If you do, email me and tell me so I can be glad what I did can be of use. Also email me if you would like and I will send you the entire series to date. I still haven’t written 13-16, but will send that too when it is done.
If you steal it and call it yours, the angels will weep.
Romans 12: A Sacrifice of Serving Love
The apostle Paul has spent the first part of the book of Romans (chapters one through eight) talking about the relationship of sin in our lives and his plan for taking care of that sin problem. Jesus, he says, is the answer. He ends that section by saying that we are free from unnecessary law when we are in his grace and that there is nothing that can or will keep God from loving us.
The second section (chapters nine through eleven) tells how it is that God will save his people: adoption. No longer will anyone be physically born into the kingdom of God. Now all who come to God through Jesus will come by choice, rather than by birth. He used the tree of Israel and the grafting in of branches as an illustration.
The third section, and the last (chapters twelve through sixteen) will be practical. The first section said every person has sinned, the second section showed how God was going to bring us into the kingdom, and the upcoming third section will tell us what we are to do about it, and how we are to live in this relationship. It is a user’s manual of the Christian life.
To live in Jesus and to be able to participate in his grace, you must allow yourself to be fully immersed in him, almost like being sacrificed (Hebrews 12:29 our God is a consuming fire). You have to allow God to change you, change your heart and your mind, so that you can change your life. As he said before in the book, you cannot change yourself by your own will. Romans 7 said that the harder you try, the worse it gets. It is only God through the grace of Jesus Christ that can really change you.
QUESTIONS:
1. The sacrifice of our lives to God is not really all that strange. What are some other sacrifices we make in our lives?
2. How do you test and approve God’s will? Is it really up to us to test God?
3. Do you think we can be proud of our gifts? How can you tell the difference between pride and confidence? Is there a difference?
4. Does stepping forward and doing what God gave you the ability to do make you proud? What about when other people think so?
5. Do you think that each church has the gifts it needs to grow and become stronger in Jesus?
6. What about people who do not seem to have anything they do well? Is one gift any better than any other? How can encouragement or serving or showing mercy be a gift?
7. V9 Love must be sincere. How can you insincerely love someone else?
8. V9 Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Does this mean you can’t like things the world likes. (ie movies, music, politics)
9. How do you be devoted to one another in love and honor one another above yourselves? What exactly do you do to do that? Does that mean that you give in to them all the time?
10. What is practicing hospitality? Is it just feeding people and having them in your home?
11. V17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Does that really work? Have you ever seen it work? Can you do it? Can you really bless those who persecute you without feeling taken advantage of?
12. V21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. How does this work? Will it work in our culture today?
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