Dear Student of the Word,
I had two wisdom teeth extracted earlier today, so while I am home recuperating I thought I would send out this next installment of our Romans study. (You see I told you last time I would not take as long to send out this installment!) This week we go to Romans 12, which contains the popular and helpful verse about renewing your mind. This is what I had to say about the first few verses of Romans 12 in part one of this seven-part study:
Study Twelve, Part One
12:1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God-this is your spiritual act of worship.2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is-his good, pleasing and perfect will.
12:1 – I have at times been guilty of a partial commitment to God. At that point, I gave Him my free time, but not my career. I yielded my mind, but not my mouth. I would give Him some of my finances, but not surrender the control of all. Here Paul urged that we offer our bodies as a living sacrifice to God. God isn’t interested in halfway measures. Since He is Lord of all, He cannot be Lord of some of you and me. So God wants your entire being to surrender to Him and His Lordship.
The word sacrifice here has a different connotation than we give it today. In modern terms, a sacrifice would be defined as the following: You have five dollars and you feel impressed that the Lord wants you to give it to someone in need. But you don’t want to give it; it’s all you have. So you resist, but then yield to God’s direction. That is what we call a sacrifice, but that isn’t the Biblical concept at all.
A Biblical concept of a sacrifice is giving to God what already belongs to Him. It has nothing to do with your attitude or whether the “sacrifice” brings you hardship. So if you are instructed to give your body as a living sacrifice, you are simply giving to God what already belongs to Him. If you worship with hands lifted, that isn’t a sacrifice because you don’t want to raise your hands or feel embarrassed, even if you it anyway. It is a sacrifice because your hands are God’s, and when you lift them you are simply following the directions of their Owner and Maker.
If you are holding back on God and then yield to His demands, that isn’t a sacrifice for you. That has simply revealed a rebellious, sinful attitude. God doesn’t need you or me doing Him any favors. He needs our obedience and submission to His absolute Lordship. Where have you been ‘sacrificing’ to the Lord that isn’t really a sacrifice at all, according to this definition of sacrifice? What are you going to do about your attitude in that area of sacrifice – yielding to God what already belongs to Him?
12:2 – Christians of all people should not struggle with knowing God’s will. The problem with knowing God’s will doesn’t lie in God’s ability to speak it, but your ability to hear and process it. For you to process God’s will, you must ask, believe that He will reveal it to you, and confront any thinking that may work against you carrying out His will. This is why Paul instructed that our transformation comes from a change of thinking, not a change of behavior.
Paul said not to be conformed to this world. Culture and the prevailing mindset or worldview in any generation are powerful tools. They shape us. If the prevailing mindset is that you need to buy a new car every three years, then that mindset is a hard one to escape. It presses and shapes your thinking and consequently your behavior and buying habits. If your culture tells you that you should follow one particular political party or belong to one denomination, then you will follow and defend that party or denomination. Culture is powerful.
There is only one way you can break free from that cultural thinking and that is by having my mind renewed. As one preacher said, you must be free from “stinkin’ thinkin’”. This will lead to my transformation. This word from transformation is from the Greek word that is the root for the English word metamorphosis. It is what happens to a caterpillar when it goes into a cocoon. When it comes out a butterfly, it has experienced a metamorphosis. That is the kind of change that God wants to bring about in your life through a renewed mind.
Are you fighting against or cooperating with the transformation God wants to cause in you r life? Do you find yourself changing your mind and thinking new thoughts, being open to new things? If not, then you are in danger of being conformed to the thinking of this world, without realizing it!
As always, I welcome your comments to this week's study. For additional Bible studies, check out my website archive, which contains a complete collection of all my verse-by-verse New Testament studies, along with the unpublished volume of The Faith Files.
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