Romans 12: 1 – 4 NLT
“And so, dear brothers and sisters, 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. 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 God has given me, 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. 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.
We all are a part of the body of Christ and we each have a special function. We are each unique, and we also belong to each other. As Paul introduces this truth about being part of the body, he has some advice for us to follow.
I like the way The Message (a paraphrase) writes the first 2 verses. Instead of just giving us the verse, it’s more like an explanation of those verses:
“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.”
God has given each one of us gifts to reach the world around us. These verses remind us to take our lives and consciously turn them over to God every day. God wants the best for you, to develop you into a wonderful person. It’s so easy to get up in the morning and start running through our busy days. The thought of saying a prayer might even pop into your head, but you have something you need to do right now.
Being aware of God throughout the day is something I’ve struggled with most of my life. As a young person, being a teacher and looking after 3 daughters with a husband who was super busy in his job, being aware of God’s presence was far from my mind. It seemed to be a battle just to get the ordinary things done. God brought various hard things into my life to remind me that I needed him daily. I couldn’t do it alone. I encourage you to find that time to connect with God on a regular basis – let him develop you into that special person that he sees in you.
Just in case you think you are doing just fine, the next verses warn us about being rather conceited, thinking you’re pretty good at what you do. When you start to use the gift God has given you, it is a temptation to be rather proud about it. Think about Jesus’ humility. He was God Himself, but lived a life basically in poverty and took all the hatred of people on himself – even to the cross. It’s easy to become overly confident in our abilities. Stop and remind yourself of what Jesus was like. “Be honest in your evaluation of yourselves”.
After giving us advice on how to live and what to avoid, Paul will go on to list various gifts God gives us. “Just as our bodies have many parts and each part has a special function, so it is with Christ’s body. We are many parts of one body, and we all belong to each other.”
Tomorrow’s devotions will look at gifts listed in the following verses of Romans 12.
Our song for today is Spirit of God by Phil Wickham.