God. And it's an event. It's an event that happens, that will happen as you do that. But I think you have to be careful. And this is where maybe the abuse comes from.

This is something that, that happens, it talks about your body, but your body only acts hopefully in connection with your mind, right? Your mind tells your body what to do. Hopefully your arm doesn't go off and do something you don't know about, right? You tell your arm what to do, or your leg what to do.

So it's to present yourself to God. A couple more examples in Romans. Do not Okay, do you not know that when you present yourselves, present tense, continuous action, to someone as a slave for obedience, you are the slave of the ones whom you obey? Either sin resulting in death or obedience resulting in righteousness. So here the point is, you can continuously obey the sin nature, which is not where you want to be, right? Resulting in death or separation, that's spiritual separation, not physical death. you can be continually obeying God, resulting in righteousness. So Paul presents in Romans 6, there are two ways you can go. You can follow the sin nature, if you will. You can obey God. You have two paths you can take.

Another verse in 19, it says, I kind of jumped in the middle of 19 here, for just as you presented, and this is Eris, it's talking about you already have done this, just as you presented yourselves as slaves to impurity and lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, so now, here's the opposite situation, so now present yourselves, another event, your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification. So a couple takeaways from that, and this is what I kind of noticed, it takes To walk with the Lord or not walk with the Lord is something that you enter into, right? It's an event. You present yourselves as slaves to impurity, which you shouldn't do, but you do. Through an event marked by the heiress' tent, you present yourself to God, slaves to righteousness.

So it seems like these have a bearing on 12.1, and I think they have an important bearing. So I actually pulled up a couple charts from back in, we taught earlier, and this is a picture form of just what I said. You present, this is the negative, you present your members as slaves to impurity. And impurity is the idea of uncleanness, lewdness, etc. And there's a verse that talks about that. Or, and you present yourself as slaves to lawlessness. So that's the bad part, right?

Let's go on then, the opposite side. So now, in contrast to that, you present And here it is, it's aorist imperative action, it's God's will for you to do this, you're doing it, and it's an event in the believer's life. So this very much fits, in my mind, this very much fits with what he's asking us to do in 12.1. Maybe it was more detail in 12.1, but very much the same idea.

You present your members as slaves to righteousness. So you do this as you live your Christian life. And this is where I kind of take sides here, if you will. You do this as you live the Christian life. You walk in the light as he is in the light. You can say you abide in Christ. You abide in me. These same members can now be used for righteousness.

So Romans chapter 6 presents the two places you can go, if you will. 12.1 appeals to you. Present yourself to God. Obeying God, present yourself, and we'll talk more about that in a second here. Okay, so now, so why is it so important? And this is kind of a review of what we just said. This is from a colleague.

Okay, first of all, as we just saw, your body, think about this, your body expresses who you are, if you will, expresses who you are. Either it can express of your sin nature, You can say the only thing the sin nature can use is your body. Your sin nature will use your body to carry out what's in your mind. Your body also is a means of the expression of God. First Corinthians 620, for you have been bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body.

So we saw God is a means, will work through your body to show out through your hands and your everything of who you are in Christ. The body of the believer is where God operates. And then thirdly, the body, and this is a struggle that every believer has, the body is a struggle with his senses. The eyes, ears, nose, and whatever.

I was thinking about, I'm not sure of your experience, but going to movies and watching TV can be challenging. Because what happens? Things come on the movie or TV that you don't want to see as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. Something comes up. And you say, oh wow, if I keep looking at this, I know what's going to happen next. I'm going to go off and think about something and I shouldn't be there. So the struggle is in your mind. Through the eye gate, if you will, this comes into your mind.

You say, wow, where did this come from? You didn't intend to see that necessarily. Maybe you picked the double G movie you could find. I'm sure you can't find those anymore. It's a struggle. We've gone to G-movies, we're taking the kids to G-movies, and they have X-rated, what is it, previews. In fact, Vani, she wrote one time and said, what are you doing putting X-rated in these G, you know? What's that? R-rated, I'm sorry.

Anyway. So what's my point? The point here I think is your senses, what comes into you, what you read, what you hear, comes in and that's the battleground. That's the battleground with your body. So basically here it says, for we walk by faith and not by sight. Many times we cannot trust our senses. We just cannot trust them. Okay, so that's the importance of our body. The body is how we interact with this world, this fallen world. We interact through our body either for good things, from the Lord, or we interact from things from the world, the flesh, and the devil. Okay, so let's go on.

So now we kind of move to the last half of this verse. To present your bodies as a sacrifice living holy well-pleasing to God so first of all as a sacrifice Sacrifice here is the idea of a spiritual offering. It's metaphorical the spiritual offering and So how does the body, so this is from I think Wiest, how does the body become a sacrifice? And so here's one, I have a better chart than this, this is my first cut at it, this is my first chart at this, second chart's better.

So here's this gentleman, Wiest is quoting, he says, and this is what I was just talking, let the eye look at no evil, this is a sacrifice. Let the tongue utter nothing base, it's an offering. Let the hand work no sin, this is a sacrifice. So his perspective is, well, don't look there, don't touch there.

But I think it's good to say, well, what, as a New Testament believer, what are the sacrifices that are part of our lives? And we'll look at that in just a second. But another part here is the fact that it's a living, it's a living sacrifice in contrast to the dead sacrifices of Israel. That's just what that verse says. So God, we are serving God, not in slavery, but in our life. We're serving with our life. That's how we serve God. We are living sacrifice.

So, I like this. So, Macaulay went through this and he said, well, let's step back for a second. Let's look at scripture and say, what, as a believer priest in the Lord Jesus Christ, what are the church age sacrifices? Let's look at that for a second. So I think that's trying to pin down, you're gonna offer your body as a living sacrifice. Well, what does that mean?

Can I put some rubber to the road there? First thing is, first verse. This one is jam-packed. Hebrews 13, 15. Through him, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God that is the fruit of the lips that gives thanks to his name. and do not neglect doing good and sharing with such things God is well pleased. So from this one, you could say, wow, look at this. As I continually praise the Lord, as I continually offer the sacrifice of praise, so praise is a sacrifice for a New Testament believer. Then also, if you look carefully, 16 kind of adds two more things to it. doing good, and sharing, for which such sacrifice is God as well pleased. I would count three there. Macaulay just counted one there. But I'll give him a break. So we offer sacrifice of praise to God through Jesus Christ. And doing good, kind of repeating what I just said. Okay, next verse.

Philippians 4.18. But I received everything in full and have an abundance. I'm amply supplied, having received from Epaphroditus what you have sent.

And I think it's material goods, maybe money, conceivably. Probably money, I guess. A fragrant aroma, acceptable sacrifice, well-pleasing to God. So these material goods, possibly money, were an acceptable sacrifice. So that's the second one in Macaulay's accounting. He counts praise as the first, material goods or money as the second, and the third one is our bodies, right? Presenting your bodies as a sacrifice.

So his little alliteration, is that what it is? The first letter of each word is the same. He says praise. In the church age, a church age believer can praise the Lord, can sacrifice to the Lord by his praises, his purse, and his person. Praise, purse, person. Okay, let's go on.

Holy and well-pleasing to God. Haggaios and here it's not so much speaking of it's speaking more being separated right you know that that's kind of definition that is separated to God for a purpose your body is holy both in the sense of being set apart for its use, and wholly in the sense of being used as pure and righteous purposes, thus free from sinful practices. So he says presenting our bodies is a sacrifice, it's living, now it's wholly set apart to God for a purpose, and then the fourth one is well pleasing to God. Here's the idea, acceptable, that which God wills and recognizes. I like what we says here. This word is speaking of something which is well approved, eminently satisfactory, extraordinarily pleasing. I thought that was really good.

So the four things, four things present our bodies as a sacrifice, it's living, it's holy, and well-pleasing to God. And then he rounds it out here by saying, which is the spiritual service of you. So we actually have two words here, and if you look through, they're kind of It's basically spiritual service, and they're two Greek words that kind of go together, and they kind of occur in different places. One pertains to the reasoning of your mind, and one pertains to your service, quote, religious service, if you will.

So Constable says the presentation is to be in accordance with spiritual intelligence. I like to say that, you know, true Christianity, a person that's been born again, is a thinking man or woman's religion. It's not a religion. It's a person. But we're to think. He wants you to think. He doesn't want you to think, well, I, you know, it's just, I get this feeling and, you know, you know how it is. I could go on for hours like that or watch TV and see all those kind of folks. Anyway, it's a thinking person's relation with our Savior. And here's another word, the spiritual or intelligent religious service. And there's the two words, I can't pronounce them together.

In contrast to what, like what Israel, Israel had a very, if you will, you had the sacrifices, they had incense, they had a very visual, if you will, all this stuff happening. The Christian life is one of the mind, the mind is key in the Christian life. So here's a picture. you present your bodies as a sacrifice living, holy, acceptable to God, that equals, that's your spiritual service. That, the group of things in the first part of the verse equal your spiritual service for God. Okay, so let's close it out here. A few final thoughts. I have two charts. So here's the elephant in the room.

Some scholars claim the tense of the verb present or offer, eris, presupposes a decisive offering made once for all. Others say the eris tense does not carry the once for all meaning and that Paul simply meant we should make this offering without implying how often. So one camp says it's a once for all, and actually there are translations that show that. It's a once for all, and some don't show that. They say, and we'll see. So Constable gives his take on it. Constable says, in view of the nature of the commitment that Paul called for, it seems that we should make it decisively as often as needed.

And I kind of think that's what Romans 6 is about, right? If you're hanging out in your sin nature, and you want to move from your sin nature to your new nature, You know, we talk about, you know, it says, don't do that, but do that. In terminology of 12.1, it says, present yourself to God. And that seems to be what Paul calls for in Romans 6, and it matches Romans 12.

Okay, and he has a few additional comments. Israel, whole burnt offerings, which represented the entire person, par offeree, was burned up. So he's basically saying that your sacrifice, he couldn't crawl back off the altar, right? We talk about crawling back off the altar sometimes. The offerer could not reclaim it because it belonged to him. So we're offering ourselves to God with no reservation. Paul implies that this should be characterized by the Christian self-sacrifice.

Okay, well hopefully that was instructive. A lot of stuff, a lot of details there. Hopefully we'll review this a little bit next week and we'll go on to the rest of it. Stop letting the world squeeze you into its mold. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you so much, Lord. Thank you for your desire that we walk with you, fellowship with you, abide with you. And in this context, we present ourselves to you, Lord. We're thankful that we can do that by the power of the Holy Spirit, that we can spend our lives with you. In Christ's name.