Romans 12:1

The doctrinal section of Romans concluded with the great doxology of the last chapter; and, following the style of other Pauline letters, as in Ephesians, Colossians, Galatians, etc., Paul next presented for his readers various practical applications of the holy gospel to their daily lives.

Concerning this twelfth chapter, it may be doubted if there is a more influential chapter in the New Testament for determining what is acceptable Christian conduct, this being due not to the superiority of these inspired words over others, but due to the fact of their having been read so frequently in public Christian assemblies. Many a rural congregation throughout the world has had for its chief Sunday enlightenment the reading of this remarkable chapter by some member of the congregation, especially in those situations where the services of a full-time minister were not available. This writer yet remembers with joy the frequency with which this chapter appeared upon the weekly agenda of the Lord's Day services in the country church he attended as a boy, there having been no capable reader in the congregation who, at one time or another, was not called upon to read it. The sacred memory of that little church where friends and neighbors gathered in the vale of Dudley has blessed him half a hundred years.

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service. (Romans 12:1)

How magnanimous is that authority which, having the power to command, stoops to plead for mortal compliance with God's will! "I beseech you ..." means "I beg of you, please ..."[1] This admonition still lies under the spell of that heavenly love radiating from the great doxology just concluded in Romans 11, and relies strongly upon God's great love as the basic motivation of all human obedience.

Present your bodies ... The body here is from the Greek word [soma], meaning the physical body; and, despite that Batey and others refer it to "the whole man,"[2] the contrast with "mind" in the next verse focuses the thought on the physical body here. Vincent, as quoted by Wuest, stated that:

The body here is the physical body; and the word for "present" is the technical term for presenting the Levitical offerings and victims.[3]

A living sacrifice ... Contrasts the slain offerings of the old institution with the living sacrifices of the new.

The typical nature of the Old Testament regime, and the prophetic intent of its sacrifices and ceremonials, required, absolutely, that antitypes of the new covenant should be changed to accommodate the new information brought by the actual appearance of the Messiah upon the earth.

For example, the sacrificial lamb, slain upon countless pre-Christian altars, was an eloquent and instructive type of the Lord Jesus Christ; but, when Christ came and died for man's sins as the type indicated he would, there followed the resurrection of Christ from the dead, a fact incapable of being prefigured by the slaughter of a lamb. In lieu of the old sacrifice, therefore, God ordained that the Christian himself be presented as a living sacrifice, dying to sin, buried with Christ in baptism, and rising up to walk in newness of life (Romans 6:1-4), and thus providing a continual witness of the primary facts of the gospel (the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, 1 Corinthians 15:1-4), and pointing back to those blessed events similarly to the manner in which the sacrificial lamb pointed forward to them, but with the significant difference that the new sacrifice referred far more emphatically to Christ than did the ancient type. Thus, it is evident that, in the Father's wise design, the Lord Jesus Christ is the focus of all true religion, in both the Old Testament and the New Testament alike. Every true Christian is himself a presented sacrifice witnessing to the great facts of the Christian gospel.

Batey was correct in the view that:

This living sacrifice can best be understood in terms of dying and rising with Christ (Romans 6:1-11).[4]

Even more than this, however, is certainly included. The believer indeed presents his body for baptism, this being an important element in the new birth itself, and thus accomplishes a sacrifice which requires the volition and assent of the whole person; but the presenting does not end at the baptistery. There is also the formal and faithful presentation of the body in public corporate worship, regularly throughout the Christian's probation. Now, as in Job's day, "when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord" (Job 1:6), the sons of God still present themselves before the Lord in the Lord's Day assemblies of the church (and other times also), a duty which Christians are categorically commanded not to neglect (Hebrews 10:25). Nor can it end there. The body is the chief instrument of the person and is to be presented to God through service to humanity, by preaching, teaching, ministering, and helping people, and not merely for some space of time, but throughout life.

Holy ... modifies sacrifice; and, since the sacrifice in view is the body ([Greek: soma]), this amounts to an affirmation that the body, as such, is not evil. Paul noted in another place that the same body capable of being joined to a harlot, in the case of the Corinthians, was actually the "temple of the Holy Spirit" (1 Corinthians 6:12-20). Such teaching prohibits the view that the body is in itself sinful or evil.

Acceptable to God ... is the pledge of inspiration that believers presenting themselves in the manner indicated shall indeed be accepted by God and blessed in so doing. The condition of acceptance, stated here, is holiness; and, as Sanday observed:

The Christian sacrifice must be holy and pure in God's sight; otherwise, it cannot be acceptable to him.[5]

Which is your reasonable service ... (as in the KJV) appears to be a better rendition than the English Revised Version (1885), the commentators being all in agreement that "pertaining to the mind" is an essential element of the meaning here. Thayer said that this "reasonable service" is "worship which is rendered by the reason, or the soul."[6] The concept of what is the intended meaning, as viewed in this commentary, is that which sees that nothing could possibly be more reasonable, nor more in keeping with the conclusions of the highest intelligence, than the fact that mortal man, doomed to descend so shortly into the tomb, should rally all of his soul's energies to seek the Lord and trust the Creator alone who has the power to redeem him from the rottenness of the grave and endow him with everlasting life, the agonizing desire of which is the great passion of mankind.

Further, the most skillful exercise of intelligence, even of the greatest minds ever to appear on earth, reveals that such a seeking after God is fully consonant and harmonious with all that really blesses man, even in this life, and with all that in any way contributes to his peace and happiness now. Let a man employ his mind, his reason and intelligence, in the contemplation of one fact alone, namely, that God created man; and then let him ask if it is reasonable, or not, that such a being as God could have created man with such a nature as to make him happier in the service of the devil than in the service of God! In this single instance, and in a million others, the most ardent application of discerning intelligence will always reveal the reasonableness of serving God. It is believed that this is what Paul affirmed here.

[1] Kenneth S. Wuest, Romans in the Greek New Testament (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1955), p. 204.

[2] Richard A. Batey, The Letter of Paul to the Romans (Austin, Texas: R. B. Sweet Company, 1969), p. 151.

[3] Kenneth Wuest, op. cit., p. 205.

[4] Richard A. Batey, loc. cit.

[5] W. Sanday, Ellicott's Commentary on the Holy Bible (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1959), p. 251.

[6] Kenneth Wuest, op. cit., p. 206.