Renewing the Christian Mind
A sermon by Pastor Todd D. Baucum
Preached Sunday, May 19, 2013
Romans 12:1-2 (ESV)
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind..”
1. The Encouraging Appeal.
Chapter 12 is set apart from the previous section, where Paul has affirmed our justification by Christ’s death and resurrection, and his righteousness applied to our deficit. It is established that our standing before God is based on God’s prior electing grace and mercy on undeserving sinners. He has expounded at length of the mystery of the Gospel -that sinners who deserve wrath and judgment are recipients of the manifold riches of God’s grace.
Now he takes this to the practical application of this truth. Truth is in order to goodness. Theory comes before application. Thinking comes before action.
Notice however, how Paul makes his appeal for the Christians at Rome to live a sacrificial life of radical obedience to Christ. He says, in the Greek – (l iterally), “I am along with you calling you to live in light of this extravagant Mercy of God”. He is not pontificating from his seat of authority and saying “you ingrates shape up or ship out”. He counts himself as one whom taking the call of obedience along side of fellow believers. Paul is always the humble Apostle, understanding that he is the chief of sinners. What is the appeal? The allusion is to the OT sacrificial system. Now Christ has fulfilled the law, there is no need for any further sacrifice. Our obedience is not filling up anything that is lacking in our account. That is not the purpose of obedience. We don’t need to win favor with God, if Christ is our savior. The reason for obedience is gratitude. Thomas Watson, the Puritan divine said, “Gratitude is the rent we owe to God.” God redeems us fully, gloriously rescues us from bondage to sin. Our response is therefore to show mercy, show love and that love is revealed by a desire to please, - in a word, to obey him.
John 14:15 (ESV) "If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
In the Old Testament, the worshipper would bring in an animal, a goat or a ox, for example. It was unblemished, the best of the pick. It was costly, and the animal would be sacrificed and its life taken. The picture was to show the high price of perfection – of obedience – which we can never rise to – so something has to pay the price. In Christ, we have a perfect, unblemished Lamb of God – who paid the price for our imperfect obedience. Yet, Paul is saying under God’s grace – in the new covenant – we have a spiritual altar that requires a sacrifice of love and gratitude. We give our whole selves, our bodies and our souls – with a dedication of living and daily obedience. There is no altar in our church. We miss out on the biblical sense of daily obedience when we resort to outward religious activity and ceremony. Biblical worship is about daily obedience. It is about living daily in the awesome realization of what God has done for you. Any other kind of worship is a mockery and religious show. Worship has to connect to life.
“…offer yourselves as a living sacrifice…which is your spiritual (logical) worship.”
2. Our Rational Response to Mercy.
Spiritual worship is Rational Worship, in that it begins with thinking and reasoning rightly about God. The word Paul uses is “logical”. Because of God’s mercy the logical response is one of worship, which is literally giving ourselves wholeheartedly, body and soul to Christ on a daily basis. It is logical because it requires us to think upon the mercy and goodness of God. Christianity is a rational faith. It may at time require a trust that goes beyond sensory explanation, but it never, ever requires what some call blind faith – or just irrational leap. The Danish philosopher Kierkegaard and the early Church Father, Tertullian both said “faith is believing what is absurd”.
It is true that the world thinks the message of the Gospel - of our redemption by the folly of the Cross of Christ – as just plain absurdity. The Greeks in Athens – at the Areopagus, thought Paul was smoking something strange – and could not hold to the reality of a resurrection. They were all about trying to transcend this bodily earthy life. Christ is all about trying to put reality into this life. Paul’s main emphasis in the rest of Romans is chiefly about – how the Gospel transforms all of life. In the rest of this chapter it is about the transformation of our relationships at church. In Chapter 13 about our relationships with the civil government. It will continue to be fleshed out, how the transformed life of a redeemed person – changes the way they think and from there it changes everything.
My first church experience was an environment that was very ant-intellectual - many would highlight that the first disciples were uneducated. That intellectual questions and pursuits were a waste of time. All one needed was faith and obedience to God’s Word.
I would then read passages like, Isaiah 1:18 (ESV)
"Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord:
though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red like crimson,
they shall become like wool.
And all through the book of Acts, Paul reasoned out the message of the Gospel in his outreach to both Jews and Greeks.
Of course, Paul was exceptional – but then most of the NT was written by him.
3. The Renewing of our Minds.
Whether one is influenced by the anti-intellectual elements of fundamentalism or the average Christian experience in the church – which is the influence of the world’s thinking – both lead to minds that are not renewed by the Holy Spirit applying God’s eternal truth to your thinking.
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind..”
Our minds need to be reformatted, like the software in a computer - our old ways of thinking were dominated by sin and therefore are distorted. This renewal of the mind is life – long. It does not happen overnight. It is also related to transformed living in direct proportion to the time we spend in having our minds renewed by biblical truth.
Consider the new evidence – by US census – growing number of NONES - no religious affiliation. Belief – or non belief – is reflected in our current moral laxity. Fifty years ago, only 3 percent of the population would check no religious affiliation, in the recent census the number has jumped to 20 percent who have no religious affiliation of any kind.
The more trash we take into our minds, from what we read, study, or by entertainment – the more trash will come from our decisions and actions. Jesus said, “as a man thinks, so is he”. Corruption of life comes from the heart – mind.
We need a transformed way of living that takes Christian truth and displays it before a world that is increasingly becoming illogical, mean, and ugly. The Christian world view offers the only true esthetics, standard of beauty that brings truth and meaning to the world. We live in a world, that promotes pornography and a counterfeit beauty - half-truths wrapped in academic respectability as knowledge.
Philip. 4:8 (ESV)
Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
How can one know what the Good is – what God’s will is , without any way of discerning it in a world of competing claims of truth? What has influenced your mind – just by doing the simple math of what you take into your mind? Do not our lives bear the result? Remember, how Paul began. I beseech you brothers and sisters – I come along side you – with the same need. By God’s grace and help let us have our minds renewed and our lives transformed as we think – mediate and reflect on the mercy of God – who did what was beyond logic to save sinners like me.
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