In view of God's Mercy . . .

"Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God - this is true worship." Rom. 12:1

This verse has been important to me for a long time, it has been a guiding verse of the last few years of my life, a reminder of the life I should be living. but this time when I read it 2 very significant things stood out at me.

1. "Therefore" - so I can't look at this verse or this passage or this chapter and forget about all the stuff before it . . . this verse, passage, chapter hangs on and works because of what came before it. Therefore, because of all that stuff, because of everything that just blew your mind (read that post here), because it all works together, therefore . . .

2. "In view of God's Mercy" - the part that always used to impact me (and still does) was the part where I was supposed to be a "living sacrifice" but somehow I failed to really compute the "in view of God's mercy" part. For 11 chapters Paul clearly laid out what God's Mercy is what he is all about how we are justified by faith (3:28; 4:16) how we have gained access to grace (5:2) through his son (5:10) he spells it out beautifully and then he says "therefore" - "In view of God's Mercy". This verse would be totally different if those two phrases were absent, it would then be all about us, it would become a work effort to win our way into heaven. But it's not.

Where we expect to hear "Offer yourself to me as a living sacrifice, work hard for my acceptance, clean yourself up and then I'll see if I can love you" we don't, instead we hear the upside down Gospel that says because you are already made acceptable, because I have already given you grace and because what it takes is faith because of this mercy that God has had on you Because my Son made the way . . . Therefore offer your bodies as a living sacrifice.

To me this is the most beautiful of things, too incredible to truly fathom but it is a Grace and a Mercy that I am daily thankful for. And it is this Grace and Mercy that I pray the Youth of Ponoka will recognize.