Sometimes the words of Jesus seem too harsh. What, in fact, does He mean when He says that one cannot love father or mother more than Him? And then comes the explanation: whoever wants to save his life (“soul”) will lose it, but whoever gives it up for Christ’s sake will save it. At first glance it may seem that this is about...
Sometimes the words of Jesus seem too harsh. What, in fact, does He mean when He says that one cannot love father or mother more than Him? And then comes the explanation: whoever wants to save his life (“soul”) will lose it, but whoever gives it up for Christ’s sake will save it.
At first glance it may seem that this is about some life after death, about the paradise that awaits martyrs. But in fact here too the point is the Kingdom. The Kingdom that is not somewhere “in heaven” and not later, but here and now. And not some other life that awaits the faithful in some other dimension, but that very life to which every Christian can and must, if he truly is a Christian, be joined already here and now.
But in order for participation in the life of the Kingdom to become possible, it is necessary to renounce one’s own life. Not because it is life, but because it is one’s own. And one’s own not in the sense of unique and unrepeatable, given by God to me and to no one else, so that no one but me can answer for it before God, but in the sense of belonging only to me alone: the life into which I will let no one and which I will share with no one, fearing to lose even a small portion of my so precious life. Such a desire to hold on to one’s own life, separate from the rest of God’s world and from the Kingdom, in the end inevitably turns into catastrophe: all attempts to preserve the little that remains to us in the fallen world from the fullness of the life once given us by God end with our losing even that little. Only by renouncing such spiritual and, in the language of modern philosophers, existential self-isolation can we receive the fullness of the life of the Kingdom that the Savior has prepared for us.
But then one will have to give up the small for the sake of the infinite, limitation for the sake of fullness. And not only with regard to one’s own life, but also with regard to relationships with people, even the closest. For relationships with them too must cease to be part of our small, isolated little world in order to become part of the Kingdom. Then there will no longer be those irrevocable losses to which this little world condemns us. For the life of the Kingdom is, according to the Savior’s word, “life in abundance.” And it is given to everyone who enters the Kingdom. The one who enters brings into it all the relationships that bind him to those close to him. Relationships that also become part of the Kingdom.
12
12:1 I exhort you - St. Paul uses to suit his exhortations to the doctrines he has been delivering. So here the general use from the whole is contained in the first and second verses. The particular uses follow, from the third verse to the end of the Epistle. By the tender mercies of God - The whole sentiment is derived from Rom. i. - v. The expression itself is particularly opposed to "the wrath of God," Rom 1:18. It has a reference here to the entire gospel, to the whole economy of grace or mercy, delivering us from "the wrath of God," and exciting us to all duty. To present - So Rom 6:13; Rom 16:19; now actually to exhibit before God.Your bodies - That is, yourselves; a part is put for the whole; the rather, as in the ancient sacrifices of beasts, the body was the whole. These also are particularly named in opposition to that vile abuse of their bodies mentioned, Rom 1:24.Several expressions follow, which have likewise a direct reference to other expressions in the same chapter.A sacrifice - Dead to sin and living - By that life which is mentioned, Rom 1:17; Rom 6:4, etc Holy - Such as the holy law requires, Rom 7:12.Acceptable - Rom 8:8.Which is your reasonable service - The worship of the heathens was utterly unreasonable, Rom 1:18, etc; so was the glorying of the Jews, Rom 2:3, etc But a Christian acts in all things by the highest reason, from the mercy of God inferring his own duty.
12:2 And be not conformed - Neither in judgment, spirit, nor behaviour. To this world - Which, neglecting the will of God, entirely follows its own. That ye may prove - Know by sure trial; which is easily done by him who has thus presented himself to God. What is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God - The will of God is here to be understood of all the preceptivepart of Christianity, which is in itself so excellently good, so acceptable to God, and so perfective of our natures.
12:3 And I say - He now proceeds to show what that will of God is. Through the grace which is given to me - He modestly adds this, lest he should seem to forget his own direction.To every one that is among you - Believers at Rome. Happy, had they always remembered this! The measure of faith - Treated of in the first and following chapters, from which all other gifts and graces flow.