Read the Bible in 2023 ◊ Week 6: Sunday

Today’s Bible reading is Romans 11–12. In chapter 11, Paul finishes writing about God’s purposes in bringing in the Gentiles to be saved. Romans 11 should be read in the context of Romans 9–10, so look back at last week’s post, Romans 9–10: God & His Mercy, on those two chapters. Romans 9–11 should be read in the context of Romans 1–8, because when you realize who you were, a child of wrath, and realize all God has done for you, in His great love and mercy saving you by His grace, making you alive in Christ, the last verses of Romans 11 become your prayer.

Romans 12:1 opens with one of the great Therefores of the letter.¹ There are many therefores within the letter connecting one section with the next, marking conclusions and making transitions. Romans 12:1 looks back to all that Paul has written in Romans 1–11; Paul summarizes these eleven chapters as the mercies of God.

Mercies is translated from a different Greek word than the word translated as mercy in the rest of Romans. This word is also found in 2 Corinthians 1:3, Philip­pians 2:1, Colossians 3:12, and Hebrews 10:28. In Philippians and Colossians, it’s translated as compassion. The word is:

“properly, compassion (pity), i.e. deep feeling for someone’s difficulty or misfortune…focuses on the outward demonstration of emotion.”²

In 2 Corinthians 1:3, Paul writes God is the Father of mercies:

“the compassionate Father characterized by mercies (oiktirmōn, old word from oikteirō, to pity, and here in plural, emotions and acts of pity).”³

Look at the entire verse:

Therefore looks back to the mercies of God. Davidson and Martin write,

“Note that the mercies of God form the ground of Paul’s appeal. They are collectively all that Paul has described in God’s compassionate dealings with sinners of both parties, Jews and Gentiles.”⁴

F. F. Bruce asks,

“In view of all that God has accomplished for His people in Christ, how should His people live? They should present themselves to God as a ‘living sacrifice’, consecrated to Him.”⁵

R. C. Sproul explains,

“God does not ask us to bring in our livestock and burn it on the altar; he asks us to give ourselves, to put ourselves alive on the altar. To be a Christian means to live a life of sacrifice, a life of presentation, making a gift of ourselves to God…My life is to be set apart and consecrated to God. That is what is acceptable to him; that is what delights him; that is what pleases him; that is the appropriate response to him and for him.”⁶

Now look at the first two verses:

Sproul examines the second verse (his emphasis).

“Paul, in verse 2, shows what real worship and devotion does not entail before he proceeds to tell what it does look like. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of the world. Believers are not to align themselves to the structures and forms of the world.”⁷

This is not a knee-jerk reaction of isolation or limited to outward appearances, but something more, something far greater:

“Christ calls us to a special kind of nonconformity: a refusal to conform to the sinful patterns of the world, to patterns of disobedience.

“But notice that the call is not simply a negative prohibition but also a positive affirmation. Look at the text again: but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. To be transformed means to go above and beyond the forms and structures of this world. Christians are called to be light to the world, to be the salt of the earth, to show a more excellent way. This is not so much a call to drop out of society and culture, as a call to excellence, dedicating our lives to the glory of God. The means by which we aer to be transformed is through the renewing of our minds. We have to relearn things from a new perspective. We need new values. We need to train our minds so that we begin to think God’s thoughts after him.

“Why is it so important to have a new mind? Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will (v. 2). The question burning in the heart of every Christian is What is the will of God?…

“Do you want to know what the will of God is? You have to study the Word of God. You have to think like God. You have to have a new mind. And if you want a new mind you have to study the Word of God more rigorously than you have ever studied anything in your life. There is no magical way to know the will of God, apart from knowing the Word of God.

“…If you want to live a godly life, then it is indispensable to your spiritual growth that you dig into the Scriptures deeply, to understand what God is revealing. That is part of the sacrifice of the Christian life. There is a sacrifice of your body and there is a sacrifice of your mind. It is not a sacrifice of the ind in the sense that you vacate your intellect, but in the sense of giving your mind as a present to God, to be instructed by him, so that your thinking will honor him.”⁸

Read carefully through the end of the chapter. Presenting ourselves as a living sacrifice to God includes how we live with others, how we act towards them. As your read, remember, you are not under law, but under grace. The Holy Spirit now lives in you. You are not alone. God is always with you. And Romans 12:4–8 is also about how we as other Christians are to help each other!

As I was looking for photos for this post, I decided to use a pair of cupped hands. We not only have receive mercy and grace from God, but we give to others who hold out their hands to us.

These verses contain some of the hardest things we will ever have to do: how we are to act toward those who have persecuted us and done evil to us. There may be someone in your life who have done you grievous harm. This may have happened to you many times.

From these verses how does God want you to handle those who have cut you to the deep? What is your response to be? If you do this, will it mean that you’ll never see justice for what happened to you? Answer these questions from the text. Because those are God’s answers to you. He has not forgotten you. He is a Rock. He is just. He is faithful.

What does the last verse in chapter 12 say? If you’re struggling with this right now, what has God said to you in this letter of Paul’s that will help you? Write down those verses on a small card and remind yourself of God’s truth. Remember the Holy Spirit intercedes for you. Remember we stand in God’s grace.

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Silvesterzug Laterne: Bk muc. (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Cupped hands: Glen Bledsoe. (CC BY 2.0). Cropped.
¹S. Lewis Johnson, Jr., Discovering Romans, adapted by Mike Abendroth (Zondervan, Grand Rapids MI: 2014) 193–194. Johnson states, “The “therefore” that opens the chapter is the fourth important “therefore” in the letter (cf. 2:1; 5:1; 8:1). The apostle is introducing inferential truth from the preceding chapters.”
²“Mercies,” Romans 12:1, HELPS Lexicon, The Discovery Bible.
³A. T. Robertson, “The Epistles of Paul,” Word Pictures in the New Testament, Vol. IV (Broadman Press, Nashville TN: 1933, 1960) 208.
⁴F. Davidson, Ralph P. Martin, “Romans,” The New Bible Commentary: Revised, D. Guthrie, J. A. Motyer, eds., A. M. Stibbs, D. J. Wiseman, contributing eds., (Inter-Varsity Press, Downers Grove IL: 1970) 1039.
⁵F. F. Bruce, The Epistle of Paul to the Romans (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids MI: 1963) 225.
^6,7,8R. C. Sproul, The Gospel of God: Romans (Christian Focus Publications, Ltd; Fearn, Ross-shire, Scotland, United Kingdom: 2011) 242–243, 243, 244–245.

I’m using Michael Coley’s Bible reading plan (one page PDF to print) to read through the Bible in 2023. Each day my posts are on different books because he divides Bible readings into seven categories, one for each day of the week: Epistles, The Law, History, Psalms, Poetry, Prophecy and Gospels. There’s more information on his plan and other ones at Read the Bible in 2023.

Copyright ©2011–2023 Iwana Carpenter