It is a process, not a crisis; "_grow_ transfigured." The origin of the process, the liberation of the movement, is, at least in idea, as critical as possible; "_Give over your bodies_." That precept is conveyed, in its Greek form (παραστῆσαι, aorist), so as to suggest precisely the thought of a critical surrender. The Roman Christian, and his English younger brother, are called here, as they were above (vi. 13, 19), to a transaction with the Lord quite definite, whether or no the like has taken place before, or shall be done again. They are called, as if once for all, to look their Lord in the face, and to clasp His gifts in their hands, and then to put themselves and His gifts altogether into _His_ hands, for perpetual use and service. So, from the side of his conscious experience, the Christian is called to a "hallowing of himself" decisive, crucial, instantaneous. But its outcome is to be a perpetual progression, a growth, not so much "into" grace as "_in_" it (2 Pet. iii. 18), in which the surrender in purpose becomes a long series of deepening surrenders in habit and action, and a larger discovery of self, and of the Lord, and of His will, takes effect in the "shining" of the transfigured life "more and more, unto the perfect day" (Prov. iv. 18).
Let us not distort this truth of progression, and its correlative truth of the Christian's abiding imperfection. Let us not profane it into an excuse for a life which at the best is stationary, and must almost certainly be retrograde, because not intent upon a genuine advance. Let us not withhold "_our bodies_" from the sacred surrender here enjoined upon us, and yet expect to realize somehow, at some vague date, a "_transfiguration, by the renewal of our mind_." We shall be indeed disappointed of that hope. But let us be at once stimulated and sobered by the spiritual facts. As we are "yielded to the Lord," in sober reality, we are in His mercy "liberated for growth." But the growth is to come, among other ways, by the diligent application of "the renewal of our mind" to the details of His blessed Will.
And it will come, in its true development, only in the line of holy humbleness. To exalt oneself, even in the spiritual life, is not to grow; it is to wither. So the Apostle goes on:
[Sidenote: Ver. 3.] =For I say, through the grace that has been given me,= "_the grace_" of power for apostolic admonition, =to every one who is among you, not to be high-minded beyond what his mind should be, but to be minded toward sober-mindedness, as to each God distributed faith's measure.= That is to say, let the individual never, in himself, forget his brethren, and the mutual relation of each to all in Christ. Let him never make himself the centre, or think of his personal salvation as if it could really be taken alone. The Lord, the sovereign Giver of faith, the Almighty Bringer of souls into acceptance and union with Christ by faith, has given thy faith to thee, and thy brother's faith to him; and why? That the individual gifts, the bounty of the One Giver, might join the individuals not only to the Giver but to one another, as recipients of riches many yet one, and which are to be spent in service one yet many. The One Lord distributes the one faith-power into many hearts, "_measuring_" it out to each, so that the many, individually believing in the One, may not collide and contend, but lovingly cooperate in a manifold service, the issue of their "like precious faith" (2 Pet. i. 2) conditioned by the variety of their lives. So comes in that pregnant parable of the Body, found only in the writings of St Paul, and in four only of his Epistles, but so stated there as to take a place for ever in the foreground of Christian truth. We have it here in the Romans, and in larger detail in the contemporary 1 Corinthians (xii. 12-27). We have it finally and fully in the later Epistolary Group, of the first Roman Captivity--in Ephesians and Colossians. There the supreme point in the whole picture, the glorious HEAD, and His relation to the Limb and to the Body, comes out in all its greatness, while in these earlier passages it appears only incidentally.[209] But each presentation, the earlier and the later, is alike true to its purpose. When St Paul wrote to the Asiatics, he was in presence of errors which beclouded the living splendour of the Head. When he wrote to the Romans, he was concerned rather with the interdependence of the limbs, in the practice of Christian social life.