Skip to main content

Our Bodies as Living Sacrifices, Holy and Acceptable to God: The People of God and the Relationship between Theology and Ethics in Romans

 

What is the relationship between theology and ethics?  Paul often follows a theological section in his letters with an ethical section.  This division comes in Galatians 5.1: ‘For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery’ (ESV throughout, unless stated otherwise). In Romans, the transition is:

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. 2 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 (12.1-2).

Both transitions show that ethics is not only related to but dependent upon theology.  This ‘theology’ is not mere doctrine; it is a new reality.  Christians are ‘set free’; they have experienced the ‘mercies of God’, a transformation by the renewal of their minds.  In 2 Corinthians 5.17, Paul forcefully stated: ‘If anyone is in Christ—new creation!  The old things have passed away; behold!, the new things have come’ (my translation).

The little word ‘by’ in ‘by the mercies of God’ in1 Romans 12.1 (ESV and NRSV) could be translated in a variety of ways: ‘by means of’, ‘through’, ‘because of’.  However, translations that suggest the relationship between the theology of Romans 1-11 and the ethics of Romans 12.1-15.13 is only God’s forgiveness (mercy) and our response of gratitude sorely miss the mark. The New Living Translation has: ‘… give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you.’  The New International Version similarly has, ‘…in view of the mercies of God.’  These do not capture the heart of Romans or the meaning of Romans 12.1-2.

By this point in Romans, Paul has argued so much more: God’s mercies are not merely forgiving mercies but also transformational.  Hence, Paul says in Romans 12.2: ‘be transformed by the renewal of your mind.’  Recall that the problem Paul sets out to answer in Romans 1.28 was that God had given humanity in its sins over to a ‘debased mind’.  Now, because of the mercies of God, Christians are no longer slaves under the power of the world but are free to live for Christ, have renewed minds, and once again know the moral will of God.  In light of the sacrifice of Christ, in light of the empowering Spirit of God, in light of God’s forgiving and transforming grace and mercies, Christians are different and can live differently.

What is the difference?  Romans 12.1 says that we are to be a ‘living sacrifice’ that is ‘holy and acceptable to God’.  First, instead of turning away from God to live apart from Him and for ourselves—illustrated in terms of idolatry and homosexuality in Romans 1.18-28—we are now to approach God with our whole lives, offering ourselves to Him.  Second, we are to offer our transformed selves, holy and acceptable to God because of the mercies He has wrought within us, as our appropriate worship. 

We could never have offered ourselves to God without His mercies that have transformed us into a holy and acceptable people.  As Paul says in Ephesians, God ‘chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him’ (1.4).  Colossians 1.22 adds, ‘and above reproach’.  Ephesians 5.25-27 says that Christ’s love for the Church means that He gave Himself for her, sanctified her, cleansed her, and presented her to Himself without spot or wrinkle, holy and without blemish.  This is the language of sacrifice in the Old Testament.[1]  A priest, too, was not to have a blemish when offering sacrifices as this would profane God’s sanctuaries; but the LORD was the One who makes the priests holy (Leviticus 21.21-23). 

If Paul’s point in Romans 12.1 was one of forgiveness alone, he might have said that God forgives us even though we inevitably offer impure sacrifices to Him, given our fallenness or sin.  However, all of Romans 1-11 has argued something different: God transforms us to be holy and acceptable before Him.  We do not live in Romans 1.24-28 with debased minds.  Nor do we live in Romans 7.7-25 with divided selves and a powerless Law.  We live in the reality of Romans 8.1-17 that makes us holy and acceptable to God—by His mercy and grace, not our works.

Christian ethics is not a Christian ethical system that is for the whole world.  It is something that Christians alone can live because of the change that life in Christ has brought. It is an act of worship, a presenting of an offering to God of our very lives that is holy and blameless because the LORD has made us holy by His mercies and grace.  No longer living in conformity to the world, we are transformed by the renewing of our minds.  With such a transformation, we no longer offer worship to false gods but to the true God (Romans 1.18-23), and we no longer dishonour our bodies with dishonourable passions contrary to nature (homosexual relationships) (Romans 1.24-28).  Instead, we are to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God (Romans 12.1).


[1] In Leviticus alone, 1.3, 10; 3.1, 6; 4.3, 23, 28, 32; 5.15, 18; 6.6; 9.2-3; 14.10; 22.19-21; 23.12, 18.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

‘For freedom Christ has set us free’: The Gospel of Paul versus the Custodial Oversight of the Law and Human Philosophies

  Introduction The culmination of Paul’s argument in Galatians, and particularly from 3.1-4.31, is: ‘ For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery’ (Galatians 5.1). This essay seeks to understand Paul’s opposition to a continuing custodial role for the Law and a use of human philosophies to deal with sinful passions and desires.   His arguments against these are found in Galatians and Colossians.   By focussing on the problem of the Law and of philosophy, we can better understand Paul’s theology.   He believed that the Gospel was the only way to deal with sin not simply in terms of our actions but more basically in terms of our sinful desires and passions of the flesh. The task ahead is to understand several large-scale matters in Paul’s theology, those having to do with a right understanding of the human plight and a right understanding of God’s solution.   So much Protestant theology has articulated...
Post a Comment
Read more

Alasdair MacIntyre and Tradition Enquiry

Alasdair MacIntyre's subject is philosophical ethics, and he is best known for his critique of ethics understood as the application of general, universal principles.  He has reintroduced the importance of virtue ethics, along with the role of narrative and community in defining the virtues.  His focus on these things—narrative, community, virtue—combine to form an approach to enquiry which he calls ‘tradition enquiry.’ [1] MacIntyre characterises ethical thinking in the West in our day as ethics that has lost an understanding of the virtues, even if virtues like ‘justice’ are often under discussion.  Greek philosophical ethics, and ethics through to the Enlightenment, focussed ethics on virtue and began with questions of character: 'Who should we be?', rather than questions of action, 'What shall we do?'  Contemporary ethics has focused on the latter question alone, with the magisterial traditions of deontological ('What rules govern our actions?') and tel...
Post a Comment
Read more

The New Virtues of a Failing Culture

  An insanity has fallen upon the West, like a witch’s spell.   We have lived with it long enough to know it, understand it, but not long enough to resist it, to undo it.   The very stewards of the truth that would remove it have left their posts.   They have succumbed to its whispers, become its servants.   It has infected the very air and crept along the ground like a mist until it is within us and all about us.   We utter its precepts like schoolchildren taught their lines. Its power lies in its claims of virtuosity, distorted goodness.   If presented as the vices that they are, they would be rejected.   These virtues are proclaimed from the pulpits and painted on banners or made into flags.   They are established in our schools, colleges, universities, and seminaries.   They are the hallucinogen making our own cultural suicide bearable, even desirable.   They are virtues, but disordered, or they are the excess or deficiency of...
Post a Comment
Read more