In Romans 12:1–2 Paul calls upon people to engage in a new form of worship which entails sacrificing all of one’s bodily life through a new mindset directed wholly to God. This was not an appeal directed to individuals, however, but rather an exhortation to the new church as community in Rome. The Gentile Christians are thereby integrated into God’s history with Israel, whose God now also becomes their God. Like Israel the Gentile Christians now also examine the Scriptures to discern the will of God so as to learn what is good and acceptable and pleasing to him.
The following section concerns the service of all the members of the one body (Romans 12:3–8) and therefore also pertains to this new form of worship. Just as God had revealed himself to Israel as a people, so now he wills that the Gentile Christians live as a community characterized by service and assistance to one another. This community constitutes, as it were, the inner court of the temple for the new sacrificial service. Living for the brotherhood necessitates modesty, which complements the humility required for truly enquiring what God’s will for our lives is. In other words, it is within the context of the church that logical
or rational
worship takes place and this is also where God’s people are instructed with regard to the renewal of their human disposition. Denying this means thinking more highly of yourself than you ought.
With the church as the training ground for our new disposition as regenerate Christians, our thoughts are automatically directed towards the unity and love within the body of Christ. Love is, after all, the fulfilment of all the commandments (Romans 13:8, Romans 13:10). It heals people, relationships, and society as a whole. In Romans 12:9–21 Paul describes the heart of this new disposition, which he rhetorically builds up as if it were a mosaic of many little stones that fully describes that one word: love.
Throughout Romans 12:9–21, Paul therefore strategically employs varying tonality to describe what the attitude of love should look like. With every new example he employs, it becomes clearer that love is both the weapon of the kingdom of heaven and the sign of God’s coming. The Christian church in Rome at the time was an outpost of the Lord in a world in which the denial of God and the abandonment of people to evil is prevalent (Romans 1:18–32). If Romans 12:9–21 is not understood from the perspective of the coming deliverance, it would constitute nothing more than an unworldly and presumptuous section that is powerless. Paul writes this section as part of a letter in which he has already extensively looked forward to the time when creation will no longer be subjected to futility (see Romans 8:1–39). The hope of the coming revelation of the sons of God is determines the ethics characteristic of a genuine neighborly love. The gospel thereby reveals the power of the righteousness of God
(Romans 1:17).1
1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.