Having been set free in the power of the Spirit of life, we voluntarily present our bodies living sacrifices to God. It is not a blind ritual ceremony, nor a legal obligation, but the free service of a willing mind. We offer our minds and bodies intelligently to God, consecrated and set apart: this is acceptable to God. Because we are alive to God in Christ, and through grace free from the law of sin and death we can yield ourselves to God.
The world around is an immense system built up by the enemy, astray from God., As Christians, we cannot be conformed to it. With our renewed minds, we seek a way through this world in the path of God’s will. It may not acceptable to us, but it is acceptable to God. What a great privilege it is, to have the will of God in a world that has departed from Him! Christ has revealed the way, a heavenly way on the earth, walking with divine perfectness as Man. It was a life of perfect obedience, and a life of grace – God manifest in the flesh. Now, in grace, God has been fully restored to His place, and man to his, so as to represent God. Now we seek God’s will, knowing that it is perfect, and we obediently delight in it.
We do so firmly, because we is serve God quietly in faith. We find our place that God has set us in the body, and confine ourselves to the service of Christ, waiting on Him. Verse 5 is the only reference to the body in the epistle. We are in Christ, members of His body, exhorted not to go beyond the gift given to us in grace, but to serve the Lord in it.
In our Christian life, we have the spirit in which we are to walk. If we give, it should be in love, freely and unfeigned. We are to abhor evil and cleave to what is good. We should put others before ourselves, seeking to live in peace with all. We should not follow the fashions of the world, but be friends with those of lower social classes. Our walk ought to be beyond reproach. In spite of the evil of others, we do not avenge ourselves but do good to those who hate us.
This is the characteristic Christian walk.
A simplified summary of part of the introduction to John Nelson Darby’s Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans
