The Reasonable Worship

W. Carl Ketcherside

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     In January of this year we began an ascent of the highest peak in the Roman letter, chapter eight. We worked our way slowly up the steep slope and explored for several months the view at the summit. Now we must return from the mountain-top and resume life on the practical plane. Here we will test the reality of our transcendent experience and see how the life of the Spirit fits into our day-by-day existence.

     The great argument of Paul ends at Romans 11:36 with a magnificent tribute to God. "For from him everything comes, through him everything exists, and in him everything ends." That is Goodspeed's translation. Knox has it, "All things find in him their origin, their impulse, the center of their being." It is conditioned upon this tremendous truth that the apostle predicates his conclusion concerning our obligation to the Father of lights. We will consider that obligation as portrayed in chapter 12.

     "I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service (12:1).

     It is noteworthy that the apostle who has probed the very heavens, does not make an authoritarian demand or a dogmatic request. He places his approach to life in a framework of pleading, appeal, or entreaty. He wrote to the Corinthians, "I do not mean that we are to dictate to you with regard to your faith; on the contrary, we work with you for your true happiness." Even his appeal is based upon the compassion which God has shown. Our obligation stems from the overflowing mercy in which we have shared so freely.

     We are to present our bodies. The word "present" is employed in Luke 2:22 where Joseph and Mary took the child Jesus to Jerusalem "to present him to the Lord." It is used in 2 Corinthians 11:2, where Paul says of the community of believers, "I feel a divine jealousy on your behalf, because I betrothed you to one only husband, even to Christ, that I might present you unto him in virgin purity." It is used in Ephesians 5:27 where Jesus is desirous of presenting the church to himself as a glorious church, unspotted and unwrinkled.

     In all of these cases that which is being presented or dedicated to God and Christ, already belongs to them. The firstborn male belonged to God under the Mosaic covenant, so Jesus, who opened the womb, was presented unto God. The bride belongs to the husband so Paul wanted to present to Jesus the congregation in virgin purity which was betrothed unto him. And our bodies belong to God. We are not our own. We have been bought with a price. We can only give to God that which is his. We are to offer our bodies as living

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sacrifices. This is in contrast to the holocausts required of the Jews, and the offerings of the Gentiles to their false gods. One statement occurs over and over in the law of offerings as transmitted by Moses. "He shall lay his hand upon its head, and kill it." The law required the bodies of dead animals, flayed, cut into pieces and laid in order upon the wood that was upon the fire of the altar. Nothing impresses me more with the contrast between grace and law than the fact that one approaches God through living men and the other through animal corpses.

     There is more than this involved in a living sacrifice. It is continual and constant. An animal could only be offered once, but life is an unceasing and an unremitting offering. Just as Jesus offered himself for us once, but ever lives to make intercession for us, so we must freely give ourselves to him, but live to make intercession unto God.

     Our sacrifice must be holy. This is a translation of hagios, which we also sometimes translate by the word "sanctified." Literally, this means set apart to God, or consecrated to his service. When a man set aside a tenth of his grain, or olive oil, or vintage, to present it unto the Lord, it was separated from all of the rest. It looked exactly like the remainder, and you could not tell them apart, but there was a difference, and that difference lay in the fact that one was peculiarly God's.

     So there are certain things which must be said about the person who is holy. First, he is separated from the unregenerate world and does not share a common life (or fellowship) with the unbelieving mass of mankind. This does not mean that he does not work, or go to school, or ride on a plane with the immoral of this world, "since then you would need to go out of the world" (1 Cor. 5:10). But he is separated because he has heard the call of God and responded to it. "Come out from them, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch nothing unclean, then I will welcome you" (2 Cor. 6:17).

     Second, this separation makes a difference. But the difference lies in the fact that one belongs to God. To be holy is not to be equated with being an odd-ball, a screwball, or an eccentric. There is nothing anemic or washed-out about a follower of the Lamb. He is not a dud or a blank cartridge. This is borne out by 1 Peter 2:9, where the King James Version uses the term "a peculiar people." In their ignorance of the original many have interpreted this to mean that we were to appear in unconventional garb or attract attention by quaint speech.

     Actually, the expression means that which belongs to one person by right of purchase or choice. The New English Version is correct in rendering it "a people claimed by God for his own." It often happens that ownership gives value to a thing. I once visited Monticello, which was built by Thomas Jefferson. I saw his notebooks, spectacles and writing quills. I had seen a thousand others more prepossessing in appearance, but these fascinated me because of the one to whom they belonged.

     Once Nell and I went to the home of James A. Garfield. Those of you who have been there know that his Bible still lies open on his desk, at the place where he was reading shortly before he was assassinated. I have a good many Bibles that are worth more money, and are more adapted to use, but the simple volume upon the desk drew my attention because of whose it was. So we can be quite ordinary people, with no outstanding ability, and yet if we belong to the Lord, we are different. We have transcendent value. And that is what being holy is all about.

     This seems important to me because I once had holiness confused with an attitude toward things, rather than with a relationship to God. One is not especially holy because he does not watch television, play croquet, or wear wide neckties. Indeed, some of the worst hoodlums that ever lived, dressed pretty conservatively. One who is holy is different because he marches to the sound of another trumpet. He is God's man.

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     W. E. Vine says about the term, "The word logikos indicates that which appertains to the mind, the reasoning faculty. The sacrifice is therefore to be intelligent, and the idea suggested is by way of contrast to the sacrifices offered under the law by ritual and compulsion. The presentation is to be made in accordance with the spiritual intelligence of those who are new creatures in Christ."

     C. H. Dodd says, "The ritual of sacrifice was in Judaism, as in all ancient religions, the central act of worship, by which the holiness of God was acknowledged, and in some sense conveyed to the worshipers. For Christians, Paul says, the real worship of God is their self-dedication to him for ethical ends.... Without that thought, taken with full ethical seriousness, any ritual of sacrifice in Christianity would be a relapse into superstition." Please go back, read that again, and pause to meditate upon it for a little while!

     The Revised Standard Version translates the words by "spiritual worship." The New English Version has "the worship offered by mind and heart." The Twentieth Century New Testament has "reasonable worship." The word rendered worship is latreia, and it is an interesting one indeed. In its root form it referred to work done for wages, but voluntarily so. It was not applied to a slave, but to one who personally secured a position and filled it with a sense of responsibility.

     Then the word advanced another step and was used to denote a dedication of life to a cause which engrossed one's attention or appealed to him as being worthy, and finally it was the word used to describe service dedicated to the gods, the giving over of one's life to serving in the temple of a deity. In its usage in the new convenant scriptures it applies exclusively to the worship of God. That is why the lexicographers define latreuo, "to perform sacred services, to offer gifts, to worship God in the observance of the rites instituted for his worship."

     This is of supreme importance because it points out that spiritual worship, that which Jesus calls "worship in spirit and in reality," actually consists of the surrender of self to God. It is giving my eyes, ears, mouth, tongue, hands and feet to God, and doing so voluntarily as an act of commitment. It entails also the devoting of my bodily desires, feelings, passions and sensations to God, holding nothing back. Thus, everything I do in the body, with an eye singled to the glory of God, is worship. For the Christian there are no "acts of worship," for the simple reason that there are no acts which are not worship.

     A little later Paul will say that one who attaches special significance to a day "observes it in honor to the Lord." He will also point out that one who eats meat eats in honor of the Lord. We honor the Lord by living, and we honor the Lord by dying. Everything that we do is worship, so "whether we live, or whether we die, we are the Lord's" (Romans 14:8). So long as we think of worship as limited to certain "holy places," and "holy days," we are acting as if Jesus did not come and die. We are living B. C. lives in an A. D. world.

     In Christ there are no holy places, no holy days, and no holy things. There are only holy people. We cannot dedicate buildings to God. We can only dedicate lives. We give our bodies, that is, ourselves. And we are the temple of

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God. We are God's building. We are God's garden. William Barclay says it far better than I can:

     "The true worship, the really spiritual worship, is the offering of one's body, and all that one does every day with it, to God. Real worship is not the offering of elaborate prayers to God; it is not the offering to God of a liturgy, however noble, and ritual, however magnificent. Real worship is the offering of everyday life to God. Real worship is not something which is transacted in a church; real worship is something which sees the whole world as the temple of the living God, and every common deed an act of worship."

     "And be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God" (Romans 12:2).

     It is apparent from this statement that "this world" is set in opposition to "the will of God." One cannot conform to both at the same time. It is important, therefore, that we have a clear understanding of what is meant by "the world." Certainly there is a lot of fuzzy thinking on this subject in the present age. Let me provide for you some helpful comments. C. H. Dodd says that "the world" is, "Human society insofar as it is organized on wrong principles, and characterized by base desires, false values and egoism." William Barclay defines the world as, "Pagan society with its false values, its false standards and its false gods." Please take note that both of these great expositors use the term "false values." Value is the worth or importance you attach to a thing. It may have little to do with the actual worth of it. It may be almost wholly divorced from reality. But your sense of values will always affect everything else by comparison. If you elevate a thing in your heart to a place of prime importance, you will measure everything else by its relationship to that thing. It becomes your god. Barclay is very perceptive when he speaks of "false values, false standards and false gods." The three are inevitably and inextricably linked together.

     One of the greatest minds of which I have ever heard, in the field of scriptural research, was that of Richard Chenevix Trench. To him we are indebted for that very helpful volume called Synonyms of the New Testament. And in it he defines the world as "that floating mass of thoughts, opinions, maxims, speculations, hopes, impulses, aims, aspirations, at any time current in the world, which it may be impossible to seize and accurately define, but which constitute a most real and effective power, being the moral atmosphere which at every moment of our lives we inhale, again inevitably to exhale."

     The world is the realm in which we move by choice, breathing its atmosphere, thinking its thoughts, sharing its dreams, and bowing to its gods. It is the territory pre-empted by base desires and ruled over by Satan, who is designated "the god of this world." His is the sphere of Atmos, that in which we live and breathe.

     Paul uses two words which we have translated as "conformed" and "transformed." The word "form" is at the heart of both. But they are not at all the same in the original. The word for "form" in conformed is schema. It has to do with the external. It literally means to fashion or shape in accordance with a model. It signifies that which is changeable, variable, and subject to alteration.

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In 1 Corinthians 7:31, we read, "For the whole frame of this world is passing away." Frame is the translation of schema. In Philippians 2:8 we learn that Christ came "Bearing the human likeness, revealed in human shape." Shape is the translation of schema. There is one other place in the new covenant scriptures where the identical form of the original used in Romans 12:2, is to be found. It is in 1 Peter 1:14, "As obedient children do not let your characters be shaped any longer by the desires you cherished in the days of your ignorance."

     When the Greeks created a figure or model for display of specially woven cloth, they used a form of this word. When the sculptors took plastic clay and shaped it before the eyes of their students they employed a form of this word. But there is nothing truly permanent about fashions or fashion models. And clay can be re-shaped in many ways and to make many images. So J. B. Phillips has really caught the true gist of what Paul is saying when he translates the passage, "Don't let the world around you squeeze you into its own mold, but let God remold your minds from within."

     Most of my readers have never seen a butter mould, but when we were youngsters on the farm one of our tasks was to help churn the milk to produce butter. The churn dasher was plunged up and down in the liquid until the butter "came." The butter was then rescued from the milk and placed in a large crock. After this it was formed into attractive pats by squeezing it into a mould. Our favorite mould was a round one which produced a pound of butter in a circular shape with the figure of a pineapple on top. Other families had different shaped moulds with other designs. But the butter always took on the form of the mould into which it was pressed.

     We had a homely saying about a man who did not resist temptation and the pressures of sin. We said, "He is as soft as butter." We meant that he took on the form of the world around him. Sometimes we said of a man, "He will trot under the wagon of anyone who will hunt with him." A faithful dog would not follow everyone who came along. He was loyal to his master. One of the early "graphophone" companies used as its symbol a terrier cocking his head to listen to the sound coming from the horn shaped like a huge morning-glory. The symbol included the words, "His master's voice."

     Paul is pleading with the Romans not to be formed or shaped by the impulses, aims, aspirations, or maxims of the world. These are changeable. They are inconstant and inconsistent. They produce no loyalty to God. They distort and obscure the Master's voice.

     We are to be transformed, and here the word for form is morphe. This word relates to the character or nature of a thing. It is not that which is affected by outward fashion. It is internal and relates to essence rather than to mere appearance. It is the word translated by "transfigured" in Matthew 17:2, and Peter says of Jesus upon that occasion, "He was invested with glory and honor" (2 Peter 1:17).

     It is the same word rendered "changed" in 2 Corinthians 3:18, where the New English Version has the reading, "And because for us there is no veil over the face, we all reflect as in a mirror the splendor of the Lord, thus we are transfigured into his likeness, from splendor to splendor, such is the influence of the Lord who is spirit." The Greeks used the term for transfigured to describe the alteration which took place when a butterfly developed from a caterpillar, and the ugly looking worm became a gorgeous and beautiful insect.

     In the case before us Paul is saying that to engage in true worship, which is the complete sacrifice of life, one must not make an outward change in conformity with the standards of fashions of this passing age. The entire person must be transformed. There must be a radical alteration of our very nature. As Peter states it, "Through this might and splendor he has given us his promises, great beyond all price, and through

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them you may escape the corruption with which lust has infected the world, and come to share in the very being of God."

     This tremendous change must be made by renewing the mind. This is very significant The New English Version reads, "Let your minds be remade and your whole nature thus transformed." We have already learned from the previous verse that the worship we are to render is rational, that is, it conforms to the highest function of reason. But in order to achieve this height of rational power our minds must be remade. They have reflected the color of the surrounding world. They have been polluted by the atmosphere which we breathe, which is corrupt and tainted.

     The word for renewal is anakainosis. This is important because the Greeks had two words for new-- neos and kainos. It is not my purpose to elaborate upon these. The intensive student can investigate them in such works as "Synonyms of the New Testament," by Archbishop Trench. It is enough for our purpose to know the basic difference between them.

     Neos means new in time, or of recent origin. Kainos means new in quality, that is, different in character from the old with which it is contrasted. The renewal of the mind which results in transformation is not simply the old way of thinking updated. It is not merely the addition of late information, or recent concepts which bring about the renewal. Instead, Christ comes into one's life, and the whole nature of existence changes. The mind is no longer set on earthly things. One has heaven in his mind and glory in his heart.

     "Prove" is from dokimazo, and it conveys the idea of testing or trying a thing with a view to approving it. The Good Housekeeping Institute tries out products submitted to it with a view to bestowing the seal of approval when they are deemed worthy. The Consumer Research Laboratory puts various items to a rigid test with the intent of testifying for those that are approved.

     The new mind is the proper arena in which to demonstrate the effectiveness of the will of God, that is, to show it is all that it claims to be. It is good, because of its effect upon those who follow it; it is acceptable because it meets all of the requirements of heaven; it is perfect, because it is thoroughly and completely capable and adapted to fulfill the role for which it was intended.

     It is my intention, God being my helper, to allow his will to prevail in my life. I want his love to be my love, his purpose to be my purpose, and his word my word. I eagerly solicit the fervent prayers of all that I may overcome my weaknesses by his power, and live the transformed life.