The Culture of Hope Founded on Faith
The living sacrifice described in Romans 12:1-5 involves our personal commitment to habitual and continuous worship of God demonstrated by the way we think and live. Each verse presents a different aspect of our daily lives permeated by God: Personal Holiness, Personal Purity, Personal Humility, Personal Collaborative Approach, and Personal Perspective of Unity in Christ. Today we will finish verse five.
5. Personal Perspective of Unity in Christ – “So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.”
There are three factors in our unity in Christ. First, we are called to love one another because of our spiritual new birth. Second, the corporate collaboration of the Body of Christ is based on the conspicuously distinct nature of our individual relationship with God. And third, the metaphor of the born again Body of Christ intentionally working together as a healthy unit is addressed in Ephesians 4:22-32 in terms of living holy lives, individually embracing God’s call to the righteousness given to us by Jesus on the cross: “That you put off the old man, concerning the former way of living, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts. Be renewed in the spirit of your mind and put on the new man which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.”
The passage then goes into specific areas of personal responsibility that we are admonished to exercise in order to go on together in unity:
- Exercise Honesty – “Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor for we are members one of another.”
- Sin Not in Anger – “Be ye angry and yet sin not. Let not the sun go down upon your wrath neither give place to the devil.”
- Stop Your Theft – “Let him that stole steal no more…”
- Practice A Good Work Ethic – “…but rather let him labor, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that is in need.”
- Use Wholesome Communication – “Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.”
- Actively Disavow Sin – “And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice.
- Make Kindness Your Habit – “And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.
How you live your everyday life should be your living sacrifice to God. In other words, everything about your life needs to run through the filter of three questions:
- Does this line up with the Bible and therefore is it God’s will?
- How does this give God glory?
- How can I turn this to worship for God?
2 Timothy 1:12b-14 reminds us that we are not left to carry these exhortations out in our own strength: “…for I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day. Hold fast the form of sound words, which you have heard of me, in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus. That good thing which was committed unto you, keep by the Holy Ghost which dwells in us.”
