Biography Dr. John Stott was rector for 25 years of All Souls Church, London, the largest Anglican church in Britain. He is widely known for his university missions, his seminars for pastors and students in the Third World countries, and his continuing service in World Evangelization out of the Lausanne Congress. Dr. Stott is founder and director of the unique London Institute for Contemporary Christianity. This Institute has as its primary purpose helping men and women apply the Biblical revelations to our contemporary world. He is a rare combination of pastor, teacher, evangelist and world-renowned author. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date noted above.] [Transcribed from tape and edited for clarity.] _________________
Firstly then, I want to invite you to consider the ground on which Paul bases his appeal. He does not issue an appeal in a vacuum; he issues his appeal in a precise context. His appeal at the beginning of Romans 12 is in fact the culmination of eleven chapters of close arguments. He says, "I beg you therefore, because of what I have been writing, on the basis of the mercies of God, that you present your bodies." So that phrase "the mercies of God," is a kind of apostolic shorthand for everything that he has written up to this point. He began at the beginning of his letter by speaking of our sin as human beings and our guilt, and our need of the mercy of God. Because all of us, without any exception whatever, Jew and Gentile, educated and illiterate, religious and irreligious, have done what we know to be wrong, we are guilty before God, our conscience tells us so, and we are without excuse. We have known what we ought to have been, what we ought to have done, and we have not done it. And yet God has continued to love us, even when we have continued to rebel against him and to run away, from him. He sent his son into this world to identify with our sin and guilt, and on the cross to bear in his own innocent person the condemnation that we deserved. So if we run to Jesus Christ, put our trust in him, and take refuge in him as our savior, God justifies us. That' is. He accepts us in Christ, he adopts us into his family, he makes us his child, and puts the Holy Spirit within us and begins to transform us into the likeness of Jesus. Then one day God is going even further than that. He is going to regenerate this universe. There is going to be a new heaven and a new earth. The sufferings of this groaning creation are not worth comparison with the glory that is one day going to be revealed. Now all this, and more, is included in that little phrase, "the mercies of God," and is the basis of Paul's appeal that cannot be ignored. So Paul doesn't begin, you see, with an appeal. He begins with an exposition. The characteristic mood of the gospel is not an imperative to do this or that. The characteristic mood of the gospel is an indicative. It tells us of something that God has done in and through Jesus Christ on account of which God appeals to us to respond. Let me ask you: is the reason why our resolutions are so often irresolute, that we have never seen and understood the mercies of God? Or if we have understood them at one point in our lives, we have then come to lose sight of them. There is the basis of Paul's appeal. We must see the mercies of God and then in response to his mercy, we are ready to come to him with our lives. So that brings me secondly from the basis of his appeal to the nature of it. You know what it is: "Present your bodies." Very earthy, isn't it? There are some Christians I know who are really rather embarrassed at the fact that they've got a body at all. They rather wish they hadn't. They wish they could escape out of their body into the pure ether. But God has given us a body and he means us to present it to him. So you notice that the appeal is not to give your heart to God, which is a phrase we sometimes use, but it isn't a very Biblical one as a matter of fact, as if we're thinking of some ethereal or mystic experience. It isn't even to give your life to God because that's a rather abstract idea. It's to give our bodies to God. Malcolm Muggeridge, whose name I know is well known in America as well as in Britain, has sometimes spoken about himself and his old carcass. He's said that he has dragged his old carcass around in the world for too long. Well, I love Malcolm Muggeridge, but I'm not sure we really ought to refer to our bodies as an old carcass, because God has given us our body. So let's think about it for a few minutes. God has given us feet to go places so that we don't have to stay rooted to the same spot all our lives. We can move around and explore the wonderful world that God has made. God has given us hands to create things and to form things, to paint and draw and sculpt, to clean and cook with, to write with, to soothe and caress with. These wonderful versatile things we call our hands. God has given us ears to listen, and mouths to speak. So that even now I'm communicating to you. You are listening with your ears, watching with your eyes, and I am speaking with my mouth. It is a wonderful thing to have a body through which to express our personality and communicate with one another. God has given us eyes to see the marvels of his handiwork, to look into one another's eyes, to see one another, to be able with the eye to smile and express our love with a smile, or express our sense of humor with a twinkle in the eye. How marvelous to have feet, and hands, and ears, and eyes, and lips. Well, we are to present our bodies, to bring all this to God our bodily life to him for his blessing and his direction. It is a living sacrifice, not like the dead sacrifices of the Old Testament, but a living sacrifice, and it is our spiritual worship. Amazing, isn't it, that to present our bodies can be a spiritual worship. The worship God wants is not just something in the heart, it is not just expressed in hymns and canticles through the lips. The worship he wants is the presentation of our bodies to him - to live for him, to serve him in this very corporeal way.
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