Faith and Work
Tom Shrader grounds his teaching in Romans 12:1-2, first walking through the arc of Romans 1–5 to establish that all people are separated from God by sin and rescued only by the unearned love of Christ. Because of that mercy, Paul urges believers to present their entire bodies as living sacrifices, meaning every activity—work, home, relationships—is an act of worship. The transformed heart and renewed mind that result from genuine faith produce a countercultural life in which there is no division between the sacred and the secular, because Christ is Lord over all of it.
“There's nothing you can do as a follower of Christ to make God love you more, and nothing you can do to cause Him to love you less.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: New City Church
Recorded: Oct 27, 2013
Duration: 41 min
Themes: faith and work, worship, grace, transformation, sacrifice, everyday life, renewal, calling, working professional, feeling purposeless, new believer, struggling with identity, young adult, navigating work and faith, seeking life meaning, questioning relevance of faith
Scripture: Romans 1:16, Romans 1:18, Romans 1:20, Romans 1:21, Romans 2, Romans 3:10, Romans 3:23, Romans 5:1, Romans 5:5, Romans 5:6, Romans 5:8, Romans 5:10, Romans 6, Romans 12:1-2, Ephesians 2, 2 Corinthians 5:14, 1 John 2:15, James 4:4, Philippians 2, 1 Corinthians 13, John 9
Theological Themes: sanctification, becoming holy, total depravity, justification by faith, lordship of christ, spiritual worship, renewing of the mind, sacred and secular
Full Transcript
Introduction
Open your Bibles, please, to the Book of Romans, chapter 12. If you are using one of the Bibles we provided, it is on page 616.
When Brian called and asked me to be here, I said yes — the answer is always yes if scheduling allows. He suggested a topic: faith and work. I told him I had message creep. I wanted to go beyond faith and work to something like faith and living, or the gospel and living, or "I believe this stuff — so what?" He said, go for it.
What I want to do is read Romans chapter 12, verses 1 and 2, and then talk our way through what I hope will be helpful enough that when you walk out of here today, you have something God can use to transform the rest of your life.
> *I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.*
That will be the text we return to as we work our way through this morning. Let's pray together.
Father, thank You that You are a God who loves us, a God who sheds mercy on us, and then You don't just leave us but call us to live in a way that brings honor and glory to You. Father, I pray that when this is over today, we would understand Your call to have transformed hearts and informed minds and to lead a radical life. God, we ask this of You in Christ's name, amen.
What God Is Doing at New City
When Brian was talking about the gathering next Sunday for people new to New City, I want you to know — and sometimes you are so in the midst of what God is doing that you don't even realize it — God is doing something very special here. All around the valley, this church comes up in conversation: what God is doing here, and not just here but in the community, integrating with the people who live around you. There is a great opportunity to make the invisible God visible to the people all around you and to speak the truth boldly. That is what Brian is committed to, that is what the staff is committed to, and that is what this church is all about.
When a church grows numerically like this one has, there are inevitably people coming from all different backgrounds. Sometimes you come into the midst of a community and there is a whole terminology that is new to you, a whole mindset that is new to you, and that is hard when people are arriving from as many as two dozen different backgrounds.
I was born and raised Catholic — grade school, high school, college. First through eighth grade I was educated by what I say all the time is the most misnamed group of people on the planet: they called themselves the Sisters of Mercy. They weren't long on mercy, but one teacher with thirty-five kids and no aides didn't need to be — she just ran that ship. So when I came into a church setting like this one, it was a very different experience, even though some of the words were familiar.
The Foundation: The Gospel of Jesus
What I want to do today is go to something very basic. If you don't get this, the rest of it makes no sense. For some of you — maybe many of you, maybe most of you — this will be familiar territory. If it is familiar territory, you should not be bored with it, because it is the sweetness of how God saved you in spite of you, not because of you. For those of you for whom this is new, this is monumental. This is big. There is nothing bigger than this. This is the most important topic that will ever be taught from this platform — not because of who is teaching it, but because whoever teaches it is teaching you the gospel of Jesus.
In the book of Romans, go back to chapter 1. Paul writes this book, which is arguably his most important work — often called the Magna Carta of the Christian faith. He introduces himself and his audience with some general greetings in chapter 1.
The Gospel and the Human Condition
In verse 16, Paul says, "I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it's the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes." Right away he introduces us to this word "gospel," which means good news. It has to do with salvation. When I first got exposed to Bible teaching, there were words like salvation, saved, delivered, and lost — words about being separated from God and needing to be rescued.
What Paul is saying is that for those of us who come into this world separated from God — which, by the way, is everyone — the only way to be reconciled to God is through this thing called the gospel. The gospel is this, and we will come back and detail it further. By nature, as Ephesians chapter 2 tells us, we are children of wrath and sons of disobedience. By nature, who I am is a sinner separated from God.
This is not semantics. It's not that I'm a sinner because I sin — I sin because I'm a sinner. Any parent has had some version of this. I walked into my daughter Sarah's room one day, and she had an orange marker in her hand — orange marker on her lips, orange marker down her mouth — and I said, "Did you do this?" And she said no. My son Yale got a blue marker on the white couch and marked everywhere, but then he took all the mystery out of it because he signed it: Yale. We never have to teach our kids to lie; we have to teach them to tell the truth. Why? Because we are by nature children of wrath. When Adam sinned, he plunged all of mankind into ruin.
Suppressing the Truth
Look at verse 18: "The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness, and men who suppress the truth." That phrase "suppress the truth" is in an active form. It means to literally hold down. When I first studied this in the original language and read about holding down the truth, I thought of my daughter and her jack-in-the-box.
As a parent, you have certain toys that are more annoying than others. When my girls were small, they had the popcorn popper — you push that thing around and it makes an incessant noise. The jack-in-the-box was the same way. The good thing with a little kid is that when the jack-in-the-box pops out, it takes them an hour and a half to figure out how to close it again because of the dexterity required. When my daughter figured out that she could hold that latch down, unhook and re-hook it, there was no stopping it. It was so bad that one morning we had to say, "Honey, somebody broke in last night. They didn't take the TV or the credit cards, but your jack-in-the-box is gone. Maybe we'll find it at a pawn shop."
That is exactly the problem Paul is describing. Verse 20 tells us that creation screams of a Creator — of His power and His nature — so that all you have to do is look around and you instinctively know there is something bigger than you. Creation does not necessarily point me to Jesus, but it certainly points me to a Creator. And what happens, Paul says, is that people suppress that. Verse 21: they did not honor God, they did not give Him thanks, they became futile in their speculations. Professing to be wise, they became very foolish. You see people with astounding explanations of creation, of God, of man — and Paul says that is foolishness, because the answer is right here.
A Blanket Indictment Against All Mankind
Beginning in chapter 2 and running into chapter 3, what Paul is writing is a blanket indictment against all of mankind. He is saying that religious people — in that context, the Jews — are lost. People who are blatantly evil by everyone's standard are lost. And people who might claim, or whom society might claim, to be good are lost. Here is his conclusion in chapter 3, verse 10: "There is none righteous, not even one. There is none who understands. There is none who seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they have become useless. There is none who does good, not even one."
Now that may push back against your human experience. You might say, "Wait a minute — Nana? Nana fits in there too? But she makes cookies. She lets us sleep over. She has us in the will." Here is what Paul is saying. By "good," he means good not just in outward action, but in the inward heart. And Nana's heart, naturally, hates God. That is hard to hear. You might say, "But I have a neighbor who watches my house when I'm gone and cuts the grass." Paul's point is this: God is looking at the heart, not the action, and His conclusion is that no one is good.
He summarizes it in chapter 3, verse 23: "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."
Something Is Wrong With Us
Spend a moment on this, because it is enormous. That verse is the explanation for the world you live in today. You do not have to be particularly thoughtful to look around and sense that something is wrong — wrong in the world, wrong in the country, wrong in the state, wrong in your community, wrong in your sphere of influence, wrong in your family. And ultimately, you arrive at the most personal point of all: there is something wrong with me. That is exactly right. That is what is wrong, and it is sin. There is something wrong with us.
Our fundamental problem is not educational — it is not that we need more degrees. It is not economic — it is not that we need more money. It is not that we need to be more sophisticated.
The Fundamental Problem Is Spiritual
The fundamental problem is spiritual. And since the fundamental problem is spiritual, the solution is spiritual. Paul says he wants us to come face-to-face with this reality: everyone who has ever lived has sinned. The Bible tells us that if we break a law, we break the law, and the result of that sin is separation from God. The wage of sin is death — and that does not just mean physical death. Death means separation.
Christmas is coming, and we will sing a song with this line: "God and sinner reconcile." If you know nothing else, but I tell you that Brian and I have been reconciled, you can appropriately deduce that there were pre-existing hostile conditions. That is man coming into the world. That is the condition we are in.
God Moves Toward Us
Look at chapter 5, because God moves. The bad news is that you are lost in your sins and trespasses, dead in those sins, and there is nothing you can do to fix it. But God moves. Verse 1 of chapter 5: "Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God." Right relationship. We have been reconciled to Him.
How? Why? What was the motive? Verse 5 is designed to move you: because of His love — the love that God poured out within your heart through the Spirit. Then consider verses 6, 8, and 10. This is the condition. This is who you were, naturally. "You were still helpless, and at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly." Verse 8: "He demonstrated His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Verse 10: "While we were enemies, we were reconciled to God, through the death of His Son, Jesus Christ."
He moved. It is not that there was something just a little bit wrong with you. You were separated from God, dead in your sins and trespasses, incapable of making it right. That is what is wrong with each one of us. Whatever you may think is wrong with you is only a symptom of a deeper condition: separation from God. But God moves. Christ came, lived, and died on the cross so that we might have eternal life.
What It Means to Believe
Paul uses the phrase "if you believe in Him." That does not just mean mental assent. It does not just mean acknowledging a historic event back in the distant past. It means there is a point in time — and you may be able to name the place, the day, the hour, or it may simply be that you have arrived there — where you understand that your sin has separated you from God and there is nothing you can do to fix it.
Trying to fix it yourself is called religion. When it comes to spirituality, there are two big categories: biblical Christianity and everything else. Everything else involves you cleaning up your act in some form. Some of you may be here for exactly that reason. Maybe you had a tough week or two or three, did things you never thought you would do again, and you are here today to clean up your act. Let me take all the pressure off: you cannot clean up your act. It demands perfection, and you are already past that. But Christ died. He loves you.
You Cannot Out-Sin His Grace
To me, these are sweet words, and they get sweeter every day: He loves me in spite of me, not because of me. We learn from a very early age to perform. When we do well, people like us. When we do poorly, they do not.
When I was young — it is hard to tell looking at me now — I was a good athlete. Baseball was my sport, and I played it pretty well through early high school. My dad, who I think was determined for me to be a good player, had me doing drills every night without exception. Nobody ever told me this, but one day I figured out that the ride home was completely different if I went three for four than if I went zero for four. Three for four meant I had value, I had merit. So all of life becomes this quid pro quo, a condition: if you do this, then I will respond accordingly.
We come to God wanting to bring that same dynamic with us. We say, "God, here is what I am going to do." And He says, "That is not helpful. I already did it for you." So here is something — my grandpa would say this would jar your preserves — there is nothing you can do as a follower of Christ to make God love you more, and nothing you can do to cause Him to love you less. You sang it: "When I failed a thousand times" — and a thousand times is a lot — His grace is still there.
He says, "You are My child. I entered into this relationship with you knowing everything there was to know about you." You have heard husbands and wives argue until one of them says, "I would have never married you if I had known that about you." God will never say that to you. He knows everything you have done, said, thought, are thinking, and will ever do or say, and He says, "You cannot out-sin My grace." Come into that right relationship with Him, and you are saved.
Saved — Past, Present, and Future
Saved from what? There is a past aspect: saved from the guilt of sin. And there is a future aspect. Here is one of those great truths: those of us who are truly Christians are as certain of heaven as the saints who are already there. For a long time I lived with the idea that yes, I may be in for now, but I can screw it up —
A Transformed Heart, an Informed Mind, a Counter-Cultural Life
Romans chapter 12 brings us to three key points. God wants us to have a transformed heart and an informed mind that leads to a counter-cultural life. These are not separate pursuits but a single, unified response to what God has done for us.
Paul opens Romans 12:1 with, "I urge you, brothers." Those brothers are not people who share a chain of DNA — they share a spiritual chain of DNA. More than that, it is the Holy Spirit that binds them together. He urges them "by the mercies of God," which encompasses everything we have been talking about: the love and grace that God pours out freely on His people.
That love is not motivated by anything God sees in you. It is not that you are a little messed up and He can help you along. No, it is in spite of you — because of His love. Paul says it this way in 2 Corinthians 5:14: "It is the love of Christ that compels us." Through the power of God's love, He took the cross — a symbol of torture and agony — and turned it into the most powerful symbol of love in the world.
Right after that, Paul says if anybody is in Christ, he is a new creature. And God reconciled us to Himself so that we could take a ministry of reconciliation to this world. That is the foundation from which everything else flows.
Presenting Your Body as Worship
Because of these mercies, Paul calls us to present our bodies to God. The word translated "spiritual service of worship" is the word from which we get the English word *logic*. It is, literally, the only logical thing to do. When you begin to truly contemplate what God has done, the only response is to give Him your body — which incorporates your emotions, your mind, your will. It is the whole self. It is saying, "God, this is yours. This is my worship."
Unfortunately, the word *worship* breaks down for us because we tend to think of it as what happens in the first twenty minutes of a church service. But our act of worship is everything we do. Worship does not start or end in church — you are worshiping, or not worshiping, all week long, depending on what you do with your body.
Eugene Peterson captures this idea well in *The Message*: "Here's what I want you to do — take your everyday, ordinary life — your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life — and place it before God as an offering." When we talk about faith in the marketplace, we are really talking about something far bigger than the workplace. We are talking about faith in life itself.
There is a tendency to treat Sunday as the high point — the singing, the fellowship, the football — and then treat Monday as the enemy. But if there was ever anything meant to be around the clock, it is this: your worship. The Living Bible paraphrases it as a plea to "give your bodies to God as a living sacrifice." Phillips puts it even more directly: "With eyes wide open to the mercies of God, I beg you, my brothers, as an act of intelligent worship, to give your bodies as a living sacrifice."
Work as an Expression of Praise
What Paul is saying is this: because I have a transformed heart, I am a new creature, and everything I do is to praise God. Work is not the enemy. Work is yet another expression of how I praise God. Whether you are the barista making the drink or the customer buying it, all of a sudden you begin to look at ordinary life differently.
Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount that we are to live in a way that people see our good works. A quick warning is needed here, however: you can quickly lapse back into religion — thinking it is about the behaviors you avoid, the things you do not do. No, it is a matter of attitude far deeper than any of that.
Don't Let the World Squeeze You Into Its Mold
Paul gives us the corresponding warning in Romans 12:2: "Do not be conformed to this world." The Message renders it this way: "Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking." The Living Bible adds: "Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but be a new and different person with a freshness in all you do and think." Phillips is the most direct of all: "Don't let the world squeeze you into its mold, but let God remold you from the inside out."
That last phrase is the key. The change begins inside. Because I am different inside, there is an external expression of that difference. Paul's call is not to behavioral conformity but to genuine transformation — a transformed heart that shapes an informed mind that produces a life running counter to the surrounding culture.
Don't Be Conformed to the World
Don't let the world squeeze you into its mold. In First John, chapter two, verse 15, we read: "Do not love the world or the things of the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that's in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the boastful pride of life are not from the Father but they're from this world and this world is passing away." James says it even more vividly. James chapter four, verse four: "You adulterous, do you not know friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God."
James is not saying don't spend time around worldly people or be friendly with them. When he uses the word "world," he is talking about the world's systems, its thoughts, its values. The world has a value system, hopes, and desires that are often confusing and self-absorbed. Jesus comes along and says if somebody does you dirty, you exhibit love to them — if he hits you on one cheek, give him the other. The world comes along and says, "I don't get mad, I get even." There is an entire change that takes place.
My wife Sandy is teaching a Bible study in the Gospel of John, and she came across a quote and was kind enough to share it with me. The author writes: "Men will flock to a teacher or preacher who can really give them guidance for the tangled business of thinking and living." Jesus is the one who admits the shadows and makes things clear, who at many crossroads of life shows us the right way, who in the baffling moments of decision enables us to choose aright. All of a sudden, I am not conformed to the world and its confusing messages.
We have the mind of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, and the most powerful force on the planet is the Spirit of God applying the Word of God to the heart and mind of the child of God — and that is you. It is somewhat ironic, because in church circles we often talk about people who come in and are not Christians but pretend to be. But Paul said no — we have a deeper problem. We have Christians who are acting as though they are not.
Transformed by the Renewing of Your Mind
Don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed. Literally, there is a whole new creature that takes place. And that transformation comes by the renewing of your mind. The battle starts here — the battle is to begin to see yourself and the world around you as God sees it, to see that it is temporary. That is not to say these things are unimportant; they are just not ultimately important. They are expressions and opportunities for you to show what a transformed life looks like.
I was talking to someone the other day and they mentioned a Christian plumber. The response was, "Well, there's no Christian way to unstop a toilet." We need to be careful, because in our language "Christian" has become an adjective when it is actually a noun — it is who you are. You do the work of a plumber, but you are a Christian who does it. You do the work of a CEO as a Christian who does it. You are a stay-at-home mom, and you do it as a Christian — with a worldview that is entirely different.
Paul says in Philippians 2, "Have the mind in you that is also in Christ Jesus." He is talking about humility. That old definition says humility isn't thinking less of yourself — it is thinking of yourself less. It is the same core idea as love. When Paul defines love in 1 Corinthians 13, he gives fifteen characteristics: eight are negative, seven are positive. And here is the linchpin: love does not take into account wrong suffered.
Right Relationships Flow from a Right Heart
So how do I know I have the mind of Christ? I begin to see people as Christ sees them. Because when this relationship — my relationship with God — is right, these other relationships, as far as it depends on me, can be right as well. I did a men's conference a few years ago — five messages over a weekend. After three of them, the organizers told me they were not very happy. I asked what they had wanted, and they said, "It's men — we thought you'd do something on parenting or marriage."
Here is the key to marriage that Sandy and I have discovered, having been married about a year and a half. If I love God and Christ more than her, we are going to have a great marriage. If she loves Jesus more than me, we are going to have a great marriage. When this relationship with God is right, I am no longer looking at Sandy and asking, "What about me?" I am called to love Sandy as Christ loves the church. It is that transformed heart, that renewed mind, that leads to a radical lifestyle.
No Division Between the Secular and the Sacred
This brings us to a phrase worth examining: there is no difference between the secular and the sacred. Somehow we have come to think of certain things as truly sacred and everything else as belonging to the world. But there is no such division. Brian has chosen — and I presume because God has called him to — to use his skills and gifts right here, teaching and leading this congregation. But this is not more holy or sacred than if he were using those same gifts at a university. We have this idea that the staff are in "full-time ministry" and everyone else is not. But if you say Jesus is Lord, you are in full-time ministry. You represent Christ everywhere you go.
In John chapter nine, Jesus and the disciples are walking into a town and they encounter a man who has been blind from birth. The disciples ask, "Who sinned, this man or his parents?" That was the conventional wisdom of the day. And Jesus said neither — but that...
Living as a Display Case for God's Work
This man might become a display case for the work of God. That is who you are, twenty-four seven. Some of you come from homes where they think you are nuts to be here. They do not get it. They do not understand it. But here is what happens: they watch you over a period of time, and they go, "I do not know — she is different than she was." Jesus said it this way, that I shine in such a way that men see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. You then have the opportunity to say, "It is not me, it is Christ in me."
You take that to work, or home, or the ball field, or the gym, or Costco — always get Costco in there because Sandy loves Costco. Everywhere you go, you see the world as it really is. God saved you and empowered you, and your life is transformed. That heart is transformed. Your mind is renewed as you study His Word, as you hear this, as you understand that everything is in perspective.
All of this is passing away. Scripture reminds us over and over again — oftentimes in the midst of discussions on either suffering or stuff — that we came into the world naked and we will leave naked. Again, this is not to say work is not important. It is just to say it is not the most important. When it comes to work, the bottom line is not the bottom line. The process matters. All of that is because your life and my life are different because of Christ.
Two Buckets: Those Who Know Christ and Those Who Do Not
In this world, and therefore in this room, there are two big buckets of people: those who know Christ, and those who do not. As Brian was praying, he said, "God, there are some here who do not know You." If you are hearing that for the first time, that is just a whole new language. So let me separate it clearly. There are those who have come to Christ in repentance and faith, drawn by God's love — and there are those who have not. There is biblical Christianity, and there is everything else. That is the bottom line, and all of the other things we talk about flow from that.
An Invitation to Communion
Every week, at essentially this point in our service, we stop to commemorate what Christ did on the cross. The word associated with communion is *remember*. You will see stations here in the front and in the back, and they are designed for those of you who know Christ in a personal way — to come and take those elements, to eat and drink, and to think about the past, present, and future aspects of communion.
Now, some of you — and I know this, because I have been through this many times — have more questions now than you did forty-two minutes ago. That is good. We are here with the answers, not because we are so smart, but because we know where to look. God has made Himself clear to us. So if you are somebody who is struggling with that, I would encourage you to pray after the service or meet with the men and women who will be in the front of the room. They are here for you.
Now is the time for communion. As your heart is prepared and ready, go and receive those elements. Let us pray.
Father, thank You for that. I hope it is somewhat clear, but it is a waste of time if Your Spirit does not apply it to our hearts. So do it. We pray for those like me who have heard this a thousand times, that we would never grow weary of the message of love and forgiveness we find in Jesus. We pray to You in His name. Amen.