Sacrifice and rebirth
This week's verses are Romans 12:1-2: Therefore I exhort you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a sacrifice—alive, holy, and pleasing to God—which is your reasonable service. Do not be conformed to this present world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may test and approve what is the will of God—what is good and well-pleasing and perfect. Paul is talking here about saying no to comfort and complacency. He and his audience lived in a difficult time in the Roman empire. The church was only beginning, and it was receiving heavy persecution. It would have been easy to understand why the pagan Romans would persecute them. They believed in a completely different set of gods. The new thing people were coming to terms with was that their own Jewish brothers and sisters were also persecuting them. There was a temptation to soften their position to fit in, to tone down their life of faith to not draw attention. We...