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I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

As a believer, you need to be a member of a church. This text tells us that we each individually need to present our bodies… yet the sacrifice we give is one. He is telling the church members to each present their bodies (plural) and that all of them together form a (singular) living sacrifice. How you serve and worship with your church body is an act of worship unto the Lord, together. We don’t change to be more like the world, rather, we continually mold and shape our thinking to align with God’s Word. We go through a process of learning how to discern what God’s will is. We test, all along the way, what God wants us to do. One step at a time, day by day, year over year. Following Jesus is a continual struggle, it’s work, but it’s completely worth it!

 For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted back into their own olive tree.

God’s people is like a big tree. In the OT He set aside a national people called Israel. Many of those people, at the time of Christ, rejected Jesus as Messiah, to their great detriment. Nationality is not, nor ever has it been, a marker of salvation from the Lord. If anyone, regardless of their biology, rejects Jesus, there is no hope for their salvation, they are, as it were, like a branch broken off of the tree of life which is called God’s people. But we, though not part of that national group, through our belief in Jesus, are grafted into the tree of life. We receive the same blessings and life that come from the genuine root, even though we are not by nature part of God’s national people. So what of national Israel? Well, they should understand the concept of Messiah even greater than we. How much easier should it be for them to believe. So what Paul is saying is this, there is no national people of God outside of Jesus, and those in Christ are part of one and the same people with everyone else regardless of background. Who your parents are has no bearing on whether or not you are saved, only Jesus.

1 Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. 2 For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. 3 For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. 4 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

Seeking to worship God, even the right God, in the wrong way falls outside of the category reserved for horseshoes and hand grenades known as “close enough.” If you don’t connect with God through Jesus Christ, then you’ve not connected with God. The question (typically hypothetical) that gets asked goes something like: “what about those who don’t know about Jesus?” That question is almost directly addressed in these verses. Here is a people, God’s People even, who are ignorant of Jesus (the righteousness of God) and so they did not worship God in the correct way. They were zealous… yet misguided. Paul’s prayer is that they would be saved through Jesus Christ. If we are not leading well-meaning people to Jesus, they will spend eternity apart from God. How sad will it be on the Day of Judgment when we see those headed to the lake of fire and we say “but they seemed so senesce…” It’s all about Jesus, be sure you tell someone about Him today.

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

It’s striking how different Paul’s attitude was towards sin than the typical western Christian. One gets the impression from the average modern churchgoer that as long as you think happy thoughts about Jesus, then it doesn’t really matter what you do. Nothing could be farther from what the New Testament actually says. “God forbid!” (KJV) If you’re a Christian, you’ve died to yourself, so you no longer fall into those temptations of selfishness (which all sin is) without some serious guilt and repentance. If you’re able to just go on doing what the Bible calls sin, and not do the things the Bible actually calls you to do… I don’t think Paul would honestly count you as a genuine Christian just yet. Salvation involves repentance. There’s no way to be saved from sin you don’t think is wrong. As for His forgiveness today, rely on His strength to resist temptation, and confess as you continue to fall short… Do we just trust that God’s love is big enough and if I sin “oh well, I’m under grace not law” BY NO MEANS! It doesn’t work that way… if your faith does work that way, then you’re not following the Jesus of the Bible. You need to trust Him today…

 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned… Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.

It’s not my fault, it’s only human nature, right? Well, not so much. Adam and Eve sinned, and as a result all of humanity’s nature is broken, so broken that we all will sin. But that’s just it, we all will sin. Even though we all will make the choice, that’s just what it is, we choose to sin. We are all responsible. In the same way those who choose to sin are condemned (which is, by the way, everyone), those who choose Jesus are forgiven. It is not automatic. As great as salvation is, you still must make the choice. Follow Jesus, give Him your life, make Him your Lord… you’ll never regret it!