This is a radical difference from our previous lives and Paul makes a point to set up the truly transforming nature of his gospel. We're not to simply fall into the habits of this world around us by doing those things we previous did—we must be transformed in our minds.
Here some Christians will raise a banner that we need new thinking, chaste thinking: Christian Thinking. And in so doing a plethora of marketing merchandise comes out like wrist bands asking us What Jesus Would Do or fish bumper icons or a crown of thorn tattoo with the words.
But for Paul (who already stated that saved people have been rescued from the bondage to sin) his concern doesn't raise one over the other but he does focus on the priority to get into a habit with the physical. I'll have to unpack that.
In Romans 6 Paul notes that there is a constant vulnerability of letting sin take over our lives and reign by having the Christian caught up in bad stuff. In Romans 7 and 8 he points out that although our now spiritual mind struggles with our fleshly bodies, ultimately the whole bang shoot will be redeemed. In other words, our bodies has a time stamp where it's going to be remade without sin but in the present our minds struggle with our current bodies.
So surely our mind will struggle with bodies of death but in the meantime, take these bodies and offer them as a living sacrifice to do worship the Lord in service. He's already claimed the body, promised to renew it, might as well start fitting that divine mold which He promises to work on us.
This habit stands in stark opposition to that of the moral Gentile, the righteous Jew or the rampant heathen. For in Romans 1 and 2 these people first refused to give God thanks in their mind, they refused to acknowledge God's power and rule and God then gave them over to their darkened thoughts to do all types of things with their bodies.
But in the case of those who are justified God has identified us as in Christ and so will conform us to that perfect mold. He unshackles us from wrath, the bondage of sin, the body of death and promises to work things to perfection so we are to first submit our bodies in our mold forming that God is already set in place.
In so doing a believer puts to the refiner's test his or her own Person to reveal those things that God is already working out. And the things God is working is not limited in scope to the believer but includes all of creation—but it must be evidenced in the believer.
For just as the believer has the Holy Spirit as a down-payment for a future reality (2 Cor 1:22), the believer is the down-payment to the earth for the future reality and all of creation groans for the revealing of the Sons of God (Rom 8:19).
And those Sons of God have believed God's good Gospel. They have been saved by Him because they trusted in Him according to His good gospel. He takes in Sinners on the ground of them standing on His mercy according to His Good Gospel. His entire will in redeeming all of Creation in His Son who hung on the cross is the summation of his perfectly complete, totally good and infinitely acceptable Gospel so we are to not only believe it, rely on it, preach it: but by all means Live It.
Living the Gospel is therefore, the theme of Romans 12 – 16; how it looks like in action, how it behaves, how it answers to whom or what, how it deals with other believers, what is its modi operandi.
Romans Series
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Christian Living 
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