One Before Two: An Order that Paul Wrote
Healing & the Body
Getting down on the floor with my foam roller the other morning, I noticed my aches and pains in their usual places. Bending and stretching didn't seem so appealing at the time. But then I was captured for a moment by the thought that Paul had called it worship in Romans 12. As I sat there on my knees, I wondered.
Worship? How is worship a part of rolling out my aches on the floor this morning?
"I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect."
— Romans 12:1–2 (ESV)
Present your bodies. Not your belief in your personal humility, not your thought in what you did right for so and so. Not your best thoughts. Not your best defense or offense, not your cleanest joke, not your intent to do better next time, not your will.
Your body.
Paul asks for your body to be the first thing that is presented in verse one of chapter 12, before he ever gets to the mind in verse two.
He's begging. Crying out. Loudly asking.
Brothers! Present bodies!
A Marine drill sergeant silently just went off in my head, sorry.
But that isn't Paul's tone. The word he uses, parakalō, is the one the King James renders "I beseech you." It's a plea, not an order. It shares its root with the name Jesus gives the Holy Spirit: the Paraklētos, the Helper who comes alongside (John 14:16). Paul isn't barking. He's pleading, "by the mercies of God."
And the Helper doesn't stand at a distance while I do the presenting. He's in it. When I'm on the floor and don't even have words, "the Spirit helps us in our weakness… the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words" (Romans 8:26). His work doesn't stop at my thoughts. It reaches the body itself: "he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you" (Romans 8:11). And the transforming Paul promises in verse two is His work too. The same Greek word shows up in 2 Corinthians, where we "are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit" (2 Corinthians 3:18). I bring the body. The Spirit groans with me, gives it life, and does the transforming.
I am sitting here, crying sometimes in pain, presenting a broken and stiff body. Am I really realizing how this could be an act of spiritual worship? That my body, as Paul says, is a temple of the Holy Spirit, and that I am to "glorify God in your body" (1 Corinthians 6:19–20)?
"God, Do You See Me?"
Transformation seemed far from the moment.
God, I cried out. I am hurting. God, there is such a long list. God, do you see me?
Hagar asked that question once, alone and in pain in the wilderness. And God answered her there. She gave Him a name no one else in Scripture gives Him:
"So she called the name of the LORD who spoke to her, 'You are a God of seeing,' for she said, 'Truly here I have seen him who looks after me.'"
— Genesis 16:13 (ESV)
He doesn't only see me now. He has always known this body, every joint and every ache, because He is the one who made it. "For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb" (Psalm 139:13). His eyes saw my unformed substance before there was anything to stretch.
And He is not watching from a distance. Christ took on a body too: one that grew tired, hungered, wept, and was broken.
"For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin."
— Hebrews 4:15 (ESV)
Seen. Known. With.
Life-Giving, Shameful, and Comforting
As I contemplated and my mind turned to the day, it stayed with me. Then turning to Romans 12:1–2, it was life-giving, shameful, and comforting all in one moment.
Life-giving, because the body is wanted. God doesn't ask me to leave my body at the door and bring Him only my mind. He asks for the body itself, stiff joints and all. Nothing about this aching frame is excluded from worship. God wants my treasure in my jar of clay because the clay is treasured. "We are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand" (Isaiah 64:8). Albeit it's been marred by many spoken and unspoken things, but still it's wanted. I use it to pray, praise, and curse. James saw it too: "With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people" (James 3:9–10). It's integral.
Shameful, because I didn't want to do the bending and stretching. It didn't seem appealing. But I also realize that I may have erred in skipping one of the smallest offerings I have on a daily basis. And underneath the reluctance was something older: a whispering that it wasn't going to be worth it, but also guilt that my treatment of my vessel had not been what an offering should be. Have I really treated it as a temple of the Holy Spirit? How often have I pushed it, ignored it, and asked it to carry what it was never meant to carry alone?
Comforting, because none of that shut me out from the presence of a holy God. The God who sees, knows, and has lived in a body met me on the floor that morning. My bent-over form began to take on new meaning. Wasn't He in the garden? In the beginning, "walking in the garden in the cool of the day" (Genesis 3:8). In the middle, in Gethsemane, where He "fell on his face and prayed" (Matthew 26:39), His own body bent low. And He promises to be there at the end, beside the river of the water of life and the tree of life (Revelation 22:1–2). A reluctant, aching offering of humanity is still an offering. And He loves to receive the aroma of worship that it is.
When Paul gets to the mind in verse two, the verb changes. "Be transformed" is passive. It's done to me, not something I produce. I present the body. God renews the mind.
That is the order Paul wrote. One before two.
If You're on the Floor Too
Maybe you know this morning. Not my stretches, but your own version: the place where you've read every right verse, tried to think the right thoughts, and still your body braces, startles, tightens, or shuts down. You've worked on your mind for years, and something underneath hasn't moved.
That isn't a failure of faith. It may simply mean you've been trying to start at verse two.
Where EMDR Fits
Painful experiences are stored by the brain in ways that sit below conscious thought. That's why insight alone often doesn't reach them, and why a person can know something is true and still not feel it. EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) helps the brain reprocess those stuck memories, so what has been held as present-tense threat can finally be metabolized as something that happened and is over.
The shape of EMDR follows Paul's order. It begins with safety and preparation: building stability before anything difficult is touched. Only then does reprocessing begin. Truth is "installed" after the distress has resolved, not argued in before it. And before a session is complete, there's a body scan, checking whether the body itself has let go. The body isn't an afterthought in the process. It's part of how we know healing has happened.
For Christians, this work doesn't replace the renewal of the mind. It clears the ground for it. If you're interested in more of how the nervous system and faith meet, I've written about why you can't simply "feel" God's presence on command, and about waiting in the dark.
If you've tried hard to renew your mind and your body still hasn't gotten the message, EMDR may be the next step. I offer Christ-centered EMDR in McKinney, serving Collin and Denton counties.
This piece reflects my own theological and clinical reflection and is offered for educational purposes only. It does not constitute counseling, therapy, or a counselor-client relationship, and reading it does not establish one. If you're in crisis, call or text 988, or go to your nearest ER.