Chapter 12 marks a turning point Paul's letter. He moves his conflicting

church readers to the how of the unity thing; how it works to be a body

(different parts, all working together, belonging to one another) and what

the love that fuels this will look like (the same kind of love for your

friends, our church body members, and our enemies alike!) And he begins

this instruction with one of the most poignant battle cries in all of

scripture: what God wants from us is for us to offer our whole selves to

him, and to not fall into worldly patterns of managing our human mess, but

to let Him transform us.

By Hannah Flint