IDENTIFIED BY ROMANS 12:1-4

IDENTIFIED BY ROMANS 12:1-4

Wednesday, August 09, 2017

Romans [NLT] 12:1-4 And so, dear brothers and sisters,[a] I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him.[b] 2 Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect. 3 Because of the privilege and authority[c] God has given me [Apostle Paul], I give each of you this warning: Don’t think you are better than you really are. Be honest in your evaluation of yourselves, measuring yourselves by the faith God has given us.[d] 4 Just as our bodies have many parts and each part has a special function, 5 so it is with Christ’s body. We are many parts of one body, and we all belong to each other.

Philippians [ESV] 3:7-15 But whatever gain I [Saul/Paul] had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you.

   I see the implementation of Romans 12:1-4 as primary identifying His people as “in Christ”:

·         Working to not give place to ego in all things, but instead Christ-like godliness, especially in relationships. Mt.7:13-24; Rom.12:3; ICor.13:1-13

·         With our own superior philosophies cast aside to the trash heap (KJV dung pile), we “in Christ” first and foremost seek direction from the Word living and written. This is not to say we shouldn’t additionally read other helpful writings, but we must do so in the light of God’s Word. Sunday afternoon I read WHAT’S YOUR GOD LANGUAGE, by Dr. Myra Perrine, and STEPPING UP, A Call To Courageous Manhood, by Family Life. Desiring to please God, while doing so I continually compared the writers’ words to God’s Word. Act.17:11 One repeated phrase that stood out in comparison to the Word is “the Bible says”. I highly recommend both books as they provoked me to thought.

·         Put briefly, if truly “in Christ” we live thinking differently. We walk with repentant thoughts grounded in God’s Word producing acceptable good fruit that pleases Him. Thought and action that may or may not please others. Mt.10:32-42; 12:46-50

  This may surprise us in real-life application: A friend once shared with me that he had been a very egocentric competitive person. Placing winning above all else destroyed many of his treasured relationships. After trusting Christ he worked hard at replacing ego with support of others. This lead to people telling him their troubles. After some years he began hearing the same old stories and began feeling boredom. Arriving home one evening after one-of-those-days he realized he was allowing the puffery of vaunting self (1Cor.13) and therefore not worshipping God with his life.

EBB4