Paul is greatly moved when he finishes taking about God’s mercy. And so should we all be! Jesus has shown us how God goes about being kind to those who hate him. And this has introduced a whole new era.
So now, we all need a new life-style to match, and Paul pleads with us to have a life where God’s mercy shapes how we think, what we do and what we trust (12:1-2).
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the world—or, literally, ‘the age’ we live in is very confining. We are expected to behave and believe and approve as others do—or be excluded. It’s God who sets us free from these constrictions and enlarges our horizons.
The ‘age’ to which Paul refers is not a particular decade but all the time between the coming of Jesus and his coming again. In other words, now.
So, our thinking needs to change. God, the Lord of the universe, is being merciful—to me! I don’t need to hang onto my guilts or resentments or selfish ambitions. I’m free to live in the flow of God’s largesse. Has this really broken into our thinking?
Paul is now able to develop something he said earlier. We used to be slaves to our sins, but have now been entrusted to a new and powerful gospel. This will change the way we look at things, and our living.[i] This may sound risky, but it’s liberating. We will be giving to others what God is giving to us.
And the sacrifice this will involve will not be to placate an angry God—or an angry world for that matter. And we won’t need to ‘kill ourselves’ doing it. We offer ourselves as a ‘living sacrifice’, simply giving our lives over to Christ’s new regime—mercy. Well then, how should we live?
It’s interesting to see where Paul begins—with egotism (12:3-8).
We’ve all got things we can do, and especially so when we’ve been set free. God gives us gifts—a range of capabilities to help us help each other. But if we forget mercy, these things can make us proud.
Rather, we need to forget about being great and to check how closely our works reflect what we are believing—our ‘measure of faith’. And we need to forget about how much control it enables us to have and to think about how much it helps the whole group to be strong and useful.
And then, Paul gives us a lovely list of alerts—or commands. These may well stop us in our tracks when we realise we are living according to our old way of life, and that we need a new line of action, or a new habit (12:9-13).
Loving is a good place to start.
Paul is not talking about love defined by the present age—often little more than giving people what they want. I call this ‘lazy love’. It’s harder to discern what a person really needs and to look out for ways to give them that. We need to reflect God’s loving, which, as we have seen, can sometimes be kindness, and sometimes severity.[ii] Whatever, it needs to be genuine.
And, given that we are now part of God’s new age, our sense of good and evil also needs to change.
The world shapes our moral compass by its culture and ideology. But now, our affections and conscience must be reformed by seeing what evil does to Jesus, and by the goodness with which he responds.
We look at the things that kill Christ. They are the things to hate and to run from. And we look at the way Jesus responds. Here is the power that will reign in the age to come, and the power that will begin to change this present world. These are the things to love.
Paul’s check list continues with eagerness, joy, patience, prayer and generosity. If I mention the opposites of these, we may see how much we need a constant flow of God’s mercy!
For example, are we dull in our affections, morbid with our problems, anxious about the number of things that should be done or threats to our safety, or afraid of meeting people with great needs?
It’s time to get our minds full, again and again, of God’s great mercy—to us. He is full of affection. He rejoices over us with singing.[iii] He is slow to get angry. He has not spared his own Son; will he not then freely give us all needful things?[iv]
We need to do what Mary did when she was told she would be the mother of the Son of God—‘Let it be to me according to your word’.[v] When she prayed this prayer, the Holy Spirit caused a new life to be formed in her womb. In another sense, we can ask for Christ to be formed in us[vi]. And God will see to it that we are transformed—transformed by his mercy.
And what about living in a world that doesn’t appreciate ‘where we are coming from’ (12:14-21)?
This is a very helpful list to have because most of us spend our time among people who don’t know God—and don’t want to.
We can show what our God is like by our good will for nasty people, sympathy with everyone, friendship with people without our privileges, respect for the opinions of others and kindness for people who hate us. How come? God is being good to us! And God wants to show his goodness to others. We’re just imitating our Saviour! And we’re leaving him to deal with what is not given to us to fix.
We are called to overcome evil with good, like Jesus did the day he died for our sins. It won’t look like it’s working—not yet. But it will.
[i] Rom. 6:17
[ii] Rom. 11:22
[iii] Zeph. 3:17
[iv] Rom. 8:32
[v] Luke 1:38
[vi] Gal. 4:19
[i] Rom. 6:17
[ii] Rom. 11:22
[iii] Zeph. 3:17
[iv] Rom. 8:32
[v] Luke 1:38
[vi] Gal. 4:19
Simply True 