If you go back and read Romans 8:37-39 and then skip to Romans 12, it would seem that there is a natural flow. Paul took a bit of a turn in Romans 9–11, and then he has seemingly returned to the gist of what he was saying in Romans 8.

Based on the security we have in Jesus, in the salvation that was so richly purchased for us, we now have this responsibility. Jesus brought back the possibility for us to have FREE WILL again. As sinners, we did not have free will, so to speak; we were sold under sin, and all of our thoughts were sinful all the day long, according to Romans 3. But now that we are saved, we have the ability to offer our bodies as living sacrifices to God. He does not need dead sacrifices; He wants us alive.

This would have been an interesting picture to the Jews he was writing to; you see, they saw sacrifices every day. They knew death and the bloodshed that came with sacrifices. Sacrificing meant death to something. The idea of a living sacrifice may have been missed by them. But Paul was calling us to exercise our free will, the free will we have in Jesus with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Now, we can choose to offer ourselves to God out of love and gratitude for all He has done.

There is a call to stop and then to do. Stop conforming to the world, stop being shaped by the world’s ideas and philosophies. We see in the modern church that there are so many who claim Christ but then preach evil. They say that Paul wrote things that were not right, or one woman I heard claimed that Christ was a racist. But this is just as evil as those who claim that they can correct the Greek language with the KJV.

Paul encourages us, beseeches us, pleads with us to present our bodies as living sacrifices to God. We are to be transformed by what God has done for us, and when we explore the grace and the priceless gift that was bought for us, we should want to transform into the image of Jesus. We transformed; we get the word metamorphosis from this: the caterpillar into the butterfly. One dies and the other flies. The caterpillar willingly dies to become the butterfly, and we should willingly die to self to be transformed by Christ.

Vs 9-21: When we are transformed, when we begin the process of dying to self and selfishness, we are able to love our neighbor like Jesus loves us. We can love without hypocrisy; we say we love someone and then actually live up to the responsibility of that commitment. True, godly love always comes with a responsibility: God so loved that He gave.

In vs 10, we are called to be kind; we are supposed to be kind to one another, even when the other is not there. We are to be eager and diligent to help when we can. All too often we say, “Oh, come back tomorrow” when we can help today. True transformation helps us to view the trials and troubles of life differently. We can find the joy in the trials; we can find the hope in the troubles of life, and we can get through.

When we are transformed, we deal with revenge another way. We no longer seek revenge. We can begin to bless those that persecute us. What a call and a challenge for us in this current world! We see Christians in Nigeria getting killed and Christians in the UK being arrested for praying outside of abortion clinics. Just a few days ago, a Christian couple was sentenced to 50 days in jail because they did not include lessons about homosexuality and all of the queer stuff when they homeschooled their kids. The kids were accomplished in multiple languages, on the piano, and passed all the psychological exams; yet the judge sentenced the parents to 50 days in jail.

There is rampant hatred for all things Christian in the world, and the same people are embracing Islam and other evils like atheism. We are called to love our enemies and not to seek revenge. We are called to overcome their evil with the good; this is how transformed people live. I beseech all of us to die to self and choose to live for Christ.

seangooding@yahoo.ca

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Bethany Baptist Church
70 Victoria Street, Elora, Ontario

Paul answers the question that is on the minds of so many today. I see the debates online, in the conversations that I hear in many places, sermons in the pulpit that tell us God is done with Israel, the Israel in the Promised Land is not the real Israel, and on and on we hear. But Paul tells us that the best example that God is not done with Israel is him. He is a Jew of the tribe of Benjamin, of the seed of Abraham. If God were done with the Jews, if God were done with Israel, then Paul would not be saved. And by the way, neither would any of the other apostles; they were all Jews.

Paul uses the example of Elijah from 1 Kings 19: 1-10 as a reminder that God is never defeated. He always has lots and lots of people all over the place. If you recall the story, Elijah is emotionally and spiritually defeated; he is running from Jezebel and runs away to a place by himself. And there, God feeds him and lets him get some rest. But after about 40 days, God sends him back to anoint the next king of Israel (the Northern Kingdom), and God reminds Elijah that He has more than 7,000 men in Israel who had not bowed to Baal. Elijah thought that he was the only one left serving God; nothing could be further from the truth.

Paul then tells us in verse 5 that He has a remnant in Israel. There is no need to have a remnant if God is done with Israel. We can read and see in Revelation 7:1-8 that there are 144,000 Jewish missionaries who are sent out to find and bring to Israel the believing Jews. So, if these are Jews, then they are NOT SDA church people. The Seven-Day Adventists have NOT replaced Israel, and the Law-keeping in the world will not change that.

In verses 5-6, Paul reminds us that salvation is by grace only. The Jews who are saved will not be saved and cannot be saved by keeping the Law; they, like everyone else, have to believe in the Messiah and the resurrection.

As far back as Job, the earliest book in the Bible, the idea of resurrection has always been tied to salvation. In Job 19:27, Job says that he knows He will see God with his own eyes even if he dies. For now, God has allowed a ‘blindness’ to overtake the vast majority of the Jews about Jesus. They are not able to see Him; they rejected Him and, for a time, are blind. But God tells us in Romans 11:25 that the blindness of Israel is temporary until the time of the Gentiles is completed. Then God will revert to dealing with the Jews, both punishing them for their unbelief and tormenting the world for coming against His chosen people. The rabid hatred for Israel amongst the Muslims, the liberals, the UN, and the EU should tell us that God is not done with them.

Paul then uses an agricultural impossibility to show us who is the branch and who is the vine. In nature, it is impossible to graft a wild olive branch into a cultivated olive tree. But we, the Gentiles, were grafted into the vine, Israel, by God and God alone.

In Romans 4, we are told that Abraham is the father of all those who believe. Thus, God did what is impossible in the farming industry; He took wild branches (us, the Gentiles) and grafted us into the vine (Israel). We should not be arrogant; it is a supernatural act of God that has done this. Always remember that the vine feeds the branches and not the other way around.

Our Gospel is a Jewish one, with a Jewish Messiah, who walked in Israel, died in Israel, resurrected in Israel, and will return to Israel. If God is done with Israel, we have no hope. If God could give up on Israel, He can give up on us. In Romans 11:26, Paul emphatically states that ‘all Israel will be saved.’ In verse 27, we are told that God will ‘take away their sins.’

Then we are reminded in verse 29 that the ‘calling and gifts of God are irrevocable’; this should make us rejoice. All of the promises that God made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, all of the promises He made to David and Solomon, will be fulfilled. God will be right and everyone else wrong.

Paul reminds us in verse 33 that God’s ways are unsearchable and His ways past finding out; God has a plan; He has never lied to us, and He never will. He has never broken a promise or a covenant, and He is not about to begin with either Israel or you and me. God cannot give up on Israel, and as such, we can be assured that He will not give up on us. God be praised!!!

seangooding@yahoo.ca

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Bethany Baptist Church
70 Victoria Street, Elora, Ontario