“Making use of what you’ve got”

By Rev. Michael Stonhouse

Meditation – Tuesday, May 9, 2023

Romans 12:1-21 (Forward, p. 11) CEV p. 1184

Today’s passage is one of the key passages, one of the seminal passages, in Paul’s letter to the church at Rome. Here he moves from the theoretical, and theological, background he has laid in the preceding chapters to the practical application thereof. His opening word, in the Authorized Version (the King James Version), ‘therefore’, is quite appropriate. Given all that God has done for us, ‘therefore’ we should respond accordingly.

The first two verses of this chapter aptly set the tone and the rationale for everything that follows. He begins by telling his readers—this includes us—that we should offer our bodies as living sacrifices to Almighty God, dedicated to His service and pleasing to Him. But is it simply our bodies, our physical selves, that we are to be giving over to God? The Good News Bible would suggest otherwise: it suggests that we should be giving over our entire selves over to the service of God, which makes sense given the rest of the chapter. And the fact that the sacrifice is ‘living’, not dead, suggests that its surrender is more than a once for all thing, but something that is daily and continual. We must be continually giving ourselves over to God. We must avoid the reality that the poster of a clergy friend expressed so well: ‘the problem with living sacrifices is that they keep crawling off the altar.’ Yes, indeed, that is the problem that confronts all of us!

Verse two then moves on to a very useful, and needful, explanation of just how we are to do this. “Do not be conformed to this world [this age], but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern and know what is the good, acceptable and perfect will of God.” Jay Kesler, in his wonderful little book, I Never Promised You a Disneyland, unwraps this injunction by Paul in a very helpful way. He retells the story of the U.S. nuclear submarine, the Thresher, which was lost off the east coast of the United States in 1963 and suggests therein that the cause of its sinking and implosion was not its rigid frame but a lack of a sufficient pressure inside the vessel sufficient to withstand the intense deep ocean pressures outside it. Thus, lacking the ability to counteract this incredible pressure, it was simply crushed by it.

This, Kesler, suggests is what can happen to us in terms of the pressures and mores of this world, of this age. What the world holds to be dear, to be valued and worth attaining, can simply crush us out into oblivion, if not countered by an equally strong presence within us. This, he alleged, comes from the ‘renewing’ of our minds, of our thinking processes, their transformation you might say [here the word in Greek has the same root as ‘transfiguration’, metamorphosis, like the change that takes place in a butterfly]. We need to have ‘the mind of Christ’ as Paul suggests in Philippians 2:5, and what better way to have this than being in His written word, coming to know it intimately and internalizing it so that it becomes part and parcel of our very being. Then it can truly have its renewing, transforming, effect upon us.

Building upon these principles, Paul then delineates how this self-offering of ourselves to God should work in practice:

a) Making use of our gifts (verses 3-8). Paul reminds us that we all belong, not only to Christ and also to each other, to the Church. And as part of that Body, we have all been given gifts, individual gifts as determined by God. Further to that, we have a responsibility, not only to use these gifts to their max but also use them to the benefit of the overall body (see 1 Corinthians 12 as an elaboration of this). But here a certain caution is in order, which Paul also deals with in his first letter to Corinth. We should allow ourselves to get puffed up or proud on account of whatever gifts we have been given, but to use them with a degree of modesty, humility and good sense, not comparing ourselves with anyone else, but simply using them according to the faith God has bestowed upon us.

b) Making use of our freedom (verses 9-21). Here Paul addresses more precisely how our choices, the choices we make in life, interact with others and affect them. Among these:

-we should be sincere and genuine in our love for others;

-we should hate, abhor, what is evil and hold on to, hold fast to what is good;

-we should honour and respect one another;

-we should be diligent and work hard and not give up easily, keeping at our task and serving the Lord with all devotion;

-we should let our hope, our hope in the Lord Jesus, keep us full of hope, continue patient even in the midst of troubles, and always remaining steadfast in prayer;

-we should be hospitable and caring for the needy;

-we should bless those who mistreat us and not reply in kind;

-we should ‘stand with’, sympathize, with those around us, whether in good times or in bad, sharing their sorrows or their joys as being one with them;

-we should be friendly with everyone and not be too lofty or proud to mix with or associate with ‘ordinary people’;

-and finally, that we should not retaliate but leave all matters of justice, revenge and retribution to the hand of Almighty God, who alone knows the situation and can mete out sentence accordingly.

But here we run into a phrase that seems to run counter to all that Paul has hitherto mentioned: ‘No, if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals upon their heads” (verse 20). ‘Heaping burning coals upon their heads’: this sound awfully much like vengeance to me. This is a quote from Proverbs 25:21-22 but that isn’t of any help; and likewise useless is another translation, ‘you will make him burn with shame.’ That still comes across as nasty. But then, in my research, I discovered something that put an entirely different light upon this phrase. This source suggested that the lighting of a new fire was a very difficult and onerous task in those days—given that matches or simple firelighters were non-existent. Instead, what most people used to start new fires were the coals of an already existing fire, carried in some non-flammable container upon the head. Thus, to pile ‘burning coals’ on someone’s head was to give them a great gift and render them a wonderful service, even more than food or drink. And that wonderfully fits with what Paul is saying, namely that we should always use our freedom, our individual choices, in ways that bless and benefit other people.

And doesn’t all this seem so absolutely fitting in terms of what Christ Jesus has already done for us? Seeing as He loved us so abundantly that He died for us and redeemed us by His blood, should we not reciprocate by ourselves loving those others that He loves. Amen.

Forward notes: “Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer” (verses 11-12).

“The Oxford Dictionary defines zeal as excitement and ardent as passionate. But there is more to the story. Ardent is derived from Latin meaning “to burn,” and the Greek word used for zeal in Romans 12 is zeontes, meaning ‘to boil.’

“Thinking about an ardent spirit as one that is burning or boiling becomes a challenging metaphor for two reasons. First, burning and boiling both involve an energy exchange. Second, things that are burned or boiled are themselves changed. Wood that is burned is reduced to ash and coal; boiled water is transformed into steam.

“Paul tells us that, as believers in Christ, our lives should carry energy into our environment, energy that is capable of transformation. The Spirit’s indwelling presence allows us to be hopeful and patient as we continue to pray. But it starts with us first, finding those places where our hearts burn and the Spirit bubbles up inside of us.”

Moving Forward: “When do you feel the Spirit bubbling up inside of you? What can you do to allow that energy to transform your environment?”