When it comes to our worldview and values Paul says we are to renew our minds to align them with kingdom values. This renewal implies change, repentance. Repentance, a change of mind and heart, is part of salvation, yet repentance is not meant to be a one-time act that leads to salvation, it is meant to be a lifestyle that seeks to continually align our thinking and acting with the values of scripture. Our problem in the church is both wrong or poor doctrine, orthodoxy, and wrong practice, orthopraxy. Yet to be found faithful in both we need to develop the ability to swim against the strong currents of our culture. We are daily inundated with billboards, seemingly ‘omnipresent’ social media, regular media and in general a culture heading in the opposite direction of a scriptural worldview. I don’t think that as believers we intentionally choose to be conformed to the world, we simply become immersed in our culture and don’t know how to live out the old expression that we are to ‘be in the world but not of it.’
In Romans 12:2 Paul says very clearly that the solution is to renew our minds. However, I think the primary problem we encounter in trying to renew our minds is earlier in Paul’s exhortation. Let’s look at our passage again.
1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. 2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Romans 12:1–2 (NKJV)
Paul pairs renewing our minds with presenting our bodies, our whole lives, as a sacrifice. We see this same concept in Romans 6:1-4. This is really a description of Paul’s later summary statement in Romans 12:1-2 about presenting our whole selves as a living sacrifice and transforming our thinking.
11 Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. 12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. 13 And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. 14 For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace. Romans 6:11–14 (NKJV)
This pairing of the principles of Romans 6 with Romans 12 becomes more obvious when we find that the word ‘reckon’ in Greek in 6:11 has the same root as ‘reasonable’ in 12:1. Paul is saying in both instances that it is simply the logical thing to do and it is by extension a spiritual act. The word instruments in 6:13 also means ‘weapon.’ The presentation of our body to His service and the considering of ourselves as dead to our former way of life, sin, are both acts of spiritual warfare that establish and enforce His victory in our lives and make us salt and light in our culture.
I encourage you to reflect on these things and in my next post I will delve further into what kingdom values look like.
