- Introduction
Last week, from Psalm 63, we talked about how our thoughts could be shifted, from the negative, toward an appreciation of God’s intimate presence with us. Instead of the negative self-image we can develop, we can accept what Jesus thinks about us, what Jesus has done for us, and see our new identity that comes through him. We saw that in God’s presence, His truth could dismantle the lies that our negative side can come to believe. In all this, we can ‘rise above’ our circumstances … toward God’s future for us.
If we want to cement in this change in the way we think and feel – then we need to have our minds totally renewed … not just how we think about our own situations, but also how we think about everything – particularly about … what God’s highest priorities might be. And from my reading of the Bible, God’s highest priority is connecting lost people with God’s love and grace. In Romans chapter 12, we have the beginning of Paul’s long “appeal” to have our mind transformed and renewed.
- Understanding the Text
We’re going to do a bit of a bible study on these two great verses (at the beginning of Romans 12). Paul says “I appeal to you …”. This seems to be a mix of instruction (on one hand) … like “I urge you”, and a passionate request (on the other) … like “I beg you” – an instruction for our own good, and a passionate request … for everyone else’s good. Why would Paul “appeal” like this? What might have been at stake? Paul is ‘appealing’ that his readers … will take all the necessary steps to grow and go forward in their spiritual life. And there is a whole world in need of some transforming (is there not)! So … will Paul’s “appeal” be successful?
When a bowler in cricket ‘appeals’ to the umpire to give the batter ‘out’ – there is a fair bit at stake – it could go either way!! ‘HowZat’!!! Often there’s a fair bit of urging, combined with some bowler passion – as there is a lot riding on the outcome! If the umpire says ‘out’ … then the bowler has been successful, and this particular batter will NOT make any more runs. However, if the umpire gives the batter ‘not out’, then it’s like that very good ball the bowler delivered had NO value after all … it’s as if it had never really happened. The “appeal” turns out to be … just wasted breath! So, in the same way, it’s actually the response to such an “appeal” (as Paul makes) that counts, more than just the “appeal” itself!
Paul has spent 11 chapters explaining the depth of the Gospel message (e.g. 6:4-11), and now he is ‘appealing’ for the Christians in Rome to live it out. How will they respond? How will we respond?? If these Jesus-followers in Rome fail to live out the Gospel message – while the Gospel will be NO LESS true, it won’t make anywhere near the difference … to the people of that society … that it should!! When Paul ‘appeals’ … he hopes … he expects … a positive response!
We should react favourably to Paul’s “appeal”, due to all of what God has done for us already! For them, and for us, what we know to be true, what we declare to be true … needs to be applied to our everyday life. This is our discipleship – this is what we should be about. To believe something to be true, and then effectively ignore it … would be tragic. Paul spends the rest of his ‘Letter to the Romans’ spelling out all the different areas of life that should be touched and transformed by the Gospel.
Verses 1 & 2 form the introduction to this. Paul is ‘appealing’ to us … NOT WITHOUT any basis for doing so. Rather, Paul is ‘appealing’ to us … on the basis of “the mercies of God” – that have been so lavishly expended on us – and still travel with us … so that we can still rise from the dust every time we fall. On that basis (“the mercies of God”), Paul wants us to become that ‘new creation’ we were saved to be – a living breathing sacrifice … fully aligned with God’s will. Paul is using “the mercies of God” as the leverage for his “appeal”. That would seem to me … to be fair enough!
When Paul says “present your bodies … (as a living sacrifice)”, he is meaning our total being – where our ‘body’ is seen as the vehicle through which our life is lived out, how our choices are activated, and how our deepest attitudes are evidenced. And when we refer to the word “sacrifice” here – this is NOT so much a giving-up (as we often view ‘sacrifice’), but rather more of a ‘taking-up’ … a ‘taking-up’ of the risen life of the ultimate ‘living sacrifice’ – Jesus. This is so that we can be ‘set apart’ (or “holy and acceptable”) – fit for God’s purposes and ready for participation in God’s mission.
God gave us His Son … to redeem our whole person, and beyond that … the whole world! Our whole life experience, in every conceivable situation, should declare a wholehearted worship of God! This is the essence of “spiritual worship” – NOT something that we do on the outside to look good and appear righteous, but something that comes from deep within us and then naturally spills over – that is “spiritual worship”. This is about having our characters fully formed – from the inside out – such that we are the same (reformed) person wherever we are and whatever we are doing.
Verse 2 also ‘appeals’ to us, this time … to have our ‘minds renewed’ – to NOT just be blindly following worldly thinking … or as Paul puts it, being “conformed to this world”. We should never be reduced to this or stuck with this … just conforming uncritically to the popular patterns before us and around us (without proper thought and consideration). This is Paul’s call to non-conformity! The priorities of God’s Kingdom often clash with the world’s agendas – and we should be able to know HOW and WHERE! [God’s will may not immediately be … what we would choose for ourselves – unless we actively pursue that ‘renewed mind’. With a ‘renewed mind’ we can even follow Jesus in decisions like choosing the cross … over other easier temptations (or, at least, by taking up our cross and following Jesus … as the Gospel teaches).]
The “world” (in the negative sense used here) can easily impinge on us or pressure us: through various forms of media, certain values and language; materialistic pressure, social pressure, ideological pressure. Through all this, we should NOT allow our decision for Jesus to be weakened! J.B. Phillips famously translated this: “Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God remould your minds from within”.
In this way, from an outward perspective, we are to be drawing people out of darkness and into light – the wonderful light of Jesus (1 Peter 2:9). From verse 3 of this chapter on, Paul launches into an array of qualities and attributes that follow on from being “living sacrifices” and having our ‘mind renewed’. That list begins with humility, then goes into communal giftedness, practical love, joy, patience, prayerfulness, service and hospitality. And it goes on and on from there.
- Renewing our Minds
It is our minds that do the reasoning and the decision-making. The mind is often where the battle takes place between conflicting desires or objectives. From where we come from, we could easily need a ‘metamorphosis’ of the mind – just like when a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. Our whole way of looking at life, and other people, and our physical environment, may need to change. So too … our values and goals.
If the leverage for complying with all this is “the mercies of God” (v 1), then the goal is ‘discerning the will of God’ (v 2). We need to be in a position to more easily and naturally discern, understand and activate God’s will – and it is by the ‘renewing of our minds’ that this can happen. We can then come to more instinctively know what to say and how to act. We can really go where God calls. Our goal … what we need to know, increasingly so … is God’s will … i.e. what is, “good, acceptable and perfect”.
We may NOT be able to live “perfect”, but we DO need to know what “perfect” looks like. And “perfect” looks like Jesus. The “good” and the “acceptable” and the “perfect” … start within the mind, heart and teaching of Jesus. Slowly but surely, if we study Jesus hard, and really get to know him … Jesus’ attitudes become our attitudes, Jesus’ mind becomes our mind … moving well-and-truly, above-and-beyond … our human desires.
What does “perfect” look like?! Jesus took the time to offer living water to a Samaritan woman who had experienced major relationship difficulties. Although others sought to stop him, Jesus stopped and encouraged the children to come to him so that he could bless them. Jesus travelled a distance to assure a foreign woman that the Gospel of mercy was for her benefit too. Although sorely tested by Satan, Jesus chose God’s will as against anything that would be more comfortable or convenient. Despite their rejection by mainstream society, Jesus reached out a hand of healing to those suffering from leprosy, demon-possession, blindness, etc. And, Jesus was sure to spend time in prayer with his father, every time he needed to do so. That’s what “perfect” looks like! And that, of course, is just touching the surface (of Jesus’ life)!
Whenever we start to think about our (individual) freedom to decide, we should hear Paul saying to us, “I appeal to you brothers and sisters … by the mercies of God”!! True freedom is living in God’s space – with a full appreciation of God’s grace – allowing the Holy Spirit to speak words into our spirit – being a citizen of God’s Kingdom – and NOT being enslaved to ways and norms foisted upon us (by others or the ‘world’ in general).
- Practical Work
This is our challenge. However, the good news is, that it is also the work of God’s Spirit in us – once we have surrendered ourselves to the process. How can we then tell … if our mind is renewed? The level to which our mind is renewed, is seen in what our ‘default settings’ are. This concerns what we think about, what we read, what we watch, what it is … we seek to learn. What is a ‘default setting’? We take a new appliance, like a television, out of the box, and turn it on. What happens then? It functions according to its factory default settings – how the menu has been pre-set. If we don’t like these, we get into the menu, and change these settings.
Our ‘default settings’ were pretty good when we were born, but they have been adjusted (and NOT necessarily in a good way) over time … by various influences. Part of our salvation, discipleship, renewing our mind, and becoming ‘new creation’, is undergoing a re-set of our cognitive default settings – a reset of the way we think … under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. This is so that, as we have said, more often than not, we can naturally discern and embrace what the will of God is … for each situation we find ourselves in.
What are our current ‘default settings’? We could ask ourselves the following questions: What do we think about when we become conscious in the morning? Where does our mind first turn? What are our priorities for the day? Where does God figure in those? Commentator David Coffey suggests that we do an audit of our thought-life: we should write down ways in which our thought-life is still conformed to this world (and needs to be transformed), and then take the necessary action. Where necessary – we have to work out how to re-set our default settings, or as Paul says it, how we get our minds renewed? What part do we play in this? What is God willing to do for us? How can we respond positively to Paul’s “appeal”?
I’ve been reading about something called ‘neuroplasticity’ – the idea that the brain is more like ‘pliable putty’ than ‘rigid porcelain’. Therefore, what we think about and do … changes our brain. In this way we can actively participate in a re-wiring process. This is from a recent book by Charles Stone titled “Holy Noticing”. One scientific study showed that a group of nuns who had been practicing ‘centring prayer’ for 15 years, had significant neurological changes in their brains (you would assume in a good way). Another study showed that participants who completed a course, followed by regular prayer for an average of 27 minutes a day, had their brains get thicker in areas that promote learning, empathy and compassion – and their brains shrink in areas that facilitate fear, anxiety and stress.
Then, so-called ‘competitive neuroplasticity’ … describes the brain’s tendency to look for neglected neurons to recruit for new purposes. The more you think about something (for instance, reflect on the truth in scripture) the more your brain allocates its real estate to the subject of those thoughts. 20 centuries ago, Paul called all this, “renewing your mind”. The opposite holds true as well. If you repeatedly focus thoughts on negative experiences, those negative thoughts get wired more deeply into your brain. In summary – what we think about – our mental habits – what we give our attention to – what we read – what we watch – shapes our brain … for good or for ill (which, of course, in turn, shapes our behaviour).
We need to pay attention to the impact of all the information that is coming at us every day. What is going to fit with “good, acceptable, and perfect”? We need to process well … all the media in front of us. So, it must be obvious to all, that reading the Word of God, the Bible, especially, I would say, that which particularly speaks about Jesus, is certainly the way to go. We look to Jesus – we watch his actions, listen to his words, and observe his character. The longer we watch Jesus and listen to his words, the more enthralled we can become with him, and less so with the world. As we choose the Bible as our guide, we are simultaneously lessening the influence of negative media.
In this way, according to Paul’s truth in the first century, and the theories of ‘neuroplasticity’ now, we will expand the areas of the brain that embrace God’s will (while reducing the areas that conform unhappily with the world); and we will recruit those neglected neurons … in the service of God … absorbing them with truth about Jesus. If we come to the Bible with the right questions, the questions being prompted by God’s Spirit, all with a humble heart – we will experience a renewal of our mind.
- Conclusion
How can we tell if our mind is being renewed? A ‘renewed mind’ will see ourselves, others, and the world in general, and God too … from the perspective of the cross, and the resurrection. There are forgiven works in progress … like us … who are in the process of renewal. There are those who are lost and broken ... who are currently being invited … through hospitality and kindness … into an experience of forgiveness. There are those who are rejecting mercy and forgiveness, and promoting evil – thus embedding systemic evil and injustice … that the followers of Jesus will stand against. All this, at the same time, produces a rejection of sin, yet a love for sinners. A renewed mind knows clearly … what is good, acceptable and perfect, and thereby takes the right action … from moment to moment.
- Post-Message Blessing
In the conclusion to his letter to the Philippians, Paul said, “Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (4:8).
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