The start of a college year, much like the Christian life itself, always presents the college community with an opportunity and a challenge: an opportunity to make a fresh start in a new endeavour (which is especially true of new students); and a challenge to pursue the path which leads to the high calling we have in our Lord Jesus Christ. In short, our Lord calls us to pursue the path of excellence — which leads me to invite you to focus attention upon Romans 12:1-2.

Therefore, I urge you brothers, in view of god's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to god-which is your spiritual worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what god's will is — his good, pleasing and perfect will.

The Apostle Paul's "therefores" are always significant, and the "therefore" in this first verse is no different. It points us to everything to which he has been calling his readers' attention in the preceding chapters, so that what now follows is a proper consequence. Paul has pow­erfully pointed out that salvation is a matter of God's grace alone. There is no boasting by anyone in God's sight. Whether Jew or Gentile, if any stand accepted before Him, it is only because of the merits of Jesus Christ by whom, when anyone is united to Him by faith, he/she has his/her sins forgiven and is clothed with the robe of His justifying righteousness. The Epistle to the Romans powerfully proclaims the Scripture's gospel truth which was rediscovered by Martin Luther, namely, "The righteous will live by faith" (1:17). This in turn led to the Reformation emphases, "Christ alone" (not the addition of human mediation), "Scripture alone" (not the addition of human writings and human tradition), "God's grace alone" (not the addition of human merit), "faith alone" (not the addition of works as a basis of salvation).

We are sons and daughters of the Reformation even the Reformed faith which we profess and which is set forth in our confessional standards bears testimony to this. We have a glorious heritage. Let us never forget it or be tempted to sell it short in our day of increasing pressure to compromise it by watering down its distinctive and liberating truth in favour of something that may be more palatable to the modern mind but which, in the end, inevitably leads to a loss of the gospel.

But Paul has more to say in this Epistle to the Romans than just this wonderful and soul-saving doctrine. He goes on to point out that believing the gospel is not the only thing that the child of God is to do. A living faith also expresses itself in action. Hence, our text, "Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is his good, pleasing, and perfect will."

My modest aim is to concentrate our attention on some relevant thoughts which are closely related to our text and which naturally flow from its truths.

When Paul talks about the necessity of our presenting our bodies as living sacrifices to God, he links this with not being conformed any longer to the pattern of this world. Rather than continued conformity to this world (which is no friend of God), there is to be a transformation of our minds and hearts to the pattern of the age to come. For our faith is to express itself in obedience to the doing of God's good and acceptable and perfect will.

Paul therefore provides us with an outline which I would like broadly to follow in my message to you about the pursuit of excellence: 1) he provides us with a diagnosis of what we're up against; 2) then he points to the remedy which God provides; 3) all the while presupposing the empowerment and the gifts of the Holy Spirit (which he mentions in the rest of this chapter) and which are the Christian's in order that he may carry out the doing of God's will both for his life particularly and for his service in this world generally.

1. The Diagnosis⤒🔗

A. One of the major things which gets in the way of the pursuit of excellence is conforming to the world's standards and practices. Paul warns about this when he says, "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world" (v.2a).

In a way it could be argued that world conformity is just the way to get ahead in this world. And many there are who adopt the ways of the world in order to get ahead. So they selfishly make the earning of big bucks, or the feathering of their own nest, or the building of their own empire, or the indulgence of the flesh in pleasure, materialism, sex, or what not, the chief aim and purpose of their lives. And in order to achieve these dubious goals, they neglect their families, use their friends, and completely turn away from the things of God.

Many pursue the way of the world even though in the end it leads to a dead end and death. The preacher of Ecclesiastes tried all of this and he had far greater opportunity than most to do so — but in the end his verdict was, "Meaningless! Meaningless! Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless, a mere chasing after the wind" (1:2,14).

We, however, who are Christians no longer fall into this trap, or at least we know better than to go down this broad but barren path. And if you're a student, you've actually chosen to go down a narrower but nevertheless more fulfilling way, the way of the Lord along which He is your constant Companion and Friend and which in the end leads to eternal life in the place He is even now preparing for His own. Our danger, however, is more subtle than being sucked into the world's blatant opposition to God and the things of God. Rather, world conformity for the Christian more often than not means being less than what Christ wants His people to be, namely, salt and light (Matthew 5:13-16).

The Prince of this world is quite happy to have his followers put various pressures on God' s people so that they gradually lose their saltiness and increasingly hide their light under the basket of conformity with the world. Consider some of the following temptations:

1. To take God's Word less seriously than was true for God's people in time past. Are its truths still absolute, or have they become relative? Test your answer by these considerations:

1. Is the new morality still a shocking thing to you, or is sexu­al promiscuity increasingly tolerated if not accepted — at least for others?

2. Is the Lord's Day still the Lord's day? Or have sports, or recreational pursuits, or family priorities, relegated the Lord's Day to an hour of worship — as convenient? Attendance (or lack of) at the evening worship service is usually a good barometer of this.

3. Is the lifestyle portrayed on TV still regarded as contrary to Christian morality and family values? Or are we no longer even bothering to shield our children from its harmful influ­ences?

4. Are we increasingly tolerant of error? Or are even false religions a matter of opinion and personal preference? After all, who are we to interfere? Of course, if the apostles had felt this way, Christianity would have died in the first centu­ry; drowned by the engulfing tides of error that were as rampant then as they are now.

2. To be increasingly lax in matters of Christian commitment. Does the call of the Lord to put Him and His work first still mean the same for you as what it did for God's people in time past?

1. You who are students surely you've counted the cost of Christian discipleship and are even presently engaged in various forms of sacrifice to make possible your getting of an education in preparation for the Lord's call to you for His ser­vice. But does the call of the Lord to evangelism and missions still occupy a serious part of your thinking and commitment?

2. What if Christian education were no longer subsidized by the State, as is true in the United States, Canada, and to some in New Zealand? Would we still be prepared to
   pay the sacrifice for ourselves and our children?

3. To neglect in increasing measure the necessity to cul­tivate Christian spirituality (daily Bible reading, prayer, holiness in matters of speech, things seen and read, questionable or borderline activities, whether in dress or personal conduct).

We have perhaps suggested enough things that describe the "pattern of this world" against which the Apostle warns his readers and us. We also remember the warning of our Lord in this connection, "If the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men" (Matthew 5:13).

B. We've been noticing that conforming to the pattern of this world's thinking and activity involves not only doing the wrong things (things which displease the Lord) but also not doing the right things (things the Lord asks His people to do and expects of them if they are indeed His children and disciples). Paul refers to this when he mentions the phrase about God's people "offering their bodies as living sacrifices" (v 1b).

An animal sacrifice in the Old Testament was given by God's people in connection with their worship of God. Naturally, they were required to give the Lord their best and the ani­mal, of course, gave its all (its life) in total commitment. Jesus as the Lamb of God did this very thing for His people and, consequently, fulfilled all that was typified by Old Testament animal sacrifices. So we don't offer animal sacrifices anymore.

But we're still to offer God a sacrifice — and that sacrifice is ourselves! And this becomes "our spiritual act of worship" (v. 1b). Does this mean that this total commitment is reserved for the way we worship God? Worship indeed ought to be this not the oftentimes sleepy, disinterested way we display when we worship and, in doing so, betray the fact that we're confusing worship with entertainment. And as a result of this confused thinking, we increasingly adopt the attitude that, when worship doesn't entertain us, we have the right to be bored and to complain how dull the worship services are!

But Paul is talking about more than worship services and what our conduct in them is to be (necessary as it is to pay attention to what worship is and how we are to worship). What the Apostle is referring to here is the fact that the whole of our life is to be an act of worship. In the Christian life the secular and the profane have given way to the sacred. There is no longer an area (or areas) of life from which God is excluded. All is to be done as to the Lord and to His glory, cf. 1 Corinthians 10:31. This can only be the case where one has offered his body as a "living sacrifice" (which means that he is dead to self and the world, but alive to God).

Practically, this means that even your studies of Greek and Hebrew are to be dedicated to God as an act of worship! Doing this will cure you of the temptation to regard such study as a dull exercise in drudgery! (It's not really this, you know, but the temptation is sometimes there to think of it as this). No, where our whole being is regarded as a living sacri­fice to the Lord, then even dish washing, house cleaning, and study for exams are acts of worship! Non-commitment has no place in the life of God's child who dedicates his all to his heavenly Father and wishes to please Him in everything.

2. The Remedy←⤒🔗

We have already been touching upon this in our consideration of what it means to be a "living sacrifice." But something further should be mentioned here, and that's the matter of "being transformed" (v. 2b). Since the Apostle tells us elsewhere (Philippians 3:20) that we are already citizens of heaven; we would have expected him to say here, "Don't be conformed to this world but be transformed to the world to come" (of which you are already citizens). Well, as a matter of fact, this is actually what he means. What he is telling his readers and us is, "You're no longer to be a part of this world which is hostile to God, for you've been rescued out of its lostness and alienation from God in order to be the firstfruits of the new creation (James 1:18) which the Lord is already busily at work remaking until He makes all things new when He comes again and gives His own the glo­ries of the Final Kingdom in the new heaven and earth!"

Since this is in the background of the Apostle's thinking, we can see why he expresses himself in the way that he does. "Be transformed by the renewing of your mind," the Apostle says (v. 2b). Here he is pointing out that the Lord's renewal begins from within, with a change of heart and mind, as well as a new direction for the way one lives. We're on the Lord's path, not only consciously aware of the new direction in which were traveling, but we're to use our minds in the way we love and serve the Lord. There's evil to be avoided, sin to be exposed, error to be refuted, the lost sheep of the Lord yet to be found and gathered both at home and abroad, plus the ways of righteousness to be mod­eled, living as we do in a corrupt and godless society and in which the Christian is to shine as a light in the world (Philippians 2:15).

To do this means to have one's mind increasingly in tune with the Lord's will. How fitting, then, that we be students of God's Word, not just during the time you may spend in college, but for a lifetime! For only in God's Word do we really find His will revealed. So we need an education for this purpose. But further, we must dedicate ourselves to a lifetime of study in the ways of learning what the good and acceptable and perfect will of the Lord is — for us; for our work in the Lord's service; for our place in His world as we use the gifts He has given us for this purpose (vv. 3ff).

3. The Empowerment←⤒🔗

The gifts mentioned in these verses are the gifts of the Holy Spirit, as the Apostle specifical­ly states in 1 Corinthians 12:7. It is this same Spirit into whom every member of the body of Christ has been baptized (1 Corinthians 12:13) if they are new creatures in Christ. And if they are new creatures, they have been given both His presence and His power in their lives so that, not only His gifts, but His fruits (Galatians 5:22-23) are coming to increasing expression in their lives as well. In short, God's people are a charismatic people, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, gifted by the Holy Spirit, and empow­ered for fruitful service by the Holy Spirit.

God makes His people members of one family. "Each member belongs to all the others" (Romans 12:5b); and his Holy Spirit given gifts are for the common good. And so you students have come to the college in order that your gifts may be manifested, developed, honed, and then put into effec­tive use in Christ's Church and Kingdom. We're thankful that you've come in response to the Lord's call to you. For the Lord's words to His disciples are still true, "The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few" (Matthew 9:37). Thank God, He is still raising up those, like yourselves, that He calls to His work and empowers for service. So, do your studies faithfully and well, for it is Christ (not the professors) whom you serve; and it is His commendation which, one day at the end, you wish to receive.

All the subjects of the curriculum of study are important, or they wouldn't be there. But besides the original languages (which give you God's actual words of revela­tion to His people); I would single out two others for emphasis. One is theology. With some people, even students, it doesn't seem to have the impor­tance that it once had. Why then is it important? Evelyn Waugh, who is not a theologian but a British novelist, says in one of his books, "I saw theolo­gy as the science of simplification by which nebulous and elusive ideas are formalized and made intelligible and exact." This is indeed the task of theology. Moreover, we believe that Reformed theology is not only informed by the data of Scripture but that it also gives to Scripture an orderly way by which to understand and apply its broad range of truth. After all, how can you teach others if you can't properly relate the parts of Scripture to the whole? That's why C.H. Spurgeon once said to his students, "Gentlemen, if you are not theologians, you are nothing at all!" Strong words but very true.

The other subject worthy of special attention is church history. All history is good because it gives one a proper perspective of developing events. After all, as someone has said, "History is His (our Lord's) story." Church history is therefore a continuation of salvation history which we trace in Scripture to the coming of Christ. But the exalted Christ is presently ruling until all the purposes of God for His world have been brought to successful culmination. History, therefore, gives us this perspective and, in the meantime, cures us of a myopia that narrowly looks upon its own time, its views and its practices as the culmination of wis­dom and the best and only way by which things should be done. May the Lord deliver us from an attitude like this. Let the study of history help you in this regard.

Finally, in your pursuit of excellence, be encouraged by this further word of the Apostle to the people of God, "Be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labour is not in vain in the Lord" (1 Corinthians 15:58).