Thrust Statement: God wants unity between the Sunday gatherings and the weekday routines.

Scripture Reading: Romans 12:1-2

            In Romans 12:1-2, Paul calls attention to the kind of behavior that Christians should exhibit in their day-to-day walk with God. As you read and reread these two verses, one cannot help but wonder what kind of impact these words have in remolding your way of life. Paul, in verse one, speaks of “Your spiritual act of worship” (NIV), which is also rendered in the KJV as “Your reasonable service.” This phrase should cause each one to stop and reflect upon the import of this unique expression. As one seeks to grapple with the intent of this call to worship, one must ask himself or herself, how can I present my body a living sacrifice to God? This verse is not speaking of the so-called worship service that Christians celebrate each Lord’s Day.

Christians celebrate each Lord’s Day because they are worshipers of the One true God. How does one present his or her body a living sacrifice? What is worship? Do you consider your life a life of worship? How do you treat your wife or husband? Do you use disrespectful language? How do you talk to your wife or husband? How do you speak to your children? How do you have a discussion with those outside and those within the body of Christ? Do you use verbal communication that is seasoned with salt to bring honor and glory to God? Can you say that your life is a life of sacrifice to God? Can you describe your life as a life that is in harmony with the admonition of the author of Hebrews in his closing remarks about a life of sacrifice? Listen to the author as he draws attention to a life that pleases God:

Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that confess his name. ^16 And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased (Hebrews 13:15-16).^[1]

            One can hardly read this passage without a recollection of the Roman passage. Do you offer to God a sacrifice of praise through your lips? Do you do good? Do you share with others? Has Romans 12:1-2 made a difference in your lifestyle? Do you disconnect what you do on Sunday from what you do during the week? Is there a dichotomy between worship and work in your thinking? Is your concept of worship limited to one hour a week? What does this section of Scripture mean to you?

Presenting one’s body as a living sacrifice involves one’s meeting with the saints. Does Paul suggest in Romans 12:1-2 that the gatherings on Sunday are not true service to God? The answer is no! How does one harmonize what one does on Sunday with what one does during the week—twenty-fours a day? Both are related to one another. When one presents his or her body to God as a living sacrifice, this activity also entails the local gatherings that occur during the week, which includes the Sunday gatherings. These local gatherings, especially on Sundays, help to prepare God’s people for the kind of service that God expects from one twenty-four hours a day. When Christians meet together to hear the Word of God and to respond to that Word with prayers and hymns and spiritual songs of praise, this kind of worship, or devotion, is the background for other kinds of service exhibited in the life of every believer.

            Many Christians—both men and women who profess faith in Christ—have no understanding of the importance of this gathering for public worship. The Church ought to be a place where support for forgiveness and love and encouragement are extended to the down-and-out. Even though this essay speaks of the “public worship” of the congregation, this is not to say that God has ordained a “public worship” with certain rituals to be performed on Sunday morning in a prescribed way—commonly known as five-acts of worship. There is nothing in the New Testament about a worship service. Christians come together because they are worshippers of God. One may describe the activities that one engages in as acts of worship, just as he or she may describe other activities done in the name of Jesus during the week as worship. Whether one is assembled with the saints or not, one never ceases to worship the One who created the heavens and the earth. It is because one is a worshiper of God that he or she assembles with the saints on Sunday.

Christians should not abandon the assembling of themselves together (Hebrews 10:25). It is through the Church that believers are reminded that they are not their own. Even in the breaking of bread (the Lord’s Supper), Christians are reminded of the unfailing witness to the reality of redemption in and through Jesus Christ. As God’s people listen to the Word preached, one’s mind and heart is open to the message of the grace and truth that came by Jesus Christ. The Church has been chosen by God as the vehicle of His special revelation, namely, the proclamation of Jesus as the savior of fallen humanity. Christians come together to encourage and strengthen one another only to go back into the world to share God’s Good News of salvation in Jesus Christ.

One might also say that the Christian community is the one place where the self-governing individual is reminded that with all his or her proud self-sufficiency, he or she is not his or her own, but stands in the presence of God with whom he or she has come to terms of forgiveness and fellowship with God the Father in and through Jesus, God’s Messiah. J. H. Oldham strips away the husk and goes right to the kernel of the purpose of assembling:

We misunderstand the significance of Christian worship if we think primarily of its subjective aspects. The central thing is not the elevation of the soul to God in pious thoughts, but the new orientation of life which follows from the acknowledgment of the reality of God, and from the deliverance through His redeeming grace from self-centeredness, which is the essential, fundamental sin and evil and the corruption of all morality.^[2]

            The Christian assembly has been turned into a new legal code of rules and regulations concerning how to observe certain prescribed rituals. The Sunday gatherings with its emphasis upon five acts of worship has been set forth as a new law with little interest for the proclamation of the redeeming facts of salvation by grace through faith in Jesus as the atonement for the sins of the world. Many Christians have turned the Gospel into a new legal code. Christians must ever be on guard to protect the Gospel of God from this kind of corruption. Once again, Oldham writes:

Religion has come to be thought of as one department among others instead of something that is concerned with the whole of life. To the man in the street religion is one of the many special pursuits followed by people who have a bent in that direction. A false dichotomy dominates the whole of our present thinking and colours our ordinary speech. We refer, for example, to prayer and worship as entering into the presence of God—as though God were not present in every moment of our lives and in every action we perform. “To go into the Church” is a phrase that is often used to describe a vocation to the Christian ministry. When we speak of the Church fulfilling this or that function in the social sphere we tend instinctively to think of the clergy doing something about it or of assemblies, in which the clergy predominate or take the leading part, taking some action. To a far greater extent than we ordinarily realize our whole thought about the Church has become clericalized. If the Church is to be an effective force in the social and political sphere our first task is to laicize our thought about it. We stand before a great historic task—the task of restoring the lost unity between worship and work.^[3]

            One should never discount the Church, which owes its existence to an act of God (Acts 20:28). The Church is not merely a human organization, but rather a community of which Jesus is the Living Lord. God, in His wisdom, designed the body of Christ—the Christian ekklesia—as the vehicle of spreading the Gospel of God. In other words, the Church is the witness and the continuing embodiment of the historical fact that God sent His Son so that both men and women might become heirs of eternal life through adoption into God’s family (Galatians 4:1-7). When one becomes a Christian, he or she becomes a part of the community of believers who are knit together in one indivisible whole. God’s people come together in order that each person may have fellowship with others, may praise God together, and share together in God’s Holy Word. These activities help God’s people to have a communion that is centered in Jesus Christ. This gathering does not exist merely for the individual, but rather to unite God’s people into consciousness that they all belong together.

            God never meant for His people to live in solitary confinement. In Christ, one discovers that Christ has put an end to atomization. Christians are not alone, but belong to the inner life of the people of God. We are one bread and one body (1 Corinthians 10:17). One means whereby we offer our bodies as living sacrifices is through the Christian community. As Christians, individuals do not belong to themselves, they do not live unto themselves; they belong to God (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). Members of the Church belong for each other and with each other (Hebrews 3:12-14). In the Church, Christians are called to a life of service (Romans 12:1-2).

One’s whole life is to become one of service. Is your life a life of service? Have you presented your body to God as a living sacrifice? Is God first in your life? Is money first in your life? Is pleasure first in your life? Is the world first in your life? Is God number one in your life? Is your life divided? Do you remember the following words of Jesus in His Sermon on the Mount—“No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money” (Matthew 6:24-25)? What is this statement of Jesus saying to you? Do you think you can serve both God and money? Do you think you can serve both God and Satan at the same time?

Why do so many refuse to hear the message of the Gospel? They do not wish to serve. Loyalty to Christ implies membership in His society. Is there commitment to the cause of Christ in your life? This membership involves allegiance.  If one withholds his or her duty, one weakens his or her influence in the community of the redeemed. When God calls men and women to partnership with Him, He desires their cooperation in the whole range of commitment to His cause—redemption for humanity. This membership demands sacrifice—sacrifice of self to God. Christians are to emulate Christ’s ministry in their own lives: “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28). This saying of Jesus expresses the whole of His life. God wants the whole of one’s life in His service. Jesus, in response to the greatest commandment in the Law, says:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’^{a 38} This is the first and greatest commandment. ^39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’^{b 40} All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments (22:37-40).

            When one becomes a Christian, this rebirth calls for renewal and commitment. Listen to Paul as he seeks to capture the life of service:

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual^a act of worship. ^2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will (Romans 12:1-2).

In Christ, no one lives unto himself or herself. One’s whole life is a life of service. When one is in Christ, he or she cannot be free except as servants of God. In the words of Paul: “You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). One’s life should be a dedication to the kingdom of God and His righteousness. One should look for things that will give pleasure to God in his or her everyday actions. Once more listen to Paul as he calls for holiness in the life of those who were raised with Christ in baptism:

But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. ^18 You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness. ^19 I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness. ^20 When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. ^21 What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! ^22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. ^23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in^a Christ Jesus our Lord (6:17-23).

            Everyone is to refashion his or her heart so that he or she no longer points to himself or herself, but to God. If one will look at God’s mercy, one’s own heart will be melted and remolded and reoriented from a self-centered life to a life that is God-centered. Is your concept of the Sunday assembly God-centered or self-centered? What is your custom regarding the assembly? Is it important in your life? Or are other things of greater significance than meeting with the people of God. Is Sunday just a day for visiting relatives, a day for going to the lake for recreation, a day for fishing, a day for working in order to lay up more financial treasures on earth, and so on? Is Christ really and truly Lord of your life? When you call Jesus Lord, is this just simply pious platitudes, something that just sounds good? Prior to Paul calling forth for total devotion, he set forth the mystery of God as it was unfolded in Christ. When one looks at the sacrifice of Christ upon the Cross, this objective transaction calls for total commitment from every believer. Just as the religions of the world call for sacrifice, the religion of Christ (if one may call it a religion) implies sacrifice. God wants only one sacrifice following the sacrifice of Christ—the sacrifice of one’s body to Him. Christianity is concerned with sacrifice. Is your body presented as a sacrifice to God as your spiritual act of worship?

            God has set your feet on a new path in Jesus Christ. With this transformation of one’s life, one comes to walk in a path that is opposed to the ways of the world. Since you are in Christ, you must strive to advance this new direction. Paul calls attention to this new life in Romans:

What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? ^2 By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? ^3 Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? ^4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life (Romans 6:1-4).

CONCLUSION

Christians are no longer servants of sin, but are now the servants of righteousness. In Christianity, one reverses his or her former way of life. You have reversed your directions, directions that formerly led to destruction but that now leads to life. This new path in Christ Jesus is directed away from one’s self-centeredness to God-centeredness. One is sidetracked from one’s own inbred aims to devotion to Christ. One now seeks first the kingdom of God and His righteousness (Matthew 6:33). The Sunday gatherings help Christians to focus their attention on God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit. This particular gathering helps each one to be more God-centered, not self-centered. You should allow yourself to be changed from self-seeking to God-seeking. Every day should be as sacred as the so-called Divine service on Sundays. What is the motivating factor for this change in ethical behavior? The message of the Cross is the rousing reason for change.

Is there a unity between your Sunday worship and your weekday routine? Does the hearing of God’s Word on Sundays make you radioactive during the week? True worship is the presenting of your body as a living sacrifice to God. Christians must ever remember the mercy of God exhibited in Jesus, which concept will redirect one’s selfish motives to the ways of God. It is God’s love that leads to the Cross of Jesus. When one comes to this realization of God’s love, there will be unity between one’s Sunday worship and one’s daily practice. Christians should not neglect the service on Sundays in order that they may through communication with other Christians be made, as it were, radioactive in the lives of others.

In the assembly, Christians become conscious that they are the people of God. As you begin your day-to-day activities, you should ever be conscious that you should begin each morning with a link to God and to others. Every child of God is a member of the world-wide-Church of God. Remember that the Church is not an institution, but rather it is the fellowship of persons and nothing else. In Christ, new life broke into the world. Where does the renewal of the Church take place? It is with you in the market place. The Church is important in the lives of God’s people. Loyalty to Christ implies membership (association) in the society of redeemed ones, which He founded. If one withholds his or her allegiance to the body of Christ, he or she weakens the influence of the community of the redeemed. Christians are called out of the world only to be sent back into the world to bring about transformation of the world. When God calls men and women into partnership, He desires their cooperation in the whole range of their activities—twenty-four hours a day, not just Sunday meetings. Are you lacking in zeal for the things of God? Is your spiritual fervor burning for the Lord? Are you serving the Lord with a flicker of fire or with a burning hot flame? In your conversion to Christ, have you actually renewed your mind—a mind that concentrates upon spiritual things? Once more, one needs to ask himself or herself the following question: What does Paul’s words to the Romans really mean to me?

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual^a act of worship. ^2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will (Romans 12:1-2).

Have you offered your body to the Lord? Is your focus in life more on the material or more on the spiritual? Have you been untouched by the spiritual since your conversion? Are you still conformed to the thinking of the world? To the world, Sunday is just another day? Is Sunday just another day of the week to you? Is there any special significance associated in your mind to this event of God’s society of redeemed ones coming together to encourage and strengthen one another in the faith? How can you fulfill this admonition by Paul in your own life?  What does he mean by presenting your body as a living sacrifice, which he describes as “your spiritual act of worship”?

^9 Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. ^10 Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. ^11 Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. ^12 Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. ^13 Share with God’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality. ^14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. ^15 Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. ^16 Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position.^a Do not be conceited. ^17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. ^18 If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. ^19 Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,”^b says the Lord. ^20 On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”^{c 21} Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good (12:9-21).