Verse Study: Romans 12:1

Romans 12:1

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.”  

This passage really hits home to me. I have always loved the writings of Romans, ever since my Doctrine of Grace class in seminary. Chapter 12 in particular and the deviotional style writing of the message in this passage really jumps out to me.

Over the last six years, I have been working with/in ELCA churches and here are some words about Romans and Romans 12 from Martin Luther.

This letter is truly the most important piece in the New Testament. It is purest Gospel. It is well worth a Christian's while not only to memorize it word for word but also to occupy himself with it daily, as though it were the daily bread of the soul. It is impossible to read or to meditate on this letter too much or too well. The more one deals with it, the more precious it becomes and the better it tastes.
 

So, I wonder how many people have memorized it ? I know that I have not. However, as I read Romans and as I read and reread this passage over and over again, I could see the immense benefit if you would choose to do so. So, today, I am like the cow: I chew, chew, regurgitate and chew some more on it.

Luther shares this about Romans 12

In chapter 12, St. Paul teaches the true liturgy and makes all Christians priests, so that they may offer, not money or cattle, as priests do in the Law, but their own bodies, by putting their desires to death. Next he describes the outward conduct of Christians whose lives are governed by the Spirit; he tells how they teach, preach, rule, serve, give, suffer, love, live and act toward friend, foe and everyone. These are the works that a Christian does, for, as I have said, faith is not idle.