Sunday Morning Greek Blog

Pip: Sunday Morning Greek Blog — where the lectionary meets the original language, and Romans gets treated like the sustained argument it actually is. Scott Stocking has been preaching through Paul’s letter all summer, and this week we’re catching up with two consecutive Sundays.

Mara: Both messages come from Romans 12 — first the theology of gifts and what it means to be a living sacrifice, then the ethics of love that follows directly from it. Let’s start with the sacrifice that isn’t what you think it is.

Gifts, Sacrifice, and the World as Altar

Pip: Romans 12:1 opens with the word “therefore” — which means everything Paul argued in the first eleven chapters is now cashing out into practical instruction. The question this sermon tackles is what “living sacrifice” actually means, and the answer turns out to be almost the opposite of the popular version.

Mara: The post takes direct aim at a widely circulated quote — that “the problem with living sacrifices is they tend to crawl off the altar.” The counter-argument is grounded in Romans 6: “Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”

Pip: So the sacrifice has already happened — baptism is the moment of dying with Christ, and what follows is a life lived out in the world, not a posture of remaining on an altar. The world, in this reading, is the altar.

Mara: That reframe carries through to verse 2 as well. The call not to conform to the world’s pattern, and to be transformed by the renewing of your mind, is described as an exercise in faith — comparable to building muscle memory in a sport or skill. The more you practice, the more instinctive faithfulness becomes.

Pip: Which brings Paul to verses 3–8 and the gifts — prophecy, service, teaching, encouragement, giving, leadership, mercy. The sermon walks through each one, and the framing is notably practical: prophecy is less about predicting the future than forth-telling the gospel, sometimes in ways that make people uncomfortable.

Mara: On leadership specifically, the post notes that it doesn’t require knowing the Bible as well as the preacher — strong people skills, financial stewardship, or compassionate ministry all count. And on mercy, there’s a candid admission that it’s an area requiring ongoing work, especially under stress.

Pip: Mercy being hardest when luggage keeps flying west instead of east across the Atlantic — which, fair enough, is a genuinely difficult test of the fruit of the Spirit.*

Mara: The sermon closes with a congregational challenge: look around, identify a gift you see in someone else, and name it to them during fellowship time. The post also links to a 108-question spiritual gifts survey for anyone wanting to explore further. The underlying argument is that unity in the body depends on each person knowing and exercising their particular gift.

Mara: And if gifts are how the body functions internally, the next passage asks what that same love looks like directed outward — even toward people who make it hard.

Love as a Default Setting

Pip: Romans 12:9–21 looks at first like a checklist of twenty-five commands. The sermon on “Unhypocritical Love” argues that’s the wrong frame entirely.

Mara: The governing statement in the Greek is a three-word declarative: “Love is unhypocritical.” As the post puts it, “He’s setting a standard… Paul doesn’t want you to see it as a checklist. He wants you to see love as a default setting for your heart and mind.”

Pip: What follows in the passage — bless persecutors, don’t repay evil for evil, live at peace — is then a description of what that default looks like under pressure, not a scorecard.

Mara: The post also notes that “hate what is evil” is the first phrase Paul uses to describe unhypocritical love. Love doesn’t overlook or tolerate evil — that’s built into the definition from the start. The pivot to the next segment’s territory lands here: if Romans 12 defines what love does, the question is what posture sustains it.

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Pip: Two Sundays, one sustained argument — sacrifice orients you outward, gifts equip you for the work, and love without hypocrisy is the operating system underneath all of it.

Mara: Romans 13 and 14 are next on the lectionary. We’ll see what Paul does with that foundation when the preaching resumes.

*In the message, I relate my frustration with a problem we were having with an airline at the time. My wife and step-daughter were traveling in Scandinavia, but their luggage never made it to them.

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Pastor Scott Stocking, M.Div.