For once, I thought I would post on a bit of Scripture before I asked Pastor about it.  I thought I would do so because of what I have been learning...or rather unlearning.

Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is our spiritual service of worship.  And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of our mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

~Romans 12:1-2

This is a passage that I have memorized before and that has been held before me in sermons and bible studies as the epitome of what I should be doing as a Christian. Note the I.

A few weeks ago, I was trying to ask Pastor about something in Deuteronomy, which really went nowhere.  He did ask me if he answered my question in a later email.  I responded that he had not, but did not pursue it.  I was trying to ask him about trust in the context of the sacrifice I was offering to God.  After all, I have been very serious about those sacrifices because that is what I was supposed to do.

And I worked hard at the renewing of my mind, attending bible studies, reading theology books, and searching out the good and acceptable and perfect in this world.

However, as I read these verses tonight, I was struck by how very, very differently I believe Pastor would present them to me.  I believe he would present them as showing another one of Christ's gifts to us in the first verse and the work of the Holy Spirit--not I--in the second one.

What sacrifice could I offer to God?  I may be at once saint and sinner, but I am still sinner.  Nothing I can offer would be good or acceptable or perfect.  There is Law in that knowledge and with Law comes an unwillingness to keep it, despair, and contrition...but no consolation, never consolation (Walther, 14).  But I must remember the Gospel!

By dying with Christ in baptism, we are made holy.  Our prayers become His prayers; His prayers become ours.  Our life becomes His; His becomes ours.  By this, then, I actually am presenting my body as a sacrifice that is good and acceptable and perfect because I am presenting Christ.  Romans 12:1, therefore, is not a charge to go out and make myself holy, but to pray in praise and thanksgiving to God that He sent His Son so that I might have that good and acceptable and right sacrifice to offer Him.

Selah.

Now, turn to the second verse.  Once again, this has been given to me as a charge by my past spiritual teachers.  Go out and renew your mind, Myrtle.  Find His will for you and pursue it with your whole heart.  That sounds like Law again, does it not?  The rules and regulations and requirements that God gave Moses, gave His children fell away at the birth and the death of Christ.  Why is that so difficult for us to remember?  Why do we insist on recreating the Law instead of reveling, resting in Objective Grace?  I know...I know...we humans want to do something...by our nature we strive to survive.  Consider Jacob.  He wrestled with the Creator of the Universe!  Still, I would much rather have Gospel.  For I know my sin and it grieves me so....

God, in His infinite mercy, gave us His Son so that we might have the sacrifice we need, and His Son left us the Holy Spirit so that we might have the faith we need.  God, in His infinite mercy, is washing us, forgiving us, saving us...He is renewing us by giving us the Word and Sacraments.  So, I am not to go out and attend as many bible studies as possible to make myself holy so much as I am to pray in praise and thanksgiving to God that He sent the Holy Spirit so that I might be transformed by understanding the true meaning of the cross, reach out in faith, and grasp the Living Word...being sanctified because I, too, rose again from the grave in the waters of Holy Baptism.

Am I right Pastor?  A passage drilled into me--bludgeoned over the head really--that has caused much desperation in my faith and in my life becomes yet another example of how much God loves me and cares for me.

How, then, am I to serve God?  First, by letting Him serve me each week in the Divine Service.  By taking in His Word and Sacraments, I am given grace and mercy and love and peace and thereby able to give the same to those around me by faith.  Second, by recognizing Law for Law and Gospel as Gospel, so that I might remain pure in faith. And, third, by coming to the throne of God and begging for His mercy and wisdom and direction in my life.  He will make my path straight that He might therefore love my neighbor as He loves me, that He might lay down my life for others, that He might serve His flock through my vocation.  For in Him I live and move and have my very being.

In both verses, it is God who is at work, not I.  Not I.  How blessedly sweet that is it not I!