But observe the pregnant collocation here of "_the body_" with "_the reason_." "_Give over your bodies_"; not now your spirit, your intelligence, your sentiments, your aspirations, but "_your bodies_," to your Lord. Is this an anti-climax? Have we retreated from the higher to the lower, in coming from the contemplation of sovereign grace and the eternal glory to that of the physical frame of man? No more than the Lord Jesus did, when He walked down from the hill of Transfiguration to the crowd below, and to the sins and miseries it presented. He came from the scene of glory to serve men in its abiding inner light. And even He, in the days of His flesh, served men, ordinarily, only through His sacred body; walking to them with His feet; touching them with His hands; meeting their eyes with His; speaking with His lips the words that were spirit and life. As with Him so with us. It is only through the body, practically, that we can "serve our generation by the will of God." Not without the body but through it the spirit must tell on the embodied spirits around us. We look, we speak, we hear, we write, we nurse, we travel, by means of these material servants of the will, our living limbs. Without the body, where should we be, as to other men? And therefore, without the surrender of the body, where are we, as to other men, from the point of view of the will of God? So there is a true sense in which, while the surrender of the will is all important and primary from one point of view, the surrender of the body, the "giving over" of the body, to be the implement of God's will in us, is all-important, is crucial, from another. For many a Christian life it is the most needful of all things to remember this; it is the oblivion, or the mere half-recollection, of this which keeps that life an almost neutral thing as to witness and service for the Lord. [Sidenote: Ver. 2.] =And do not grow[207] conformed to this world,= this _æon_ (αἰών), the course and state of things in this scene of sin and death; do not play "the worldling," assuming a guise (σχῆμα) which in itself is fleeting, and which for you, members of Christ, must also be hollow; =but grow transfigured,= living out a lasting and genuine change of tone and conduct, in which the figure (μορφὴ) is only the congenial expression of the essence[208]--=by the renewal of your mind,= by using as an implement in the holy process that divine light which has cleared your intelligence of the mists of self-love, and taught you to see as with new eyes "the splendour of the will of God"; =so as that you test,= discerning as by a spiritual touchstone, =what is the will of God, the good, and acceptable, and perfect (will).=