Tag Archives: Romans 12:1-2

Renewing Our Minds- #4

In our last essay I built our case for the fact that most Evangelicals don’t think. You will remember that I said that the basic problem has been that the Church has allowed itself to be more influenced by the culture than by the Bible. The result has been that the Church has been marginalized in the culture to the point that She is without a witness to the culture. She has been forced out of the market square and into the dark alleys of the culture.

In this essay I we will take a brief survey of what Scripture has to tell us about our thinking and our minds. By necessity this will be a very quick survey on the Bible’s teaching regarding the mind and thinking. Hopefully this survey will encourage you to make a more in-depth look at what Scripture has to say about these matters. For now I would like to look at selected verses and offer just a few comments on them.

Scripture on the Mind

Let’s begin our survey by looking at:

Job 38:36- “Who hath put wisdom in the inward parts? Or who hath given understanding to the heart?” 

What is the context of this verse? This verse comes in a list of questions intended to reveal the omnipotence and sovereignty of God. The obvious and expected answer to all the questions posed in this section is, “Only God!”

Why is it important for us to be reminded of this? We need this reminder because of our sinful tendency to make ourselves the god of our lives. Nowhere is this tendency more evident than in our thought life. All to often in our desire to gain insight and understanding we can easily fall into the trap of believing we did it- either through diligent study or through our own native intelligence. We can easily forget where the power to think correctly comes from. We can easily get prideful and think we are so smart that we can figure it all out on our own.

This verse reminds us that it is by God’s grace alone that we can even think at all. We are reminded here of Proverbs 1:7- “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.” Wisdom or knowledge begins with God and we must acknowledge Him as the basis for everything. If we do not acknowledge this fact we will be sent down the path of a secular, or temporal mindset. We can become like the man described in Psalms 10:4- “The wicked in his proud countenance does not seek God; God is in none of his thoughts.” 

Prov. 4:23- “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.”

It would seem that God scans our minds, testing or judging what He finds there. We are reminded of this in several other places in Scripture. For example in Jer. 6:19 we read: “Hear, O earth! Behold, I will certainly bring calamity on this people— The fruit of their thoughts, because they have not heeded My words nor My law, but rejected it.” Notice that the fruit these people received came as a result of what they thought. Also notice what the standard is for judging our thoughts. It is God’s Word.

In other words, there is a sense in which our thinking is determinative of our condition in life- whether we are blessed or cursed by God. And the standard God uses to determine whether we are blessed or cursed is His Word. This would seem to make our thinking important as to how we live our lives. 

The word translated in Proverbs 4:23 as heart has the root meaning of the center of things, including our intellect. Also, the word translated as issues here has a root meaning of geographical boundary, or fence(issues = totsaah, to-tsaw-aw´; exit, i.e. (geographical) boundary, or (figuratively) deliverance, (actively) source:—border(-s), going(-s) forth (out), issues, outgoings.). The idea here is that what we think forms the fences or boundaries of our lives. This is what our Lord told us, isn’t it? In Mark 7:20-23 we read, “And He said, “What comes out of a man, that defiles a man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within and defile a man.”

Matt. 22:37- “Jesus said to him, “ ‘Thou shall love the LORD THY GOD WITH ALL THY HEART, WITH ALL THY SOUL, AND WITH ALL THY MIND.’”

This is a straightforward command to love God with all our minds. The question that grows out of this verse is, “What does it mean to love God with our mind?”

We will be spending a great deal of time later in these lessons attempting to answer this question. But let me introduce the subject now.

One way in which we love God with our minds is to abandon the Hellenic and humanistic way of thinking that views knowledge and truth as impersonal and abstract ideas. What a mouth full!! Let me explain what I mean by that.

Who created everything? What does this fact mean for us and our thinking? What happens if we tell people that we believe that God created everything out of nothing by just the power of His spoken word, in six literal days, and all about 12,000 years ago? They look at us like we have two heads, or they think we are a simple rube with no sense at all. After all, everybody knows that “science” tells us that everything was created by a big bang billions of years ago, and the random collisions of matter and energy produced all the complex life we see around us today, right? And scientists never have any biases.

Because God is the Creator, there is no independent creation, knowledge or counsel in the universe that is beyond Him or apart from Him. In other words, there is nothing we can know or think that does not relate back to God. There is an inescapable unity of all things under God.

Hence, life, faith and knowledge are not in contradiction to one another where they are faithful to God and his Word. In other words, we are not stupid rubes because we have faith in God and believe He created everything. Instead faith and knowledge find their unity in Him. It is an expression of our faith to believe the way we believe, just as it is an expression of men’s faith who believe that everything came from a big bang. (John 1:4- “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.” John 17:3 “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”).

So knowledge is not an abstract, intellectual matter, but rather it concerns the whole being of man. For example, we cannot seek to know Jesus as just an idea. He is the living Lord that changes men’s lives totally. Also, God’s Word is not merely abstract history, or a collection of aphorisms. It is rather the living law-word of our King that cleaves men’s hearts and minds like a sword, revealing the sin that resides there. Ideas, and the world of the mind are just as real as this physical world we live in. Ideas, and not just armies, wage battles throughout history that determine the course of events.

We will have much more to say about how we are to love God with our minds as we go through this study. Suffice it to say that it involves a reexamination of our presuppositions and sinful ways of thinking, and this is a task to which we look to the Holy Spirit for help.

Rom. 1:28- “And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;”

What is going on in this verse? What is the cause, and what is the effect? The point we need to see in this verse is the relationship between our thinking and our actions. There is an indissoluble link between our thoughts and our actions. The beginning of all outward expressions of sins is a denial of the knowledge of God. How does this work?

As we have already seen there is a sense in which God scans the mind and judges what He finds there. One form of judgment described here in Romans is that God may ‘give over’ that mind to debasement that results in all kinds of gross outward sins (convenient = becoming, fit).

Men cannot break with God in their thinking and expect to live like covenant-keepers, or think like covenant-keepers. As we just pointed out, ideas have very real consequences for how we live our lives. Once we begin to acknowledge presuppositions that are in error, we can expect more and more error to creep into our thinking, and produce bad fruit in our lives.

Rom. 8:7- “Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.”

Here in stark contrast is presented to us the antithesis in humankind. Men are divided into one of two categories, those who love God, and those who do not love God; those who keep God’s covenant, and those who do not. This antithesis was established right after Adam fell (Gen. 3:15), manifested itself immediately in the first two sons Adam and Eve had, and continues down to this day.

Nowhere is this antithesis more apparent than in the thinking of these two groups. There is a great difference between the mind of the covenant-keeper and that of the covenant breaker. One example of this difference is given to us in this verse.

We are told that the mind of the carnal man cannot be subject to the law of God. In other words, it is subject to something other than God’s Law. It is dominated or controlled by something else. This subjection to something else means it is at war with God, and at war with those who’s thinking is subject to God and His Law.

Let’s look at an example of what is meant here. Many people in our day deny that there is anything beyond this material universe. They deny the existence of God and the spiritual realm. “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you die.” “Grab all you can now, you only go around once.”

For those who deny the immaterial, they are left with having their minds dominated, controlled and limited by this world. All that they see and think is limited to the material world they see around them. They have no understanding of the spiritual, and thus are not influenced by the spiritual or eternal in their thinking. If you try to tell them about spiritual things they laugh at you, or curse you. All they know is what they perceive with their senses. They are closed off to the vast realm of the eternal and the spiritual.

And thus were we before we were saved. Our minds were bound by this world until God’s Spirit brought life to them. But the influence of this worldly thinking did not disappear with the entrance of the Holy Spirit in us.

Which leads us to:

Rom. 12:1-2- “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. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.” (Eph. 4:23 “and be renewed in the spirit of your mind”)

What did we say renewal meant? It means to renovate, to make over and make new. Renewing our minds involves changing their orientation and thought patterns so that they conform to those that please our Lord. This is a process that requires the knowledge of the gospel, the power of God’s Spirit, and an orientation towards the eternal.

In particular this involves re-orienting our minds away from a secular and temporal point of view to an eternal and spiritual orientation. When this happens our whole view of the world changes. Our minds are made new, and things which we did not believe or understand before now make complete sense. (My views on creation.)

We will have much more to say about this question of renewing our minds in the lessons ahead.

Phil. 2:5- “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus,”

This verse is really the crux of the whole matter. It gives us the target we should strive for as we work to renew our minds.

What is the ‘mind of Christ’? How is it different from our minds? As we think about the life of Christ and how He acted and reacted we begin to understand His mind. It is first of all a mind that is not driven by pride or ambition. It is one that recognizes its dependence on the Father, is content to do His will, and which views all of reality from His perspective. It is the Christian mind that we hope to discuss in detail in a few weeks.

This is really the purpose of our study. It is my hope to encourage you to begin developing the mind of Christ. That is to say, with the help of the Holy Spirit, to renew your minds and think God’s thoughts after Him. 

So let’s summarize what we have learned in this brief survey. First, God is vitally interested in what we think. He is actively scanning our thoughts, judging them and giving us the fruits of those thoughts. Second, in this way our thoughts are determinative of our condition in life as well as the actions we engage in. Third, when we exclude God from our thinking it sets a course for our lives, as well as a way of viewing the world around us that is different from those who do not exclude God. Finally, we are to work at reorienting our minds and developing the mind of Christ. This takes active effort on our part, along with the work of the Holy Spirit. As we engage in this activity we are loving God with our minds.

Renewing Our Minds- #3

In our last essay we looked at the Biblical example of the disciple Apollos for a mind being renewed. Apollos was from the city of Alexandria in Egypt and was highly educated in the classical culture of the day. He is also described as an eloquent man who was also well trained in the Scriptures.

We can conclude from his name and training that he converted to Judaism and also to an early form of Christianity, though we are told he only knew about John’s baptism and didn’t have a full understanding of the Gospel.

At this point he is introduced to Aquila and Priscilla. We are told that they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately. Fortunately Apollos was not too proud to hear what they had to teach him. He was willing to be further renewed in his thinking, and thus be more useful in God’s kingdom.

The story of Apollos and his willingness to continue to study and to be corrected is not always the norm in the church. Let’s explain what I mean.

The Problem

Does it surprise you to know that most Christians in our day do not think? Bertrand Russell, the British philosopher, mathematician, and social reformer has written, “Most Christians would rather die than think- in fact they do.” 

One does not need to look very long at Christianity Today, or watch much TBN to come away with many such examples of non-thinking among our brothers. 

Sadly, there is a great misunderstanding in the Church today about the role of the mind and the necessity for our minds to be renewed. Does it surprise you to hear me say that?

I am an adherent to the Reformed tradition which has a reputation for intellectualism. In fact, some of our Charismatic brothers would claim we have taken this attribute to an extreme. But in their desire to avoid the problem of over thinking they have fallen into the opposite ditch.

If you watch TBN, go to most ‘Christian’ movies, or look into any Christian book sellers catalog you will see little of any substance or weight. What you will find is a plethora of pop-psychology self-help guides, apocalyptic end times fantasies, and “You too can manipulate God,” books. Missing is substantive, distinctly Christian works on practical theology, economics, bioethics, education, or gender issues.

Worse yet, far too many Christians, when asked their opinions on such issues will blissfully parrot what they have seen on Oprah or the 700 Club instead of what they have read and studied from Scripture.

I am not talking here about stupidity, what we would call the ability to think. That is to say, I don’t think Christians are stupid or unable to think. What I am talking about is the desire to think- to think deeply and critically about God, His creation, our interaction with that creation, and what God says about these interactions in His Word. In these postmodern times the Church discounts the importance of truth and the life of the mind.

Does it absolve us of our responsibility to say, “I’m already too busy? I don’t have time to read or think.” Is it enough to say, “All that stuff is beyond me? It makes no sense to me and has no relation to my life.” Or, can we dodge by claiming, “That’s the job of Seminary professors?”

As we hope to show in our examination of Scripture in our next essay these arguments just don’t cut it. As we have already seen, we have been called by God to engage in distinctively Christian thought, and He will hold us accountable to that calling.

What is going on? What is the cause of this problem? I believe that this failure stems from a subtle syncretism of culture into the intellectual life of the church. What do I mean by this?

It simply means that the thinking of the ungodly, postmodern culture around us is slowly seeped into the church until it has polluted her thinking. In other words, our thinking has been taken captive by the media [radio, TV, movies, and the press], the temporal [earthy, materialistic], and the pragmatic [whatever works or is expedient]. These now dictate to the church how she will think.

The result has been the replacement of the spiritual and intellectual uniqueness of our faith by the sensuous and emotional trappings of our culture. We have allowed the transcendent reference points from which we can judge ourselves to be replaced by the ever-varying fads and emotionalism of the popular culture.

The church is no longer looking to the absolutes of God’s Word to guide herself and her thinking. She now looks to the fads in our culture and the ever-changing standards of our culture to judge herself. The church’s desire for heaven has been replaced by a desire for happiness, or worse yet, a desire for acceptance by the culture (John 15:18).

This problem of anti-intellectualism is significant for a number of reasons. Perhaps the most significant is the fact that the modern Church has abdicated its intellectual authority, and so has lost the ability to think Christianly and be the salt and light in the world that she has been called to be. 

There was once a time when the Church and her ministers were revered and respected for their knowledge, wisdom, and ability apply the eternal truth of God’s Word to the important issues of everyday life. 

This is no longer the case and the result of this has been that the Church has been pushed to the fringes of the culture because of her inability to seriously address cultural, moral, philosophical, educational, medical, ethical, and other issues. The result is that She has been left without a witness in the culture.

We must understand that the anti-intellectualism of the modern church has rendered Her culturally irrelevant and unable to address the important issues in our day. She has become a cultural imitator rather than being the cultural originator or leader. She reacts to issues instead of being a proactive leader on important issues.

A simple test will show what I mean- how long has it been since you saw CNN interview an Evangelical Pastor to get his thoughts on the war in the Middle East, or the ethics of cloning? It used to be that the Pastor of a local church was held up as the greatest authority in the town when it came to deciding on important issues facing the town. Sadly, people of religion are now characterized as dolts and close-minded idiots.

This situation has led to the fact that most Christians have now accepted a framework for their mental activity that is constructed by a secular or carnal mind. That is, a mind whose criteria reflects secular evaluations, rather than explicitly Christian evaluations.

That is to say, Christians have abandoned the Word and mind of God as their standards for thought and are allowing something else to inform and direct their thinking.

The world is dictating to the Christian how they should think, rather than the other way around. This is the problem we face. And this is the problem we will be examining in the coming essays.

Renewing our Minds- #2

The Example of Apollos

In the first essay in this series we began by examining the context for Paul’s command to us to renew our minds.

We saw that this command came at the end of the first 11 chapters of the Book of Romans. These first 11 chapters are Paul’s formal teaching on doctrine, and as he often does in his letters, this formal teaching is followed by practical application in the life of his readers.

Paul makes the point that because of the great mercy shown to us by God we should now engage in a life long process of changing the way we think and act in this world.

So here we have the pattern laid out for us. The Holy Spirit is put in us by God and we are regenerated. We then begin the life long process of sanctifying our lives and our thinking. We do this, not because we think we can get God in our debt so that He must bless us and let us into heaven when we die. We do the hard work because we are thankful for the grace and mercy He has shown us in Christ.

So let’s look at a Biblical example of this process in action in the life of the believer Apollos.

Apollos

The Bible gives us many examples of men and women who were wise both in their knowledge of the day, as well as in their application of God’s Word to their life and culture.

For example, we can look at Moses who was “instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians” (Acts. 7:22). God then took him through a 40 year course in thinking, followed by a 40 year course of application as he led the Israelites through the wilderness.

Daniel, Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego were all educated and gifted young men who were taught the language and literature of the Chaldeans (Dan. 1:4), and were subsequently used mightily by God because of their knowledge and ability to think.

Paul was “educated at the feet of Gamaliel” (Acts 22:3), who conducted the most distinguished academy in first-century Jerusalem. Paul then had to be re-educated by God so that he could lead the early church. Many other examples could be cited.

But one man in particular is a good example of the process we all undergo to renew our minds. He can be found in the book of Acts, chapter 18, beginning at verse 24:

 “Now a certain Jew named Apollos, born at Alexandria, an eloquent man and mighty in the Scriptures, came to Ephesus. This man had been instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things of the Lord, though he knew only the baptism of John. So he began to speak boldly in the synagogue. When Aquila and Priscilla heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately. And when he desired to cross to Achaia, the brethren wrote, exhorting the disciples to receive him; and when he arrived, he greatly helped those who had believed through grace; for he vigorously refuted the Jews publicly, showing from the Scriptures that Jesus is the Christ.” 

Note a couple of things we are told in these verses. We are told that Apollos was from the Egyptian city of Alexandria. Alexandria was famous for one of the Eight Wonders of the ancient world, the great library that was the most famous in all that era. Associated with this library was a museum, but this museum was not like our museums. It was  something that was the equivalent of our present university.

Because of these institutions Alexandria was the premier center of Greco-Roman thought and learning. Many of its citizens were well educated in the classical culture of the day. Apollos was no exception. 

Note that Apollos is described as an “eloquent man.” In other words, he could speak well before crowds. It seems reasonable to assume that he must have been trained in the rhetoric and dialectic for which Alexandria and its museum were famous. He was a man steeped in the education and culture of his day.

Judging by his Greek name he must have been a convert to Judaism. We are also told that he only knew of the baptism of John. Apollos knew of the forerunner  to our Lord, and he knew of John’s baptism of repentance from dead works. But he did not know that Messiah had come. He knew the way (the path, the conduct), the water baptism (repent, expect) but did not know Messiah (grace).

We can conclude that at some point God put His Holy Spirit into the man and began the journey that results in Apollos being born again. This regeneration then began the process of renewal in mind and life that all Christians must undergo.

Was the process successful? As far as it went, yes it was. Note that Apollos was competent enough in his knowledge and application of the Old Testament to successfully argue with the Jewish leaders of his day.

But he did not know it all. He did not have a complete understanding of the Gospel, but only knew of John’s baptism. But please note that what he did know and understand he taught boldly and accurately.

Fortunately for him when Aquila and Priscilla heard him and realized his deficient knowledge. We are told that they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately. Fortunately Apollos was not too proud to hear what they had to teach him. He was willing to be further renewed in his thinking, and thus be more useful in God’s kingdom.

Note that he ends up being a great asset in the spread of the Gospel and the defense of the faith against Jewish opposition. But more than just that, Paul makes several interesting comments about this man in his first letter to the Corinthians.

His influence grew so much that when the Church in Corinth began having troubles some there claimed to be “of Apollos” (1Cor. 1:12). Paul mentions Apollos six more times in that letter (3:4, 5, 6,22; 4:6), and especially note 16:12 in which we can see that Paul thought very highly of the work of this man.

So here we have a man who was educated in the culture of his day, who had converted to Judaism and studied the Old Testament until he could refute the Jews of his day and show them Christ. Yet despite this knowledge and skill he was still not too proud to be corrected and thus increase his knowledge and usefulness in God’s kingdom. The result is a man used mightily by God in the early days of a very troublesome church.

this is the Biblical pattern we all must follow. Once we are regenerated the work just begins. We are called to spend the rest of our lives sanctifying both our words, our deeds, and our thoughts.

As we shall see in our next essay, sadly, this is not always the case for Christians.