Romans 12:1-15
Paul’s philosophy of Christian living is compactly stated in these fifteen verses. “I beseech you… that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice.” God wants us to be his. We are his by actual right. “All souls are mine.” “Ye are not your own; for ye are bought with a price.” By the right of creation we belong to him; he made us. By the right of redemption also we are his; he purchased us with his own blood. Yet God wants us to give ourselves to him. Indeed we are not his at all in the true sense until we have done this. We hold our life in our own hands until we voluntarily surrender it. This truth is well expressed in two lines of Tennyson’s “In Memoriam.”
“Our wills are ours, we know not how;
Our wills are ours, to make them thine.”
“Our wills are ours.” This is the profound truth of human sovereignty. God made us in his image, made us free to do as we will. Even God himself, with his omnipotence, cannot compel our will. Our wills are ours. Our lives are our own. But this is only half the truth.
“Our wills are ours, to make them thine.”
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