Renewing Your Mind: The Call to Be Radically Remade

Speaker A: 00:00:11

You aren't just acting like God, you're participating in his life, becoming like him and escaping the corruption that wants to force you into a mold of this world. The Deep Waters Way. Scripture, Theology and Transformation Meet.

Welcome to the Deep Waters Way. I'm your host, Ray Cooper, and I'm glad you've decided to join me for this week's exploration into the deep. So grab a cup of coffee or hot tea and settle in for the journey. It's time to slip the moorings and head for the deep water.

The shallows look safe, but that safety is deceptive. Ships rot in harbor without ever fulfilling their purpose.

Or they can be smashed on the rocks in the shallows. And you and I can find ourselves pinned to the bottom by the waves of life, metaphorically, just as I actually did once as a teenager in knee deep water. That knee deep water can be a trap, a place where complacency rules and you risk spiritual stagnation.

The solution to that is transformation, and it's found in the call we talked about last time. But the call isn't the transformation. It only beckons us into the deep, where God's transforming grace continues to work on us.

Today we're beginning to respond to that call and going deeper into a passage that is both pivotal and challenging to our understanding of transformation, Romans 12:1-2. Before we look at our passage though, let me set the stage for you.

Paul has just spent much of Romans 11 talking about God's mercies, and now he appeals to believers on the basis of those mercies. We need to understand then that everything that comes next comes from the fact that God is merciful.

And this isn't just Paul expressing his own opinion. He's calling upon more than a thousand years of God's revelation to Israel and Jewish teaching.

Overwhelmingly throughout the Old Testament, God is referred to as being compassionate, merciful, and steadfast in his love. Multiple Hebrew words are used in the Old Testament to describe God this way.

One of them is often connected by context to the twisting or clenching in the abdomen. This connection between emotional and physical sensation in the body isn't unusual. We use the same kind of language today.

Paul, having deep training in both the Hebrew Scriptures and the Greek translations of them, would have understood this implication of gut-wrenching parental, mercy towards a child. And he chooses to use the same word that was used in the Greek translations of the Scriptures to express this concept for us.

And then he states simply that this kind of mercy allows for only one response. Here's what Paul says and this is from the English Standard Version.

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.

Paul contends that in response to God's gut-wrenched compassion and mercy towards us, we should present our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God.

Paul's exhortation here is strong. And while it often indicates a completed action, the grammatical structure here can also imply something that's done completely, without holding back. To make it clear that this presentation of our bodies is not a one time event, Paul adds as living sacrifices.

In other words, the sacrifice isn't killed and then destroyed by the fires of the altar. Rather it is transformed by a continual burning away of everything that separates us from God and by our continued lived out response to Him.

We should therefore understand this whole phrase, present your bodies as a living sacrifice, as a command to give ourselves unreservedly to God.

It is a call to complete and total surrender, the ongoing offering of our desires, our ambitions and control.

This is the taking up our crosses and following that Jesus speaks of and the dying to self that Paul alludes to in passages such as Galatians 2:20 and Romans 6.

It should also be noted that this dying to self, this offering ourselves up as living sacrifices, is not a loss of personal identity, but it is the giving up of our personal agendas and the pursuit of what we perceive as good. Because of our yielding to the Spirit's direction, our lives take on a new trajectory marked by obedience, love, and holiness.

Paul goes on to call this our spiritual worship, as the English Standard Version renders the Greek phrase. Other translations give us reasonable service, and at first these two might seem like incompatible phrases, even opposite translations.

How do we get spiritual and reasonable out of the same Greek word? Well, that's part of the beauty of the Greek language.

The Greek word used here is logochen, and it typically does have to do with the mind or our reasoning ability. It's the word that we get logic from. The New Testament writers, though, often use it to refer not just to the mind, but to the spirit or the soul.

It's a word that looks inside and reminds us that God cares more about our heart being aligned with him than how high our hands are raised. And it tells us that our worship is more than just mechanical response. It's something that involves everything we are.

Paul doesn't just stop with our inward being, though. He adds a second word here that turns us outward. Latreian.

This is a word that would have hit heavily for Paul's original readers because it's tied directly to priestly service. Again, the translators are trying to capture the the essence of the language.

All too often we think of worship as simply what we do inside a building at a set time of the week. What Paul is doing, though, is making it clear that worship is not an isolated event. It's not just reserved for a particular time and place.

And it's not just about us. Worship is service. Worship is life. And life should be lived as worship to God through service to him and to others.

So when Paul uses this particular phrase, logicen litrean, and what the translators are trying to underscore here is that worship is not about performative extremes. It is neither just going through the motions, nor is it irrational emotional responses.

Worship involves all of our being, that is all that we are offered to God continuously. This in turn reflects and builds upon the idea of being a living sacrifice. Now, how do we present ourselves as living sacrifices?

Paul gives us two direct commands. Do not be conformed and then be transformed. These two commands share a couple of things in common.

So let's look at those before we look at them individually. Both commands are passive. That means we aren't the ones doing the action.

The conforming and the transforming are both done to us, and yet Paul calls us to participate in that action. So how do those competing ideas hold together in real life? Let me give you an example.

Picture yourself for a moment in a canoe, floating down a river.

It's the river that's moving you downstream, but you could resist or stop the motion by grabbing a limb, hanging out over the water, or even just by stubbornly trying to steer your own course. Alternatively, you can cooperate with the river by lifting your paddles from the water and letting the current carry you wherever it takes you.

As we dive deeper into these commands, let me clarify one more thing for you. When Paul tells us to not be conformed to the world, he doesn't mean to the people around us. He's using the same idea that John does in his gospel.

The world is a system, a way of thinking and living that's in direct opposition to God. He's talking about the attitude and the pride behind the serpent's question. Did God really say?

So looking specifically at the command, do not be conformed to the pattern of this world, we can begin to see how this takes shape. Conformed here comes from a word that means to be pressed into a mold.

Other words with similar ideas that we use somewhat regularly would be assimilated or being shaped or patterned. And notice Paul starts with don't. He's telling us that we need to stop letting the world define us.

The idea here is that we're to fight against this shaping or molding pressure. We can't control what the culture around us does, but because of God's grace, we're enabled to resist its conforming power.

But can't we just choose not to be conformed? No. Passive resistance is not the answer. By choosing not to fight, you've chosen to let the pressures and the currents of this world push you around.

There's no neutral response to being conformed. You either fight it or you become like that which opposes God. We reject the world's definition of who we are so that we can accept a new reality.

And that new reality is found in Paul's second command. We must submit to God's desire to transform us completely. How does that work? Well, it's not self help. It's not self study. It's not therapy or counseling. All of those things can help, and at times they might even be necessary for true transformation to take place.

But they're just tools that God sometimes uses. Ultimately, any true transformation comes from the work of the Holy Spirit in us. He is the one who initiates and makes the transformation happen.

All we can do is accept the work he wants to do in us. Yeah, but how do I do that? How do I accept what God wants to do in me? Well, that's where the means of grace come into play.

Don't think of this as a to do list meant to be checked for your spiritual quotient. Rather, these things are the sails we unfurl to catch the wind of the Spirit and be driven along by his moving.

We experience this moving of the Spirit through the rhythm of prayer and the study of Scripture. And as we begin to flow with these rhythms, we find ourselves hungering and thirsting for them rather than being burdened by them.

These are places where we meet God both historically and in the present.

We find it in common moments that are made holy by God's presence in them, like the gathering of believers, the hearing of His Word being preached, and the singing of hymns and songs of praise. And we see it visibly at the table of communion, where we're reminded of Jesus sacrifice for our sakes and the covenant that we enter into with God.

All of these things are ways in which God works to transform us. We don't do them to earn grace. We do them to be where grace is found in action.

But is it possible for God to work outside these channels? Absolutely. He's God. He can work however he chooses. But these are paths that he has carved out and made plain for us.

And if we don't make use of them, it shouldn't surprise us when we find ourselves drifting back into the shallows. One final distinction needs to be made between conformity and transformation. Conformation, conformity, is an outward shaping.

It's essentially compliance with a set of standards, doing what you're told. This is contrasted with transformation, which is a complete and total change of nature. The Greek word for transform here is metamorphoo.

It's the word that we get metamorphosis from.

And the idea Paul wants us to understand is the complete change of nature that begins at salvation and continues through the process of sanctification or being made holy. Adam Clark, in his Commentary on the Bible, calls this change "radical" and notes it is both inside and out.

Just as the caterpillar doesn't put on a butterfly suit, but becomes a whole new creature. So you and I don't play act a different life. We become new creations in Christ.

How does all of this happen? We've talked about resisting and submitting and the means of grace. My head is spinning. Well, you know what? I hear you. Paul makes it simple for us, though.

God works our total transformation through the renewing of our minds. Don't get hung up here, though. This isn't just changing how we think. No, Paul's communicating so much more here.

Mind doesn't just mean our ability to reason or communicate. It refers to all of our inward nature.

William Greathouse, the theologian and denominational leader, says it is the character, the inner disposition, the motivating center. It is the thoughts, yes, but it's also our desires, our ambitions and our intentions.

The renewing of our minds confirms that the work God does in us is a total transformation. It is the turning outward of a life turned in on itself.

Like that butterfly, we are completely remade in a way that is visible in the way we live. All of this points to us taking on God's character rather than the world's. Greathouse continues to explain, "Set free from sin, never to allow sin to exercise its rule over our lives, we become holy as he is holy." And this isn't just a forensic or a judicial declaration. It is an actual imparting of God's holiness into us, not by our effort or will, but by His.

And thus we become not simply name bearers, i.e. Christians or people of God. We become character bearers, being made more like him each day as his image is restored in us.

And this isn't just wishful thinking. It's a real possibility because it is the promise of God.

Jesus says in John 8, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. And then he continues, "so if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed." Paul echoes this in Romans 6, "let not sin therefore reign to make you obey its passions."

If this wasn't a real possibility, the command would not just be useless, it would be cruel. You do not command or instruct someone to do something they are not capable of doing.

But thankfully, by the grace of God and His transforming work, begun at the cross and accomplished by the Spirit in us, we have been set free and are enabled to align our lives with God's.

Peter reinforces this idea when he says that God's divine power has already given us everything we need for life and godliness, that he's given given us these precious and very great promises for one specific reason. That through them we might actually become partakers of the divine nature. Let that sink in for a minute.

You aren't just acting like God. You're participating in his life, becoming like him and escaping the corruption that wants to force you into a mold of of this world.

This freedom from the rule of sin does not mean that we will never sin again. Please, please, please, please do not think I have said, "you will never sin," because I have not. That is not at all what I'm teaching. But it's clear Scripture says we are freed from the rule of sin. So what does that mean?

Well, it means that the door has been opened to the possibility that we can reject the work of sin in our lives. We can choose not to sin. It's not that we become incapable of sinning. It's that we're freed from the inevitability of sin.

And again, this doesn't occur by our own will or our power, but by the work of God in us.

And it is in this, the transformation of our being through our rejection of conformity to the world and the renewing of our minds, that we come to truly understand and fulfill the command to be living sacrifices. It is to die to sin. It is taking up your cross and following Jesus. It is participating in the life of God.

Not that we become gods or that we lose ourselves by being absorbed into the divine, but that we truly become holy, just as God is holy, perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.

The Greek word here for perfect doesn't mean without flaw. Instead it is the idea that we become everything we are supposed to be. And that can, and should, increase each day we walk with God. Understand this as becoming more fully formed each day as the Holy Spirit works in us to make us more like God. We can still stumble, we still fall short. It's not flawless performance. It is wholeness of being, which increases as God's transforming work continues in us.

And just as there are greater and greater depths to explore when we follow the deep waters way, there is always more growth in store for us. This renewal of our mind and transformation of our being allows us to resist the conformity of the world. And it enables in us an active resistance to the pressures and assimilating natures of the world as it opposes God.

Through the work of the Holy Spirit, we are empowered to live a life of obedience to God's commands, not through our own effort, but in our yielded response to God's ever present grace. Thus the Christian life, rather than being a duty of drudgery to be resignedly accepted, becomes a rhythm of participation in God's divine nature.

This participation is then exhibited in our embrace of holiness and taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, such that temptation is resisted and sin no longer reigns. It comes down to, a renewed mind results in us being new creations in Christ Jesus, to use Paul's language, not just in a new way of thinking.

That transformation, not just of the thought processes but of actual being, naturally gives rise to a new way of acting and living. We no longer live the way we used to because we're no longer the people we used to be.

Be prepared though, that may give rise to criticism by skeptics. And we should never use transformation as an excuse to escape temporal consequences. But we have the assurance that life can be different moving forward as we respond to God's grace, because we ourselves are different by God's grace.

This is precisely the pattern Jesus describes when he teaches that outward expression flows from inward reality, that "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks, and the good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth good evil." In other words, our words, our reactions, our actions are not random. They're revelations. They disclose the condition of our heart.

This means that the behavioral transformation Paul describes is not mere moral compliance, nor is it religious performance. It's not acting spiritual, whatever we might think that means. It's the visible evidence of an inward renewal.

When the mind is being renewed and the heart is being reshaped by grace, life begins to look different. What emerges from us reflects what God is doing within us. And this brings us to this final, wonderful promise that Paul leads us to in these verses.

This transforming work of God enables us to better understand who God is and what he desires for our lives. Paul wraps up these verses saying that by testing, you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Too often we spend our lives trying to figure out what God wants. The promise is that because we have been transformed by the renewing of our minds, we are able to discern the will of God by testing. The Greek word here is a word that is used to describe the testing of metals to determine what a particular metal is and its value or purity.

In the shallows, you don't need tools to navigate. You simply follow the shoreline. And for a long period of time, this was the way exploration worked. You followed what you could see and you never got out of sight of shore. But as we said before, we aren't called to stay close to shore. We're called to the deep.

And in the deep, navigation changes. You need to examine and test what's around you and observe what's going on. And going back to Peter, he reminds us that God has given us everything we need, every tool, every test, every means, and a mind and a life attuned to him, enabled by him, to follow the ebb and flow of the currents of grace. Most importantly, he has granted us his Holy Spirit, who comes alongside as an advocate and comforter to guide, instruct and speak.

And as we continue to listen to him and test life with his guidance, we learn to know God's will and find what is good, acceptable and perfect.

We're not in the deep alone. We're not in the boat alone. The boat is not even ours to steer. The Holy Spirit is with us, and he is the one who directs our course.

So let me ask you, are you being transformed by the work of the Holy Spirit, or are you letting yourself be pressed into the mold of this world?

Are you letting yourself be conformed to the pattern of this world? Are you presenting your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God? That's the deep water sway. That's the call Jesus has extended to us.

Now it's time to slip the moorings and head for the deep waters. Join me again next week. And don't forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode of the Deep Waters Way.

The Deep Waters Way, Where scripture, theology and transformation meet.