Worship isn't a checklist. Romans 12 tells why a renewed mind, not a list of rules, is what it means to offer yourself to God.

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True and Proper Worship

Romans 12:1–2

Well, I'm back. So good to see you again today. I was joking a few weeks ago that I'm kind of like a bad penny — I'll just keep turning up again and again. Bryce was kind enough to let me know that they've discontinued pennies, so I need to be very careful about that joke. So thank you, Bryce. So yes, here we are. We're back. What I'd like to do with you today is continue the conversation we've been having for the past few weeks that I've been here. If you remember a couple of weeks ago, we were in 1 Peter, and we hit on this idea that we are priests in God's house [See "A Spiritual House," June 14, 2026]. We said that priesthood can face two directions. Number one, it can face toward God — in that sense, we are the priests in God's house who offer spiritual sacrifices to God. But we also said that priesthood can face one another — not because we need any priest but Jesus to stand between us and God, but because sometimes God chooses to minister to people through other people. So sometimes we have the privilege of speaking for God to one another, of acting on behalf of God among one another. That priesthood can face God; it can also face one another. For the next couple of weeks — I'll be here this week and next week — I'd like to focus on both sides of that coin. Today we're going to focus on what it means to be priests before God. What does it mean to face God? Next week we'll talk about what it means to be priests among one another, to be empowered by the Spirit for mutual ministry. But today, what we're going to talk about is this: what is it to be a priest before God? To do that, I'd like to take you to Romans chapter twelve, verses one and two. It's a well-known passage of Scripture from the apostle Paul to a group of Christians in the city of Rome. Let's go ahead and put that up there. Therefore I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God — this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is — His good, pleasing, and perfect will. (Rom 12:1–2, NIV) Now, as we come to this passage of Scripture, we can see that the apostle Paul is doing something similar to what Peter was doing a couple of weeks ago. Peter was playing on this imagery of temples and priests and sacrifices (cf. 1 Pet 2:5, 9), and Paul is doing the same thing here. When Paul says that we should offer our bodies as a living sacrifice, he's playing on the same kind of imagery — but he takes it a step further than Peter did. For Peter, we ourselves are the temple of God; we ourselves are the priests in God's house; we ourselves are offering spiritual sacrifices to God. That's all true for Paul too, but Paul takes it a step further and says that not only are we the ones who offer sacrifices — we ourselves become the sacrifices. So for Peter, we offer spiritual sacrifices to God. For Paul, we offer our own bodies as sacrifices. As he talks about this, he's talking about a very specific practice that took place in the ancient world: animal sacrifice.¹ That's something very foreign to us — we talk about it when we're reading the Bible or talking about ancient history. But for Paul's audience, for the people in Rome, this would have been something that was just part of life. So let's look at this next slide. I don't know if you can see it very well, but this is a relief from the first century of a sacrificial procession moving toward an altar — basically we have a pig, a sheep, and a bull. The idea is that these animals will be led to the altar to be offered to the god Mars. So Paul starts talking about animal sacrifice and worship, and the people at Rome know exactly what that means. They see things like this taking place. You could also go back to the Old Testament, where in God's relationship with God's people Israel, there is a space for animal sacrifice. We're not going to go into all the reasons for that right now, but suffice it to say that animal sacrifice was something people in the ancient world understood. So Paul draws on this imagery. He says — you know about this practice of animal sacrifice. Well, for Christians, you were a priest, you were offering sacrifices, but then he stretches that image a little bit. He says, but you're not going to offer a dead animal on the altar. Instead, you are going to offer yourselves on the altar. You will not be a dead sacrifice that lasts for a moment. You will be a living sacrifice — one that is offered continually before God. You guys kind of see how that's working this morning? He takes this imagery of sacrifice and shifts it a little. We are the priests who offer; we are also the sacrifice ourselves. Which is great, but then you have this question: what does that mean? You think about the sacrifice that takes place on the altar — that happens in a specific way. When you move into this metaphorical, spiritual kind of space, what does it actually mean for us to offer our bodies, our very selves, as a sacrifice to God? I think that's what Paul gets at next. He says, do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind (Rom 12:2, NIV). So what does it mean to offer our very selves as sacrifices to God? Well, number one, it's a negative — we need to stop doing something. Number two, there's a positive — we need to begin, we need to become something. So what do we need to stop doing? Paul basically says the world has this way of trying to press us into a specific kind of mold. Now we need to be careful here. The world is not all bad. Genesis tells us that when God created, God said that creation was very good (cf. Gen 1:31). That creation has not been completely eclipsed, but there are patterns in this world, there are forces in this world that slant away from God — that sometimes go directly against God. What Paul says is we need to stop being conformed by those kinds of forces. Those things in this world that turn us away from God. Those things in this world that compete with God. We need to stop being formed by those things. Why? Because they're not pleasing to God. If you're going to offer yourself as a sacrifice to God, you've got to put away the things that are not pleasing to God. You've got to stop being pressed into the world's mold. So what might that mean a little more practically this morning? Maybe we need to stop being conformed to the toxic political rhetoric that is rampant in our culture these days. Maybe we need to stop being formed by a mindset that says we only look out for number one. Maybe we need to stop being formed by a culture that is obsessed with competition and one-upping one another. Maybe we need to stop being formed by those voices that say, you know, Jesus — he's pretty cool, he's all right, but really his teachings, they're not practical. We leave those behind when we go into the real world, because there we've got to win. Maybe we need to stop being conformed to these ways of the world that are slanting us away from God. Because if we can put those things away, we can become something new — which is what Paul gets to next. But be transformed by the renewing of your mind (Rom 12:2, NIV). And so with this — stop being conformed to these ways of the world that are against God. Instead, I want you to be transformed, which has to do with your mind, with the way that you think. And then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, His good, pleasing, and perfect will (Rom 12:2, NIV). So notice this. As long as we are being conformed to the ways of this world that slant away from God, we can't offer ourselves as sacrifices pleasing to God. But once we stop doing that, we can begin this process of transformation in which our minds are renewed in such a way that we are able to test and approve what God's will is. We've hit on this a few times in the past few weeks, but we need to say it again: Christianity is not about to-do lists. Yes, there are things that we want to respect — there are things we know about how God wants us to live our lives. But it's not just — you remember, back in the day, I worked at a church once, and I found their old offering envelopes. On the offering envelopes, there was a check system. If you attended the sermon, you got ten percent. If you tithed, you got maybe twenty percent. If you went to Sunday school, you got — I was always confused why the sermon was only ten percent, right? But with that, it was kind of this idea that if you can just check off all these things, you're being a good Christian. Now those are all good things, but being a Christian goes beyond those things, beyond those practices, beyond those rules. Instead, we're being made into a specific kind of people who can discern what God's will is. Because we know that we're supposed to be loving people, but how many of you ever come to a place where you're just not quite sure what the loving thing to do is? We need to discern God's will in these moments. It's not enough to just have the rules — we have to have a particular kind of mind. We need to be a particular kind of people. So Paul says, I want you to be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you can test and approve what God's will is, God's pleasing and perfect will (cf. Rom 12:2, NIV). And here's the thing — if you can discern what that is, you can pursue it. And if you can pursue it, you can offer yourself as a living sacrifice, day in and day out, as you become the kind of person who knows wha...