Rom. 12, 1-6.
I exhort you, dear brothers, by the mercy of God, to offer your bodies for sacrifice, living, holy, and pleasing to God, which is your reasonable worship. And be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove which is the good, the acceptable, and the perfect will of God. For I say by the grace given to me to every one of you that no one shall think more of him than is fitting; but that he shall think of him temperately, every one, after God has distributed the measure of faith. For as we have many members in one body, but all the members have not one business: so we are many in one body in Christ; but one is another's member. And have divers gifts according to the grace that is given unto us.
In the previous posts I have written enough about faith, love, and the cross and suffering, where hope comes from, in which three a Christian life and being stands. Therefore, it is not necessary to go into this longer and further; but where love, faith and the cross occur, and what concerns Christian life, everyone may recover and remember this from the previous posts; for I want to show recently that one can see how all divine teaching holds nothing but Jesus Christ within; as we have often heard.
(2) So this epistle teaches not of faith, but of the fruits of faith, which are to discipline the body, to love, to be of one mind, to be patient (2c). And first of all he takes the fruit of faith, chastening the body and killing evil desire. And the apostle speaks of this in a different way than he does in other epistles; for to the Galatians it is called crucifying the flesh with its lusts; to the Ephesians and Colossians it is called stripping the old man and killing the limbs on earth; but here it is called making a sacrifice, and it is lifted up with the most high and holy words. Why is this? In the first place, that he might provoke us the more strongly to this fruit of faith with such mighty and glorious words; for all the world holds the priestly works, office, and dignity to be the noblest and highest; as indeed they are in truth. If anyone then has the desire and love to be a priest, and to ascend to the highest
Before God, let him lift up and take this work before him, and offer his own body to God, that is, let him be the lowest, and be utterly destroyed before the world and here on earth.
3 Here I will let everyone search for and make a distinction between the outward seeming priesthood and this inward spiritual priesthood. The latter is only held by some and a little; but this is common to all Christians. The latter is raised and named by men without God's word; the latter is founded by God's word without man's touch. This is smeared externally on the skin with bodily oil; this is anointed internally in the heart with the Holy Spirit. The former praises and extols his works and merits; the latter preaches and extols God's grace and glory. The former leaves the body unoffered with its lusts, yes, feeds and feeds the flesh with its lusts; but the latter kills and sacrifices the body with its lusts. The former sacrifices money, goods, honor, idleness, good days, and all the pleasures of the earth; but the latter has all these things taken away from it and shows the contrary. The latter sacrifices Christ again with an atrocious reversal; the latter is content with the fact that Christ has been sacrificed once, and sacrifices itself with him and in him in the same and identical sacrifice. And summa, these two priesthoods rhyme together, like Christ and Barrabas, like light and darkness, like God and the world. For as little as Christ is by oil and plates priest, so little is he by oil and plates priest.
So little is this priesthood given to anyone by greasing or coating; yet Christ is priest with all his Christians, Ps. 110:4: "Thou art priest forever, after the manner of Melchizedech." This priesthood cannot be made or ordered. Here is no made priest; he must be born a priest, and hereditarily bring with him from birth. But I mean the new birth, out of water and the Spirit; then all Christians become such priests, the children and joint heirs of the highest priest of Christ.
4 Now the name and title of the priesthood is glorious and soon called and praised by all: but the office and sacrifice is strange, and every man is afraid of it; for it is life, and goods, and honor, and friends, and all that the world hath; even as Christ did on the holy cross. No one wants to choose and take death for life, pain for pleasure, harm for good, shame for honor, enemies for friends, for this is what Christ did on the cross as an example for us. And yet he shall do all these things, not for himself, nor for his own profit, but for the service of his neighbor, and for the praise and honor of God, even as Christ offered up his body: this is a most honorable priesthood.
(5) I have often said how Christ's suffering and work should be understood in two ways: first, as a grace or good, given and bestowed upon us, in which faith should practice and accept such sacrifice and good for its salvation. On the other hand, as an example that we should follow, and also sacrifice ourselves for our neighbor, in honor of God, in which love should be practiced and such work should be distributed to our neighbor for his good. Whoever does this is a Christian and becomes one thing with Christ, and is a sacrifice of his body with the sacrifice of Christ's body; and this is what St. Peter calls doing sacrifices pleasing to God through Christ, 1 Peter 2:5, where he also describes this priesthood and sacrifice and says: "And you also, as living stones, build yourselves up into a spiritual house and a spiritual priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices pleasing to God through Jesus Christ."
6 He calls it a "spiritual sacrifice," when St. Paul says, "Our bodies are to be sacrificed. Now the body is not the spirit; but for this reason it is called a spiritual sacrifice, that it is done voluntarily by the spirit and is not forced by the law and the fear of hell; as hitherto the clergy have martyred themselves with fasting, sharp clothes, vigils, hard camps and such lost toil and labor, and yet have not come to this sacrifice, but have only fallen further from it, that they have not killed the old man; yes, they have only become the more hopeful and angry, and have presumed and exalted themselves of such works and merits before God. For they did not do these things to kill the body, but gathered them up as good works for the great merit of sitting high in heaven before other people; so that it might be called a fleshly sacrifice of their bodies, which is displeasing to God, but pleasing to the devil.
(7) But spiritual sacrifices are pleasing to God, says Peter, as Paul also teaches Rom. 8:1, 3: "If ye kill the business of the flesh by the Spirit, ye shall live." He says, "by the Spirit slaying," just as Peter calls "spiritual sacrifices"; for what is sacrificed must be slain. As if he should say here, "Where you kill the work of the flesh by your chosen way, without spirit and desire, but for fear of chastisement, there shall be carnal killing and sacrifice, and shall live no more, but shall die more horribly. The spirit must do it, and spiritually, that is, with pleasure and love, without fear of hell, freely for nothing, no merit nor honor nor reward sought thereby, either temporally or eternally. Behold, this is called a spiritual sacrifice. For whatever is done, whether it be outward, gross, bodily, or visible, it is all called spiritual, when it is done of and by the Spirit. That also eating and drinking is a spiritual work, where it is done by the Spirit. Again, what is done through the flesh is carnal, no matter how secret and deep in the soul it may be, as St. Paul calls superstition and heresy works of the flesh, which are deepest in the soul.
8) About this spiritual sacrifice, St. Pe-
trus still one more in the following text, where he speaks: "But you are the royal priesthood, that you should proclaim the virtue of him who called you from darkness to his wonderful light. Here he touches on the ministry of preaching, which is the true sacrificial ministry, of which Ps. 50:23 says: "The sacrifice of praise honors me." For by preaching God's grace is praised, and that is offering praise and thanksgiving; as also St. Paul Rom. 15, 16. boasts that he sanctifies or offers the gospel. But we do not speak of this sacrifice here; nor may it be understood in common as a part of this spiritual sacrifice, as follows; for he who sacrifices his body to God also sacrifices his tongue and mouth to preach, confess and praise God's grace; but of this in another place. Now let us see the words.
I admonish you, dear brothers.
(9) He does not say, I command you; for he preaches to those who are already Christians and devout by faith in the new man, who are not to be compelled by commandments, but are to be exhorted to do willingly what is to be done with the sinful old man. For he who does not do it willingly, out of friendly exhortation alone, is not a Christian; and he who enforces laws on the unwilling is not a Christian preacher nor a governor, but a worldly cane-master.
By the mercy of God.
A preacher of grace entices and tempts with demonstrated divine goodness and mercy, for he does not like unwilling works and unpleasant service, he wants to have joyful and pleasurable services from God. Whoever does not allow himself to be tempted and enticed by such sweet, sweet words of God's mercy, so abundantly given and bestowed upon us in Christ, so that he may also do so with joy and love, in honor of God and for the good of his neighbor, is nothing and everything about him is lost. How will he become soft and cheerful with laws and sorrows who does not melt and flow before such fire of heavenly love and grace? It is not man's mercy
heartiness, but God's mercy, which is given to us, and which St. Paul wants us to have looked at, to provoke and move us.
That you may desire your bodies.
(11) In the Old Testament there were many and various sacrifices, but they all mean the one sacrifice that Christ and his Christians fulfill with their own body sacrifices. For no other sacrifice in the New Testament can be without this one, namely, our bodies. And what will or can someone sacrifice more than himself with all that he is and has? If the body goes and becomes a sacrifice, everything that belongs to the body goes. Therefore, all the sacrifices of the Old Testament are now over, with priests and all their pomp. What sacrifice is it that you sacrifice a penny or a dime against the sacrifice of the whole body? Yes, it is not worthy to be called more sacrifice, such piecework and ragwork, because this great sacrifice, namely, Christ's and His bodies, go on with sacrifices. Therefore also Isaiah says rightly of such beggary that it should become a disgust in the New Testament before the great right sacrifices, and speaks in the last chapter v. 3: "Whoever sacrifices an ox will be as one who kills a man. And he that offereth a sheep shall be as he that breaketh a dog's neck. He that offereth meat offerings shall be as he that offereth fine wine. He that remembereth incense, than he that giveth thanks unto an idol." In the same way he speaks of Cap. 1, 11: "What is the multitude of your sacrifices to me, says the Lord? I have had enough of them. Your burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fatlings, the blood of bulls and lambs and goats, do not please me." And so henceforth with excellent words he casts out all sacrifices, for the sake of this one righteous sacrifice.
(12) Therefore our blind leaders have deceived the world miserably with the sacrifices of the mass until now, and have forgotten this one sacrifice. For the mass may well be said, that yet no fruit, but harm, comes to the soul. But this sacrifice may not be made without fruit of the soul; therefore the mass cannot be a sacrifice of the New Testament, though it may otherwise be a sacrifice of the soul.
would be a sacrifice. For all the works and sacrifices of the New Testament must be righteous and salutary to the soul; if not, they do not belong in the New Testament. As the 25th Psalm v. 10. says: "All the ways of the Lord are grace and truth."
To the sacrifice that is living, holy, and pleasing to God.
(13) These three words, "living," "holy," "acceptable," St. Paul uses, of course, to abolish the sacrifices of the Old Testament and to remove the whole priesthood. For the sacrifices of the Old Testament were oxen, sheep and goats: none of them remained alive, but when they were to be sacrificed, they were slaughtered, burned and eaten by the priests. But this sacrifice in the New Testament is a strange sacrifice, which is killed and yet remains alive; indeed, the more it is killed and sacrificed, the better and stronger it lives, as he says to the Romans Cap. 8, 13. "If ye put to death the works of the flesh by the Spirit, ye shall live"; and Col. 3:3: "Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God"; and Gal. 5:24: "But they that belong to Christ have crucified their flesh with the lusts and desires thereof."
14 Therefore we must understand this little word "living" spiritually, of life before God, and not before the world; so that he who disciplines his body and kills his lusts does not live before the world. For he does not lead such a life as the world leads. The world lives and cannot live otherwise than in lusts and after the flesh; but this man is indeed in the world with his flesh, but he does not live after the flesh; as Paul says 2 Cor. 10:3, "We walk indeed in the flesh, but we do not strive carnally"; Rom. 8:1, "Who do not walk after the flesh." Therefore such a life is an eternal life before God and a real living sacrifice; for such killing of the body and of the lusts, whether by one's own chastening or by other persecution, is nothing else than an exercise in and for this life.
(15) Neither was any sacrifice of the Old Testament holy, but only outwardly and temporally, until it was consumed; even as it was.
lived only temporally and externally until it was sacrificed. But this sacrifice is righteous and eternally holy before God. But "holy" means that which is directed solely to God's service and honor and that which God alone uses. Therefore, the word "holy" is to be understood in such a way that we should let God work in us alone and be His own holy instrument, as He says in 1 Cor. 6:19, 20: "Your members are a temple of the Holy Spirit, and are not your own; honor therefore, and bear God in your body and spirit, which are God's"; item, Gal. 6:17: "I bear the marks of my Lord Jesus on my body." Whoever then does a work for his own honor or pleasure, the sacrifice is desecrated; as those do who seek reward and merit before God with their works, whether temporal or eternal. This means that they are not yet dead to the sacrifice; for this sacrifice cannot be holy unless it is first alive, that is, dead to the world and to itself, so that it does not seek its own.
(16) So also the sacrifice in the Old Testament was not pleasing to God in itself, nor did it please anyone; but it was pleasing to the world and to men, who thought much of it, as if they could please God by it. But this sacrifice is the most hostile and unpleasant thing on earth in the sight of men. For it kills and condemns, and goes against everything that pleases the world and men and seems right. For as has been said, nature cannot live otherwise than according to the flesh, and especially in her own good works and presumption; she cannot suffer all that she does and pretends to do to be destroyed and put to death. Therefore this sacrifice is pleasing to God, says Paul, however displeasing it is to the world; and those who make such a living, holy sacrifice also feel good, and are sure that it is pleasing to God, because they know that God wants to have the lust and mind of the flesh dead, and work and live in us alone.
17 From this it follows that by the body here St. Paul understands not only the gross outward acts and works, such as eating, killing, fornication, etc., but everything that is not born again of the Spirit, and what the Spirit has done.
The old man is with his best and highest powers, both outwardly and inwardly, as there are the deep wickednesses of stubbornness, arrogance, reason, wisdom, presumption in good works, spiritual life, and what more God's gifts are in man. Take for example the most spiritual and intelligent people on earth today, some of whom keep their bodies outwardly chaste, but in their hearts they are full of arrogance, presumption, their own sense and pleasure in their life and being, or wisdom. No saint is completely free from this deep inward wickedness, therefore he must always sacrifice himself and kill such old scoundrels. But he means to sacrifice the body, because those who are Christians already live more than half in the spirit, and what is still to be killed in them he gives to the body, as the lowest and least part, since there is not yet spirit.
Which is your reasonable worship.
(18) Here he clearly separates the worship of the Christians from the worship of the Jews, saying, "The Jews worshiped in unreasonable animals and sacrifices, but your worship is in reasonable sacrifice, that is, your bodies and yourselves. The Jews sacrificed gold and silver and built a dead temple of stone and wood, but you are a different people, therefore your sacrifice is not silver or gold. Your temple is not wood or stone, but you yourselves, you are the temple of God, 1 Cor. 3:16. From this you see how righteously the Christians were treated, since they kept silent about our own worship, and drove the whole world to build churches, altars, monasteries, bells, chalices, images, and the like, as the united worship of the Christians, that it would have been too much even for the Jews.
19 He calls such reasonable worship of ours the right spiritual worship of the heart, which is done in faith and knowledge of God; and herewith he rejects all worship done apart from faith as vain unreasonable worship, even though it is done bodily and outwardly and has an appearance of great holiness and spiritual life. The works and sacrifices of the papists have been the same up to now,
Monasticism and strict living, for they were done without the knowledge of God (as they had no word of God), in addition without spirit and heart, since only the work was done, and thought it must please God, even though there was no faith; so also the Jews were worshipers in their works, sacrifices etc., of those who did not know Christ and had faith, and thus nothing better than the idolatrous, unintelligent Gentiles' work and worship.*]
And do not be conformed to this world, but be changed by the change of your mind, that you may prove which is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.
(20) The world, as I said, cannot see or hear this sacrifice, therefore it fights against it on both sides, with provoking and oppressing, with attracting and persecuting; and has the advantage that it has nothing of our sense and spirit in it, but we still have much of the world's sense and inclination in us. Therefore it is necessary for us to take care that we neither follow the ways of the world nor our own reason and good opinion, but always break our mind and will, and do and suffer differently than reason and will dictate, so that we will always be unequal to the world and in opposition to it; So we are daily changed and changed in our mind, that is, we daily think more and more of that which the world and reason hate; so that we daily rather and rather become poor, sick, despised, fools, sinners, and at last esteem death better than life, foolishness more foolish than wisdom, shame more noble than honor, poverty more blessed than riches, sin more glorious than godliness. This is not the mind of the world, but it is all other things, and in this old mind it remains unchanged and unregenerated, but hardened and stony old.
21. the will of god is in itself always good, lovely and perfect; but it is not always recognized for it, indeed, reason thinks it is the devil's evil, bitter and
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It is a horrible will, because it does not mean to be and to kill anything, which it considers to be the highest, best and holiest. Therefore, experience alone must be the master here, which examines, feels, finds and becomes aware that such will is kind and means well from the heart. After that, whoever perseveres and increases in it, he also experiences that such a good will is lovely and pleasing, so that he would take no worldly goods for it, but has greater pleasure and joy in poverty, humiliation and all kinds of adversity than anyone on earth can have in all riches, honor and pleasure; Until finally man becomes perfect, and gladly gives up life for death, and desires to pass away with Paulo; so that all sin may cease, and God's will be done in him most perfectly in all things. Then he is most unlike the world, and does not present himself at all like the world: it cannot be satisfied with life, but he cannot get rid of life; what it seeks, he flees, what it flees, he seeks etc.
22 But here you see that St. Paul does not judge a Christian clean of all sins and wickedness, because he commands us to change and renew our mind. But where there is still change and renewal, there is still something left over from the old and evil; but the same is sin, which is not imputed to Christians because of it, that they daily work on it, change it and renew it; because it is against their will in them, Rom. 7, 15. and Gal. 5, 17: "Flesh and spirit are contrary to one another, therefore do ye not what ye will." And especially he calls the "mind", so that he himself indicates what he wants through the body, which he calls sacrifice; for also above enough is said what mind is called in the Scriptures, namely, the conceit, which is the head, either of all vice or of all virtue. For what seems right to me, I hold to; what I hold to, I do; so does another. Now where such a mind is not right, conscience and faith are out; where it is not one with the other, love and peace are out; where love and faith are out, there is a vain world and the devil himself; therefore it is all up to them to change and renew; as also follows:
For I say by the grace given to me to every one of you that no one shall think more highly of him than is fitting, but that he shall think moderately of him, every one after God has distributed the measure of faith.
23 Paul gives this teaching especially to the Christians in all the epistles, so that he may keep the simple faith the same in all, and prevent the sects and various divisions in the Christian life, which arise from conceit and sense, where the same does not remain one in all. That is why he includes his apostleship here, that he admonishes them in the highest way, as being chosen and sent by God's grace to teach such things, and thus wants to say: Ye have divers graces one among another: but let every man take heed that he lay hold on his own conceit in the faith, and keep it; that no man think himself better than another, or think more of the gift that is given him than of another's gift: for where this is done, every man will despise the least gift, and think himself the best, and provoke others to it also. Wherever this proves to be evil, people fall back on their works or gifts, and so abandon their faith; for their minds run away, just as the world does, and think highly of what is high and not of what is low.
(24) This cannot be better illustrated than by the examples of our times, namely: you see that monks and priests have raised up their spiritual state, which they consider to be the best; they do not think moderately of it, but exceedingly, and their mind is that the common Christian state is almost nothing compared to it. But the same status is not commanded by God, neither faith nor love, but something special, invented by themselves; therefore they also divide themselves, and the same conceit splits into so many sects that each one wants to be the best, and all of them are of no use before God. For both faith and love are lost, and the one mind that should hold all Christians together and make them one.
25 St. Paul therefore says that just as many gifts, works, or creatures are external, so no one should be unaware of them.
We are not to think ourselves good, or to be better than others; but let every man think himself good in his faith, which we all have, though not in the same degree, one more than another. But the same and equal is that which faith possesses, namely, Jesus Christ. For the thief on the cross has JESUS Christ, and also as much in him through his faith, as St. Peter, Paul, Abraham, and the Mother of God, and all the saints, though he had not so strong a faith. Let the gifts then be unequal, and the good of faith be equal. But because we alone
If we are to boast of the good of faith and not of the gifts, then each one should let the other's gifts be as good as his own, and thus serve the other who is like me in the good of faith; in this way unity of love and simplicity of faith remain, and no one falls on his own work or merit. You may read more about this sense and conceit in previous posts, especially about the epistle on the third Sunday in Advent. But what more is to be said of this epistle, we will save for the next Sunday; for they are both attached to each other.