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"Present Your Bodies as a Living Sacrifice....": An Investigation of Paul's View of Worship with Reference to Romans 12:1-15:13

” Present Your Bodies as a Living Sacrifice …: An Investigation of Paul’s View of Worship with Reference to Romans 12:1-15:13″

Shiu-lun SHUM

As Paul claims in his Letter to the Romans, in spite of the invisibility of God, humans can yet know, through all that He created, at least the very existence of God. However, humans not only deny Him, but also create for themselves gods of various forms and worship them. Here, Paul implies that humans as a creature of God are expected to render exclusive worship to the Creator of heaven and earth. But how?

This essay seeks to investigate Paul's view of worship with special reference to Romans 12:1-15:13. It is argued that Paul's Letter to the Romans does not present the apostle's general exhortation to the Roman Christians, but rather that his paraenetic sayings in the Letter are targeted at the specific situation of the Roman Christians. These Christians diverge so greatly on the matters of the observance of Jewish religious laws that the unity of the Christian congregation at Rome was jeopardized. To tackle such a problem, Paul asserts explicitly in Rom 12:1-2, with detailed elaborations in the subsequent verses (ie, 12:3-15:13), how these Roman Christians were to lead a life that is worthy of their new spiritual identity, namely that they “present [ their] bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.”

This essay shows that Paul's instruction to the Roman Christians provides us with good insights into the issues of how humans worship the Creator or what sort of worship they should render Him. It is concluded that the worship or service Christians should render to God is to “ present [their] bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God,” that means, to live holy, righteous, and obedient lives before God; in short, living as worship, worship as living.

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