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 what God wants and is able to offer that to God as your own worship in view of what God has done for you.

So: stop being conformed to the ways of this world that set themselves against God. Be transformed into a different kind of person who can discern what God’s will is, and who, once that will is discerned, can then go ahead and pursue it. That is what it means to offer yourself as a living sacrifice to God.

But now there’s this important question. Okay, I know I need to be transformed. I know that I need to become a certain kind of person — but how do I go about that? First off, this is a work of God in our lives. It doesn’t say transform yourself; it says be transformed (Rom 12:2, NIV). That’s the first thing we need to put in our back pocket. But beyond that, we could also say there are ways that we can put ourselves in God’s way — ways that we agree with the work of God in our lives. One way we do that is we show up for worship, like you have done this morning. We gather around the Scripture together. We raise our voices together and proclaim the praises of our great God. We remind ourselves of this alternative story by which we live. We could talk about worship. Maybe we could talk about Sunday school — about getting together, once again, around the Scriptures, really applying it to our own lives. We could talk about fellowship, just laughing together. We could talk about the ways that we pursue God individually — our quiet times, maybe our times of prayer where we walk through the woods. It looks different for each one of us. The idea here is that there are ways we can put ourselves in God’s way.

We moved into a house a while back, in a place called Temple, Texas. And I decided I was going to be a gardener. That was before I knew how hard being a gardener was, so I had really grand plans. They didn’t really go much further than that, but I went ahead and dug up this section of grass and planted a really beautiful garden. It was symmetrical. It had a birdbath in the center, surrounded by shrubs. I had vines on either side going up the side of the house. It was beautiful — until it started to grow. Because what happened was, half of that garden grew like gangbusters, and the other half just didn’t grow at all — it just stayed the same. Any ideas why that was? It was because there was a big oak tree in the front yard, and I wanted to be a gardener, but I didn’t do any research. That oak tree meant that half of the garden was always in the shade and half of the garden got sun. The sunny side of the garden grew. The one in the shade didn’t.

We talk about being transformed. Sometimes we need to talk about what it means for us to step into the light of God — to move into a place where we can be worked on by God, where we can agree with what God is doing in our lives. As I said, that’s practices — coming for worship, joining for fellowship, pursuing God in our everyday lives. Maybe the thing to see here is that stepping into God’s light isn’t just something that we do and then step out of and then step back into. Maybe you could think about it that way, but really, it’s a way of life.

How many of you here have ever played a sport? All right, there’s a few of you. Here’s the thing: when you start playing that sport, you have no idea what you’re doing. You might understand the rules, but you’ve really got to think about the rules. Your body doesn’t yet move the way it’s supposed to move. Let’s just talk about baseball, all right? You might know what it means to hit a ball — it’s completely different to actually stand in front of a pitcher and take a swing. You actually have to play, and as you play the game, you are made more and more able to play the game. Does that make sense to you guys? You step into the game, and then the people around you — you have a coach, and they help you understand how you can do this better. And as you continue in this way of life, in this particular sport, your body learns how to move. You build up muscle memory. You start to understand all the rules until you’re able to discern what is needed in this particular moment — not because you have to think about it all the time, but because you’ve been formed into a certain kind of person who understands how the game should be played.

I think that’s what Paul was talking about this morning. It’s these practices, but it’s more than that. It’s us choosing to pursue God together. And as we move in that direction, we begin to learn more and more what it is to be the people of God. We begin to discern more and more what God desires in different kinds of situations. We begin to understand who God is calling us to be in ministry to the surrounding community. We begin building up some muscle memory. We begin building an understanding of this world that just flows with how God moves.

Now, do we ever get it perfect? No. At the same time, we can become — we can become more, we can become suited to pursuing the kind of life that is an ever-present offering, that is holy and pleasing to God. May we be that kind of people. May we step into the light.

Endnotes

¹ The relief Smith describes is a Roman suovetaurilia panel — the rite takes its name from the three sacrificial animals involved: sus (pig), ovis (sheep), and taurus (bull). This particular relief, a marble sarcophagus panel from the first half of the 1st century CE, depicts a sacrificial procession dedicated to Mars. It is held by the Musée du Louvre, Department of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities, inventory number Ma 1096 (MR 852), and is not currently on public display. The relief’s provenance traces to the Grimani Collection in Venice; it was seized during the French Revolutionary campaigns in Italy in 1798 and was not among the works restituted to Venice after Napoleon’s defeat. The suovetaurilia was traditionally offered to Mars and was often performed to conclude a census or military campaign — the type of public, state-level sacrifice familiar to Paul’s first-century Roman audience, and the backdrop against which his “living sacrifice” language in Romans 12 would have registered with particular force.

Works Cited

The Holy Bible, New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

Smith, Michael. “A Spiritual House.” Sermon, Yates Baptist Church, Durham, NC, June 14, 2026.

Suovetaurilia relief (pig, sheep, and bull sacrifice to Mars). Marble sarcophagus panel. Roman, first half of 1st century CE. Musée du Louvre, Department of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities, Paris, inv. Ma 1096 (MR 852).
 
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