Theological Journal - January 6

Theological Journal – January 6

A Central Rule of Life Text: Romans 12:1-2 The Message

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

Observations:

-Familiar foundational Pauline emphasis on human action responding to divine action

-ordering of daily life as sacrifice, not a religious event or sphere of life (what Bonhoeffer calls “religionless Christianity”)

-inertial drag of unreflective conformity to culture

-antidote: attention to God, discern, and act quickly

-goal: maturity

All the basics of Christian living and resources for developing a rule of life are succinctly captured by Paul and eloquently translated/paraphrased by Eugene Peterson.