- What do butterflies have to do with your bodies?
- Why does Paul call you to be a living sacrifice?
- What are your spiritual gifts, and how can you recognize them?
The 101 Bible Study explores these and other questions as we study Romans 12. The study meets this Friday, 6:30 p.m., in a home near Astoria. Call 971/238-6101 for more details. You are invited. Questions are welcome!
“The basis and spring of sanctification are union with Christ, more especially union with him in the virtue of his death and the power of his resurrection.” (John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans, Vol. 2, page 109).
“The way to determine our spiritual gifts is not to ask, ‘What is my “thing” spiritually, my spiritual specialty, that sets me apart from other believers and gives me a distinguishing niche in the church?’….The question to ask is, ‘What in the situation in which God has place me are the particular opportunities I see for serving other believers in word and deed (cf. I Peter 4:10f.)?’ ‘What are the specific needs confronting me that need to be ministered to?’ Posing and effectively responding to this question will go a long way not only toward discovering but also actually using our spiritual gifts.” (Richard B. Gaffin, Perspectives on Pentecost, p. 53).
“But this is the great mystery: that God is rich in mercy; that he gathers his elect from every nation, also that of the Jews who rejected him; that he imprisoned all in unbelief that he might be merciful to all. That mystery sends the apostle into ecstasy and causes him to marvel at and adore the depth of God’s wisdom and knowledge ([Romans] 11:33-36).” (Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 4, p. 670).
“If grace is conditioned in any way by human performance or by the will of man impelling to action, then grace ceases to be grace.”
“The Lord Jesus Christ became in himself the sacrifice for your sins. In other words, he was the sacrifice of sacrifices, the sacrifice toward which all the others pointed, the original sacrifice, next to which all other sacrifices were mere imitations.” (William F. Snodgrass, “He Offered Up Himself” in Resurrection and Eschatology: Theology in Service of the Church, p. 567).
Sin increased, but God grace has increased even more. Paul adds a prefix (from which we get our term hyper–as in hyper-drive) to the verb increase. God’s grace is super increasing, or super-abounding. The act of righteousness of the God-man, Jesus Christ, declares us just, and gives us life. Parallel to Adam, but in contrast to him, the righteousness of Christ is placed on your account as you trust in him. 
The opening rhyme of the New England Primer‘s alphabet might well be considered objectionable today. Not only was memorization expected of students, but the rhyme refers to sin and guilt, almost unmentionable concepts in our day. Although the focus of Romans 5:12-21 is very positive (Paul talks about super-abounding grace), there is also some grim news about sin. One man (Paul is referring to Adam) sinned, and in him all of us sinned.