“Are you all in?” It’s a question that was echoed by many youth pastors and speakers in many venues of my teenage years. It’s still a great question.
I know some of my peers had poor experiences growing up in 90s youth groups. For the most part, my time in the church was not only good, but significant to the trajectory of my life and formative for my calling to ministry. If “Are you all in?” was the most important question of my teenage years, Romans 12:1-2 was the most important passage. Paul urges the church at Rome,
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. 2 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. (Romans 12:1-2)
Preachers emphasized that we offered our bodies in worship, that we were living sacrifices, capable of squirming off the altar, and that following Jesus all the way meant that we would be transformed and look very different from the world. Amen to those points of application.
What I don’t remember were preachers including the verses that follow, where Paul connects our spiritual sacrifice to life in the church. He says,
3 For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. 4 For as in one body we have many members,[e] and the members do not all have the same function, 5 so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. 6 Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; 7 if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; 8 the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads,[f] with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness. (Romans 12:3-8)
Note what Paul does here. He bridges the idea of being “not conformed to this world,” but “transformed by the renewal of your mind,” with a call to walk in humility, to not to think of ourselves “more highly” than we ought to. And then he directly links that to our life in the body of Christ, serving one another.
There is a lot of jousting taking place in the Christian world today over who is and who isn’t conforming to the world. Some of those conversations are understandable and necessary. But rarely are those conversations examined by Paul’s tool of evaluation here: humility. For Paul, the most important way we demonstrate our lack of conformity to the world is through our humility.
Isn’t that something? Paul’s first evaluation of how much someone has conformed to the world isn’t theological but it is rather doxological: has our character been formed by worship. The true worshiper is humble. This, of course, isn’t to say that Paul doesn’t care about our theology nor that our theology can’t also be conformed to the world, but that the first way in which we must demonstrate our conformity to Christ is by our humility.
And then Paul gets practical: if you want to be transformed by Christ and not the world, you need to be actively part of the body of Christ. Nothing humbles us more than living in community, nothing helps us better practice humility than stepping into the family of God, submitting to leadership, and serving those God has placed next to us.
In Gary Thomas’s book Sacred Marriage, he argues that marriage is first made for our holiness, not our happiness. The same could be said about the church. The promise of church isn’t first that you’ll be happier if you are an engaged member of a local church (although psychological studies indicate that is the case as well), but that you will be holier.
You will be holier because you will have to walk through real conflict with real people. You will be holier because you will have to set aside your preferences. You will be holier because you will choose faithfulness over comfort. You will be holier because others have gifts that will strengthen your faith. You will be holier because you will exercise your gifts for the good of others. You have gifts that the body needs and the body has gifts you need.
Our “spiritual but not religious” world would have you believe that you can be all in with Christ and not all in with the church, that you can experience true spiritual transformation but opt out of a meaningful commitment to the people of God. Paul disagrees. If you want to be transformed, given yourself first to Christ, and then he will give you to the church.
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Photo by Francesco Alberti on Unsplash