“Therefore” According to Romans 12
“1 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. 2 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” (Romans 12:1-2).
As we finish chapters 1-11, we finish what many have called the ‘theology’ section and now turn to the ‘ethical’ section. We have seen that our former life was one of ignorance, sin, and the facing of the wrath of God, BUT! BUT, while we were in such a state of rebellion, God acted graciously and mercifully provided that Jesus would die FOR us. We then put our trust in Him, turned from our sins in repentance, were buried with Him in baptism, and were raised to walk in newness of life. NOW we consider ourselves dead TO sin rather than our previous situation of being dead IN sin. We now are slaves of God and righteousness rather than of sin and death. We were… but now!
All of this is summed up in the opening verses of chapter 12. Having been enlightened, forgiven, and made alive through Jesus, we should have undergone a complete change of character, thought, and attitude. We are no longer conformed to the world and its thinking, but we are transformed, changed, made to be different. WHAT does such newness of life look like? What changes does it entail? These last chapters of Romans will put before us this very picture.
The biggest fundamental change is ‘who are we listening to’, who decides what is morally correct and ethically right? Does such come ‘from God’ or from ‘man’, i.e., the ‘world’? Listening to the world, thinking like the world, and acting like the world is what has brought such ruin and degradation to God’s creation. It was that mode of living and thinking that brought our spiritual death and necessitated the death of Jesus.
Transformed, renewed, regenerated, made alive, sanctified; these words all indicate that there should have been a radical change in us. Read and reread chapter 12! Memorize it. Conform yourself to its instruction.
Beware, such change will put you at odds with the world! Paul warned that all who live godly (as taught in Romans 12) will suffer persecution. To be transformed into the very image of Jesus will bring about the same opposition from the world that He faced:
"The world cannot hate you, but it hates Me because I testify of it, that its deeds are evil” (John 7:7).
"If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you” (John 15:18).
24 "If I had not done among them the works which no one else did, they would not have sin; but now they have both seen and hated Me and My Father as well. 25 "But they have done this to fulfill the word that is written in their Law, 'They hated Me without a cause'” (John 15:24-25).
This is what walking in newness of life looks like. Here are the instructions on how to walk in newness of life. Does this chapter describe your way of thinking and acting? Hugh DeLong | 
