James-Henry Christian | August 10th, 2025
Romans 12:1-21
Introduction
If you got your Bibles, you can turn in them to Romans chapter 12. Or if you got your phone, you can type or scroll, however you’d like.
And before we get into the text, I want to shout out a group of people in this room right now that I believe uh you’re here. Um, there’s probably quite a few of you is what I would guess.
And it’s those of us who are competitive. You can look at them.
The competitive among us that winning isn’t everything to us. It’s the only thing. It’s the only thing.
And so today, what I want to do is I want to show you from God’s word based on a verse that we’re going to we’re going to uh read in just a moment, how you and I can win over sin.
How you and I can win over sin as believers, people who believe in Jesus, we can win over sin every day in our life. And I’m going to show you that. We’re going to it’s going to hinge on this verse from Romans 12 at the end of the passage. This is what it says.
Key Verse
Do not be conquered by evil, but conquer evil with good.
And so today, I’m going to propose to you the way that you and I do this at the kitchen table, at work, wherever we go, the way that you and I conquer over evil.
Main Point: We Win Over Sin by Worship
We win over sin by worship.
Now, just by telling you that, I’ve got to define my terms. Certainly, we have a we have a great worship team, both first and second services. It’s fantastic. We got we we’ve just got talented people.
But we have to ask ourselves, you know, what is the essence of worship?
If we were to if I were to I’m not doing I’m not going to touch anything, Dad. Um, don’t worry.
But what is worship? What happens if we don’t have these drums or all of a sudden we can’t play the piano? What is our worship confined to?
Is worship confined to a space? Is it confined to a time?
So, one of the problems I think is sometimes when we talk about worship, we confine it to a space, a time, a place.
We say things like, “I’m going to go worship or did you enjoy the worship?”
To which I’m thinking, well, we’re hopefully we’re still going. We’re still worshiping because one of the problems, again, one of these problems is we’re just we’re limiting worship.
And additionally, sometimes we view certain actions as inherently more worshipful. So, for instance, you know, if you’re looking out and you’re praising during our praise time, you know, somebody’s raising their hand, oh, they’re really worshiping. Two hands. Oh my goodness, they’re really worshiping.
They’ve even got their eyes closed. Those are the worshippers.
And and that and that is worship. I can but that’s not only worship.
In fact, I would say that it’s more likely that I could tell whether you are a worshipper not based on how how you sit and and act during a Sunday service. That’s pretty easy. But I would guess I could find out more about your worship by the way you treat the people closest to you and by the way that you treat the people that are farthest away from you, those whom we might say enemies.
Because worship is not confined to this place and it’s not confined to these actions that we think are holy. I think we’ll see what it is in this passage today.
Worship as a Living Sacrifice
So, we start out in verse 1–2. Paul says this, “Therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This this is your true worship.
Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.”
We don’t have a priest here at Kavanaaugh Free Baptist Church. We don’t have a pope. We do have a brother Will. But truth be told, this passage makes it seem as though we have a lot of priests in this room. We got a lot of priests in this room.
And the thing about priests, they they offer sacrifices. At least in the Old Testament, they did. And you might be thinking, well, Jesus offered—he did. Jesus offered a sacrifice as the great high priest once and for all time.
But you and I are instructed to make spiritual sacrifices. And that is we are told that we are supposed to sacrifice our body, a living sacrifice, submitting ourselves to God. And that is your true worship. Amen.
We worship. We—we’re worshiping in song. And right now we’re worshiping through the preaching of the word. And in two hours or one hour when you’re digesting your food, hopefully you’re continuing to worship—your body as a living sacrifice. That is holy and pleasing to God. That’s true worship.
But he also says, you know, don’t be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. So once you submit yourself to God, your whole self to God, God is able to transform the way you and I think.
Now when it says don’t be conformed to the world, I don’t think it’s saying that, you know, we have to be weird or just very odd, you know, like very odd people, social—like antisocial or, you know, socially unaware. I don’t think it’s saying that.
I think the text is saying that we don’t need to be conformed to the world by the way that you and I think. The way that you and I think particularly about one another.
Because you and I will be tempted and tried to to think about maybe well maybe I’m just a little bit better than you or you know maybe I can do more than you. We’re tempted to think in ways that aren’t holy.
But you have to sub—we’ve got to submit our bodies to God as a living sacrifice. That’s worship. And and then our minds, they’ll be transformed. They’ll be transformed and renewed as he shows us how to love other people.
And so today, what I want to show you is we’ve seen we need to worship our bodies as a living sacrifice. But I’m going to—we’re going to flesh this out. What does this look like at church? What does this look like at the dinner table? What does this look like to the people that I would never want sitting at the dinner table with me?
Because worship goes everywhere. It’s not bound.
Worship in the Church
And so, let’s let’s look first at Paul’s words to the church. Our worship is demonstrated by humble participation in the church.
We can know that somebody is worshiping by how they participate in the church. This is what he says:
For by the grace given to me, I tell everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he should think. Instead, think sensibly as God has distributed a measure of faith to each one.
Now as we have many parts and one body and all the parts do not have the same function, in the same way we who are many are one body in Christ and individually members of one another.
In humility, we are instructed to value one another. Everyone in this room, everyone at Kavanaaugh, extremely valuable. And he gives us this image of a of a body.
Now, if I were to attempt to walk off this stage using only my elbow, what would certainly happen is at the very least I would be sore. I might not make it down. But there’s a very large possibility that if I’m putting all this pressure on my elbow that something’s going to break under under all the pressure. It’s just it’s just it’s not going to hold up. I’m going to hurt something.
The body isn’t meant—the members are supposed to help one another. This image of a body is a way that he shows what the church ought to be.
And it’s our worship when you and I don’t come to church thinking, “I’m so much better than that person. Oh, you see that person, you know, on the other side, you know, I sit on this side because this is the better side of the sanctuary and I I don’t want to go over there with them.” No, we can’t be thinking things like that.
Because our worship is that we—our minds would be transformed to where everyone here is valuable and everyone is is a part and they are pushing forward in the mission that we have as a church.
In humility, we’re going to value one another. And in humility, we also serve God the way that he made us to serve.
Serving with Spiritual Gifts
So this is what he—Paul—says:
According to the grace given to us. We have different gifts. If you got prophecy, use it according to one’s proportion of faith. If you got service, use it in service. If you got the gift of teaching, use it in teaching. If exhorting, in exhortation. If giving, in generosity. If you’ve got it with leading, then do it with diligence. If you got the gift of showing mercy, do it with cheerfulness.
In humility, we serve the way that God has made us to serve.
Now, when we think about God giving us grace, likely, you know, what we think about is how God has saved us. And oh, that’s so precious that God would give us that grace.
But when Paul uses that term, sometimes he doesn’t use it just merely to talk about being saved. He actually uses that term to describe the calling and the purpose and the gifting that God has given to him.
So that it can be said that each of us has a grace given to us—that you and I have spiritual gifts given by God that differ from one another, that we’re expected to use to fulfill our purpose in this body.
And so we can worship by serving the way that God made us to serve, by valuing another and and not holding out on each other. He’s saying, “If you’ve got this gift, you got to use it to the full.”
We worship by giving of ourselves, by serving. This is how you conquer over evil in your life, over sin—by worship, living sacrifice to God, transforming the way you think about everyone. And it starts here at church. Amen.
Worship in Daily Life
But it makes its way to your dinner table. It makes its way to your work. It—it makes its way to your drive every day, your commute. This worship will will be there or it won’t, and we must be determined that we are going to worship.
So, brother Will, I’m going to give what in my mind is is the most applicable sermon I’ve ever given. I don’t—I’ve waited 24 years for this. This this is—I mean this is straightforward. Paul just tells us—he says, “Hey, you want to know how to worship? You don’t have to just think about this abstractly. I’m going to show you. This is how you worship.”
So let’s let’s look at them.
Marks of True Worship
First, we see we’re supposed to love sincerely. There’s supposed to be a sincerity about us.
Our worship is demonstrated by the way we act all the time. Our worship is demonstrated by the way that we act all the time.
If I want to know who’s a worshipper of Jesus, I’ll just hang out with you and you could just hang out with me to see if I’m truly worshiping—because it it’s manifested in the way we act to one another. Our worship is demonstrated. So, I can see it—you know, we can see it if you’re sincere.
We look at Romans 12:9:
Let love be without hypocrisy.
Other translations would say love genuinely. We have—we have that phrase in our culture, that uh that whole fake it till you make it kind of stuff. There’s no category for that in worship. There’s no category for fake love.
The love that God calls us to is a part of our worship to him and there’s no category for it being fake. We’ve got to love genuinely.
We—we continue going—discernment. He tells us to test what is evil, cling to what is good. And this sounds easy. It sounds really theoretical, but if we’re not careful, sometimes what can happen here is that we can become numb to things that are obviously evil.
That’s right. This happens. You know, for instance, it can happen in the in the TV shows you watch, the things you see on social media, where actions that you would never want to witness, all of a sudden you’re not blinking an eye at as you see them pop up or as you see it in the TV shows you watch.
But part of our worship is hating—detesting—getting rid of what is evil, clinging to what is good. That is part of worship. So we’ve got to discern it.
Worship Involves Affection
It also takes root in our affection questions. We’re told to love one another deeply as brothers and sisters and take the lead in honoring them.
Worship to God involves our affection to one another. And so we can tell—you know, do you worship God? Well, do you do you love your brothers and sisters deeply? Do you take the lead in honoring one another?
Now, first I want to make a comment that it seems as though right now it’s like, “Oh, these are easy.” You know, I I I do these all the time. Well, I don’t think they’re as easy as as we often think. And there’s going to be a heightening where we’re just going to—it’s going to get increasingly more difficult.
It might seem easy, but sometimes we’re so often to think of ourselves, we won’t—I’ll catch myself sometimes so concerned with what I’m doing, I won’t even think about an opportunity to honor someone else or to love someone deeply.
Enthusiasm in Worship
We continue on. Enthusiasm. Part of our worship is that we would not lack in zeal. We would be fervent in the spirit. We would serve the Lord.
Some days you wake up and maybe you’re just not feeling it. Oh, another bad day.
But every day part of our worship to God is that we are—we are zealous. We—we are excited. We are enthusiastic about all that’s—that God’s doing. We are—we’re ready to serve. That’s worship. This is straightforward. Paul’s making it easy for us.
Patience in Worship
Patience. Rejoice in hope. Be patient in affliction. Be persistent in prayer. We can do that. That’s worship.
We rejoice in hope. Be patient in affliction. Now, this is not easy because after all, affliction is afflicting.
This is worship—our bodies a living sacrifice. Conquering over these sins, conquering over evil—it’s going to take our worship, ourselves submitted as living sacrifice, if we’re ever going to rejoice in hope, be patient in affliction.
If we’re going to be persistent in prayer—and if you’ve been walking the faith road for a while, you know how hard that is—if we’re going to continue to be persistent in prayer, worship, living bodies, sacrifice.
Generosity and Hospitality in Worship
We’ll continue—hospitality—sorry, I missed one—generosity. We’ll share with the saints in their needs and hospitality. Pursue hospitality.
This is worship again. I can be raising my hand all I want to. I can be singing, come to church every Sunday, but my worship will be—my worship will take place in the way that I show hospitality, the way that I give.
When my pocketbook isn’t looking so hot and the way I share and embrace generosity—this is worship.
Blessing Those Who Persecute You
Blessing those who persecute you, showing goodwill toward other people.
Now, this is—this is where the rubber meets the road here, because some of those were pretty easy. You know, it’s easy for me to show affection for my brothers and sisters. A lot of you in this room, it’s so easy for me, ’cause you’re great. You’re so enjoyable.
But there’s a category of people—not here—but there’s a category of people that would be more difficult—would be a little bit more difficult to bless, to love deeply.
Worship—your worship to God—that someone’s truly worshiping when they bless those who persecute and and bless and don’t curse.
Sympathy in Worship
And we continue to go on. So what we’re going to see also that there is this rejoicing with those who rejoice, weeping with those who weep.
This is sacrificial. Sometimes someone’s at a different place than you and it might be a season of rejoicing for you, but it’s not for them. And we’ve got to be quick to worship God by rejoicing with them.
And—and how many times, if we’re honest, you know, after after brother Will preaches and and we hear all these announcements about those who are sick or those who are, you know, had had a had something great happen or thanking the church—how many times are we quick to glaze over that? Oh, just ready to get out of here and get to lunch.
We have opportunities to rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.
Harmony in Worship
This is worship—harmony—you know, live in harmony with one another. Don’t be proud. Instead, associate with the humble. Do not be wise in your own estimation.
Hopefully, by this time, you’re probably keeping track with these verses and thinking, “Yeah, maybe I do that one, but I’m not doing this one.”
You and I have an opportunity to worship. And so if you can’t honestly say, “Hey, I’m living in harmony with—with—with other people,” this is an opportunity for you to say, “Hey, I need to repent. I need to worship. I need to worship.”
Because this sounds easy until your kid is really just frustrating you after church today and they just keep doing the same things. Well, that—now it’s time to worship.
Overcoming Evil with Good
Don’t be wise in your own estimation. Don’t repay anyone evil for evil. And we’re about to see in the next few verses again—worship takes place.
In fact, worship is tested and tried and shown to be true not just at church, not just with the people you love, but with the people who have hurt you deeply and the people that you have nothing good to say to.
Those are the people—how you treat them demonstrates whether you’re really worshiping God at all.
Don’t repay anyone for evil. You know, do what’s honorable in everyone’s eyes. As far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Don’t avenge yourselves. Leave room for God’s wrath, because it’s written:
“Vengeance belongs to me. I will repay,” says the Lord.
But instead:
If your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he’s thirsty, give him something to drink. For in doing so, you will be heaping fiery coals on his head.
Worship—we can worship in this way. The question is, are we going to worship in this way?
Because we can’t—like I said—we can’t be content to confine worship to this. We can—we can say that it is worship when you treat the people that you wouldn’t want to ever treat with kindness, with love. That is worship.
All of life is worship. You and I every moment have an opportunity to worship God.
All of Life is Worship
So that tonight you can worship. You know, we’re gonna—we’re gonna get—we’re going to worship, and then afterward we’re going to just keep worshiping out the door at at Cheddars and Chili’s and and the home that you’re going to. We’re just going to keep worshiping.
We’re going to do it at church by the way we serve and value one another. We’re going to do it where the rubber meets the road every day. We’re going to worship when we have the worst case of road rage possible.
We’re going to worship when that person tomorrow just gets on our nerves.
I was—I had a moment a couple weeks ago as I was—I was driving and—or about to start driving and I was just thinking—I had some individuals in my life just say some things that I was I was not quite a big fan of and I was—I was just displeased and I was thinking—I was stewing and I was just thinking, “Man, I really want to—like I don’t even know what I want to do, but I want to do something. I’m so upset about this.”
And I was thinking about—let me think about, you know, the sermon I’m preaching in couple weeks. “Oh, this is my—this is time to worship. This is time to worship right now as I drive and as I think about these,” you know—this is time to worship. Opportunity presents itself every day.
Will you and I present ourselves as living sacrifice?
The Impossibility of Worship
Well, I’ve got bad news for you. It’s impossible.
Impossible. There is an impossibility of worship in this way. You can’t do it. You know how hard that is?
To show up every day to church and value one another, to serve with all you’ve got, to do all those things. To be sincere in your love, to be hospitable, to show sympathy, to show generosity, to be patient—you know how hard that is? That’s impossible.
You’ve got no shot. None.
Back to the Beginning of the Passage
Well, then why are you spending a whole sermon preaching on it, Brother James?
We started at the end of the passage, and now we look at the beginning once again.
Therefore, brothers and sisters, in the view of the mercies of God…
Worship in everyday life doesn’t happen unless we remember and unless we have in constant view the mercy that God has shown.
If we lose sight of that, we can’t do it. If we lose sight of God’s mercy, then we have lost it. There’s no chance of worship here. But when it’s in view and when we see it for what it is…
A Trip Down the Romans Road
Brother Jason, I think it’s time that, you know, to remind us of our worship, you know, we should take a trip—me and you and us—we take a trip down what some have called the Romans Road.
A trip down the Romans Road explaining the good news about Jesus through Romans. Let’s remind ourselves of this mercy.
Paul says that he’s not ashamed of the gospel. Doesn’t have to be, because it’s the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. No discriminating.
And that’s why Paul can be so excited to go and preach to a people that he doesn’t even know yet—because the gospel is that good. The power to save all those who believe.
Oh, God’s mercy—that he would save sinners.
We continue on, though—this reality is that there is God’s wrath for the ungodly and for the unrighteous. It’s real. And—and he is loving. This wrath, it’s revealed against the people that suppress the truth.
There are people that suppress the truth—they’re just holding it down, trying to really not submit to its weight. The wrath of God is revealed against this.
But we also see that nobody’s getting out of this. You know, is anybody better off? Is anybody in here have a religious advantage? No, no one.
We’ve charged that both Jews, Greeks—doesn’t matter who you are—no one has a religious advantage, because there’s no one righteous. And you might say, “Well, you know, not even one person? I know a really kind person. Brother Jason’s pretty kind.” I mean, uh—no. No one. No one is righteous. Not one. There’s no one who understands.
Everybody’s under this.
But we praise God because—though all are unrighteous—the righteousness of God is through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There’s no distinction.
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
Yet they are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ.
That—God’s mercy.
If you want to worship, win over sin in your life, conquer evil—you continually remind yourself of this good news every day, letting it wash over fresh.
Worship Motivated by the Gospel
So that when I’m tempted to say things that I shouldn’t to people that frustrate me, or that—when I’m tempted to withhold myself from serving the church in the best way possible, or when I’m tempted to keep my money back from sharing with the saints—I look and I see the great mercy of God.
I see the gospel that Paul’s not ashamed of, and I’m not either.
And because we’ve been justified by faith, Paul says in Romans 5:1, you know, “Since we’ve been justified by faith, we’ve got peace with God.” That’ll make you worship when it’s tough.
There’s no condemnation—Romans 8—for anyone that’s in God, because you’ve been set free from the law of sin and death.
So that we can conclude with Paul that we are convinced—in all these things—we’re more than conquerors. And hopefully that sounds familiar. We’re more than conquerors.
Why? Because Romans 8—I’m persuaded that neither death, life, angels, rulers, things present, things to come, powers, heights, depths—can anything separate us from God’s love? No, it can’t. Nothing can.
In view of God’s mercy, we worship, and it’s demonstrated by how we act all the time.
A Burden for Others
It burdens us for other people. When we view God’s—when we view God’s mercy, it burdens us for other people.
Paul actually says in Romans 9 that he wishes—if he could do sort of like a a transaction—that he could trade his salvation for the salvation of other believers—or unbelievers, sorry—he would trade it. If he could do a trade, that’s how good this good news is. That if he could just somehow get others to believe, he would.
That’s worship.
Doxology
And again, we’re led to conclude as he concludes right before our passage:
Oh, the depths and the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God. How unsearchable his judgments and untraceable his ways. For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? And who has ever given to God that he should be repaid? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen.
Final Call to Worship
And so in this way, we’ve been led to worship every day. You and I have an opportunity to worship as little priest after the great high priest.
We come every day and in relation to our church family, we say, “Hey God, I’m a living sacrifice. So that means the giftings you’ve given me, I’m going to serve a church. The people at church that I don’t really value, I’m going to value them.”
And when it comes to the way that I act all the time, God, I’m going to worship. I’m going to worship in the way that I go everywhere, in every way that you listed in that passage.
I’m going to be hospitable. I’m going to honor. I’m going to be discerning. I’m going to be sincere in my love, patient, generous.
Nothing wrong with raising your hand or anything like that or praising—like, nothing wrong with that. My wife told me I didn’t do that first service. So, nothing wrong with any of that.
Join me in worship every day. Join me in worship. Once we get done with this, let’s go worship. Let’s go worship by the way we treat our families, the way we treat our spouses, siblings, mom, dad, grandparents.
Let’s go worship by the way that we treat the people at work that bother us, the people at school that just—oh my goodness.
Let’s go worship together in view of God’s great mercy.