At the end of his glorious exposition of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ in Romans 1-11, the Apostle Paul writes a song of praise to God:
Oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and
knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments
and unfathomable His ways! For who has known the mind
of the Lord, or who has become His counselor?
Or who has first given to Him that it might be paid back to
Him again? For from Him and through Him and
to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.
Then in Romans 12:1, he immediately turns to address the people of God: "Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship."
Therefore. What a significant word. With this Paul turns to press his case. If all this be true--if God is truly as glorious as Paul says--then an entire structure of discipleship follows. All this--from the Gospel defined to God's glory manifested--now points us to our proper response and mode of life. On this therefore hangs the great question of faithfulness or unfaithfulness, obedience or disobedience, discipleship or disaster.
Paul is making more than a request, and he offers more than an imperative. By the mercies of God, he urges us to present ourselves to God as a living sacrifice. Theologically and biblically speaking, this appears to be an oxymoron. Logic defies the combination of "living" and "sacrifice." The sacrificial system was a graphic picture of our need for atonement and God's provision, and it pointed to the atonement accomplished by the Lord Jesus Christ on that cruciform altar at Calvary.
As the book of Hebrews explains, "But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation; and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption." [Hebrews 9:11-12, NASB]
What can this text mean, but that we are the dead made alive in Christ? As those who are dead to ourselves, we devote ourselves as living sacrifices of God. As those who are alive in Christ, we present ourselves as a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God.
Paul turns to define in greater detail how a living sacrifice would live in the light of the cross to God's glory. We are not to be conformed to this world, but rather we must be transformed by the renewing of our minds. The language here is graphic and accessible. We understand immediately what is being demanded. Living sacrifices cannot be worldly in form of life, in disposition, nor in intellectual framework. The living sacrifice is not to be conformed to the present evil age, but to be transformed by the renewing of the mind.
This is, to say the least, a very inconvenient text for those who want to blend in with the larger culture. In fact, Paul's word here is a manifesto for cultural, behavioral, and intellectual confrontation. We are not to be indistinguishable from the world in our thinking, our worldview, our lifestyle, or our worship. Instead, we are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.
Theological education stands at a crossroads. There are inescapable choices to be made, and these choices will determine whether evangelical institutions will remain recognizably Christian or fall into the same pattern of intellectual, theological, and moral collapse seen in so many colleges, universities, and divinity schools.
Historians have traced the progressive accommodation and intellectual surrender of Christian institutions in the face of a secular culture, and one of the most astonishing facts is how quickly the decline took place. Colleges, universities, and seminaries established for the training of faithful ministers and resoundingly committed to biblical truth forfeited those commitments in a breathtakingly brief period of time. Within just a few generations, the worldview of Christianity had been supplanted by the secular worldview of modernity.
