ROMANS 12--Declare Your Loyalty to Christ

Get ready for another incredible week of study through the Book of Romans. It is Wednesday, and here is your challenge to spend time each day sifting through each word of this incredible chapter.

Therefore, my challenge to you as we approach Romans 12 is this: Do not study it as a mere list of moral duties to be achieved by your own strength. That would be to fall back into the very trap of works-righteousness that the Gospel saves us from. To do so would be to treat this glorious chapter as just another law, and the law, apart from grace, only kills and condemns.

Instead, I challenge you to see Romans 12 as the beautiful, logical, and passionate response of a heart that has been utterly transformed by the Gospel of grace. See it as the fruit of a life that has been reconciled to God not by works, but by the will of God, by the act of justification, and by the obedience of faith.

Before you read a single verse of Romans 12, go back and let the glorious truth of justification by faith wash over you again. Remind yourself that you are saved by grace through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.

Then, read Romans 12 not as a command to earn God's favor, but as an invitation to live out the new life He has already given you.
• When you read "present your bodies a living sacrifice," see it as the only reasonable service for one who has been shown such indescribable mercy.
• When you read "do not be conformed to this world," see it as the natural desire of a new creation who no longer loves the world's evil system.
• When you read of exercising your spiritual gifts, see it as the joyful stewardship of what God has sovereignly given you for the edifying of His body, the church.
• And when you read the commands to love genuinely, to abhor what is evil, to bless those who persecute you, and to overcome evil with good, see them not as heavy burdens, but as the beautiful fruit of the Spirit in a heart that has been made new.

My challenge is to let your study of Romans 12 become an act of worship, a joyful response to the God who has reconciled you to Himself through the cross of Jesus Christ. Let us not be those who have a form of godliness but deny its power. Let us be those whose lives are a testament to the transforming power of the Gospel, for the glory of God alone. Amen.
(251001; Romans 12)

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   • ROMANS 12--Declare Your Loyalty to Christ