I preached this sermon on Sunday, August 23, 2026, at Christ Presbyterian Church, Milford, Ohio.
The lectionary text is from Romans 12:1-8.
I want to start this sermon with a word.
Therefore.
It’s one of those little words we can read right past. But when Paul writes it at the beginning of Romans 12, he is turning a corner.
For eleven chapters, Paul has been telling us what God has done. Then he says…
Therefore…
Therefore, what are we going to do about it? What are we going to do about what God has done for us?
I learned something about “therefore” from a professor named Dr. Mackew.
You already know that I took—and eventually passed—calculus in college. What you may not know is that my college also required two years of a foreign language.
I was pursuing a degree in Computer Science. The languages I wanted to learn were Fortran, BASIC, and Assembly—not French or German.
Spanish wasn’t an option. But Russian was.
So, in the throes of the Cold War, and with the wisdom of a young college student, I signed up for two years of Russian.
If I was bad at calculus, I was even worse at a foreign language.
Dr. Mackew was the Russian teacher for our class of 28 students. I struggled, but made it through my first two semesters.
But the college insisted on two years, so I dutifully showed up for class for the third of four semesters. Dr. Mackew walked into the now smaller class of eight students. Smiled, said, “zdravstvuyte,” looked around, and his eyes landed on me.
“Mr. Crofman, why are you here” he asked. He always mispronounced my last name. I replied, “It’s a requirement for my degree, Dr. Mackew. I need two years of a foreign language”
He thought for a long moment, realizing what he might be setting me, and himself, up for – for the next two semesters. “See me at the end of the class,” he replied.
I obediently waited after class, accepting the sympathetic nods of my fellow classmates.
“Mr. Crofman, are you ever going to use Russian?” Dr. Machew asked me without preamble. “Not a word,” I replied. I knew better than to say, “Nyet.” “I make you a deal,“ he said. “You show up to class every day, you do all the homework, and I’ll give you a ‘D’.”
My friends, the joy of passing Calculus III was nothing compared to his promise of a passing grade for my last two semesters of Russian. I kept my word; I showed up for nearly every class and diligently did my homework. Dr. Mackew kept his word as well. I passed, and I graduated. While I excelled in programming and computer science, foreign languages and advanced math were my weaknesses.
· But this story isn’t about me.//
· It isn’t about Russian//
· And it certainly isn’t about my stellar academic performance.//
· It’s about Dr. Machew.//
We were nearly done with the two years of Russian when I found out more about Dr. Mackew. When he was at university in Leningrad, he had to take high-level math – and he was lousy at math. His focus was on languages and liberal arts, and his professor recognized that focus.
One day toward the end of the semester, Dr. Mackew – then Mr. Mackew – was failing the class. His professor pulled him aside and told him, “I make you a deal. Here is a math problem. Work on this problem the entire class period if you need to. If you solve it, I will pass you.” Dr. Mackew told us he worked the entire class period on the problem, but he solved it. The professor gave him a passing grade. He got his degree.
At the time, I thought Dr. Mackew was giving me a needed break.
It took me years to realize the depths of what happened. Someone had shown Dr. Mackew grace when he needed it.
Therefore, he showed grace to others.
I discovered later that someone had acted on my behalf, 50 years earlier. Decades before I was born, a seed of grace was planted—and eventually, it bore fruit in my life.
This echoes the story Paul is telling in Romans.
For eleven chapters, Paul tells us the story of what God has done—the seed of grace God planted long before any of us was born.
Then Paul writes: Therefore. God has acted. Therefore, we respond.
It’s the turning point of the whole letter of Romans!
To appreciate what Paul is writing in this letter, it helps to understand why he wrote it. He wrote the letter of Romans to the house churches in Rome – churches that contained Gentile Christians and Jewish Christians, but almost never both in the same house church. Paul knew he had to bring these two cultures and traditions together into one body, one unified family serving the Lord for the church universal to grow.
He had to do it in a way they would both hear without holding the other group in contempt. Paul does it in two broad movements. The first eleven chapters tell us what God has done. The last five tell us how we respond.
So enough of Romans 101. Let’s hear what Paul is preaching in his letter to get us to one body.
In chapters 1 to 4, Paul starts with a huge equalizer. Everyone has the same problem: sin. And Jews and Gentiles alike receive the same answer: grace through faith in Jesus Christ.
In chapters 5 to 8, Paul brings in the good news: faith changes everything. Through Jesus, we’re no longer trapped by sin. We’re no longer slaves to death. We’re no longer trying to earn our way to God by keeping the law.
Paul says it beautifully in Romans 5:1: “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
There’s that little word again. Therefore.
And then, in chapters 9 to 11, Paul wrestles with a huge question: What about Israel? If God is bringing Gentiles into this family, what does that mean for the people God chose in the first place?
Paul doesn’t brush the question aside. He points out that God isn’t choosing one group over the other. God is creating one people.
That’s Romans 102 in just a few paragraphs.// We just skimmed over eleven chapters of Paul. The first eleven chapters ask and answer the question: What has God done?
He has shown mercy.
He has given grace.
He has justified us through faith.
He has brought Jew and Gentile together.
He has given us new life.
And now Paul says: Therefore. He’s saying: God has already acted. Now respond.
Paul starts by saying: “Therefore”: give yourself.
This is where the very first verse in today’s reading, in Romans 12:1, becomes powerful: “Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice…”
You are the sacrifice. And Paul deliberately calls it a living sacrifice.
“God has acted, therefore…” Give God your life.
That changes what we do with an ordinary Tuesday morning—how we use our time, how we speak to our family, what we do when nobody is watching. Because giving yourself to God isn’t something we do only in a sanctuary. It’s something we live out in the ordinary moments of our lives, beyond being patient in the traffic jam or being kind to the barista. It’s how we treat the person who gets on our last nerve. It’s what we do when doing the right thing is inconvenient.
Romans 12:2 naturally follows. Paul says: Therefore, “don’t be conformed—be transformed.”
It’s a nice progression: God has acted → therefore I sacrifice → therefore I change.
Paul isn’t asking Christians merely to behave differently. He says, “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
Matthew spent weeks teaching us to see differently:
· Don’t judge the field before the harvest.
· Don’t judge the fourth watch.
· Don’t judge what faith looks like before Jesus does.
Now Paul expands on what Matthew tells us.
God has acted. Therefore… let God change the way you think. Be transformed.//
Paul next says: Therefore, “serve the body.”
Paul moves from the individual to the community.
This is important because Romans 12 can easily become a sermon about me or you and our personal relationship with God.
But Paul won’t let us stay there.
“We, who are many, are one body in Christ…,” Paul says in verse 5.
We tend to think of faith as something between us and God.
Paul says, “Yes—but not only that.”
You are part of a body. And a body needs every part.
The hand isn’t more important than the foot, Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 12, in a beautiful teaching about unity and diversity in the Body.
The eye doesn’t get to decide it doesn’t need the ear.
And nobody gets to say, “I don’t have anything to contribute.”
Remember from our Romans 101 lesson why Paul is writing to Rome in the first place.
Jews and Gentiles. Different histories. Different traditions. Different assumptions about what faithfulness looks like.
And Paul’s answer isn’t, “Everybody become more like each other.”
His answer instead is, “Become one body.”
And then he finishes this passage by writing about gifts. Spiritual gifts.
So the living sacrifice isn’t merely: “What am I going to do for God?”
It’s also: “How am I going to serve God’s people?”
Paul writes that we all have spiritual gifts, and we each have different gifts according to the grace given to us. Joanne has been writing about spiritual gifts in The Branches each month; I encourage you to read her articles. And that’s Romans 103.
God has acted. Therefore, we respond.
We’ve spent the summer asking what God has done.
We’ve watched God work through Abraham.
We’ve watched Jesus teach his disciples.
We’ve watched Jesus challenge their assumptions, stretch their faith, and show them what the kingdom of God looks like.
And now Paul looks at us and says one word: Therefore.
Because of everything God has done… how will we respond?
· We give ourselves.
· We let God transform us.
· We use what God has given us to serve one another.
Dr. Mackew was shown grace. And therefore, he showed grace to me. I will always remember his living example.
God has acted. Therefore, we must respond.
To the Lord our God, Alpha and Omega, beginning and end, be all glory and honor forever.
