Be Transformed

It has been a real joy to be with you this weekend and especially this topic of being faithful.  It’s a challenge to go through this life and be faithful.  It’s what we want to be said at the end, to be called good and faithful servants.

So it’s helpful to have friends, isn’t it?  As we try to be faithful.  And it’s helpful to be encouraged by one another.  So I want to say that I have been very encouraged by you all.  I have enjoyed hearing your stories of Ligonier or R.C.  I’ve even met a few fellow Pennsylvanians along the way and it’s been a real joy, so thank you for that.

Yes, we got all of the negativity out of the way this morning, so tonight together we shall think positive thoughts as we turn to this text.  We are once again in Romans.  We will read verses 36 of chapter 11 and the first two verses of chapter 12, but we’ll be focusing on the end of verse 2.  Romans 11:36.  

“For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.  To Him be the glory forever.  Amen.  I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.  Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” 

We have here in this wonderful chapter of Romans that word “therefore” in verse 1, and of course we know that we need to be paying attention to what preceded the “therefore.”  I referenced it this morning that we’re talking here about sanctification and significantly what preceded the “therefore” is justification.

But I thought it would be worthwhile as we think about what is a truly tall order, because on the one hand it might be easier to not be conformed to this world but to be transformed, the daily work of growing in Christ can be a bit daunting.  So as we approach what is an imperative, what is a command, do not be conformed, and then the positive command, be transformed, as we approach those imperatives, let’s just rehearse a few indicatives that precede the “therefore.” 

I think I have five or six listed here.  The first is the verse we read, 11:36 – the indicative that all things are from God, are through God, and are to God.  That is that statement that we must hold onto as we think about fulfilling the imperative.  But there are many more.  So many familiar indicative statements.

Romans 8:37 – In all these things we are more than conquerors.

8:28 – For those who love God, all things work together for good. 

A few verses earlier at verse 26 – The Spirit helps us in our weakness.

Going back to chapter 6, verse 6 – Our old self was crucified.

Going back to 5:1 – Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God.

The war is over.  We begin Romans 1 and we get through the introduction and the presentation of the theme and we get right to the heart of it, and as Paul begins his argument in verse 18, what does he introduce us to but the wrath of God.  It’s where he begins.  The wrath of God.

How do we move from the wrath of God to peace with God in chapter 5?  Well, right smack dab in the middle is chapter 3.  It’s the doctrine of justification.  That’s how we move from the wrath of God to the peace of God.

As R.C. like to say, if any of us will ever get into heaven, it will be by wearing the robes of someone else’s righteousness, because all of our righteousness is as filthy rags.

We sometimes say that we come to Christ with empty hands.  We even sing of this.  But in one sense our hands are not empty.  Our hands offer up sinful, filthy rags to Christ, and He takes those sinful rags and He puts them on Himself and He pays the penalty for our sin.  That’s what justification means.  So that we now stand righteous before God, so Paul can declare that we are at peace with God.

These are the great indicatives of Romans.

There are commands in the first 11 chapters, but as Paul turns that corner here in chapter 12 and as chapter 12 finishes and rolls into 13 and 14 and 15, it is command upon command upon command.  Dozens of them presented to us.  Some of them very difficult for us given our natural inclinations. 

So he wants us here, as he turns the corner to these ethical chapters and this is no different than what Paul does in Ephesians, it’s a very typical method of his to stress the indicative, to stress who we are in Christ, and now to stress how we are to live in light of that.  But he builds this on this wonderful foundation of being transformed.

That word is metamorphosis in Greek, comes right into the English.  I mentioned Jim Boice in one of these talks with you and he was a longtime pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia.  One of his predecessors was Donald Grey Barnhouse and Barnhouse was on the radio, he held sway at Tenth Pres for decades.  He was a large man, tall as your pastor but twice the size.  A commanding presence, Barnhouse.  And he loved to come up with illustrations and his illustration for Romans 12:1-2 was to call it the Jello and the butterfly text.  We know what Jello does.  It conforms to the mold.  You pour it into the mold, you stick it in the refrigerator, you pull it out of the refrigerator, you plop it out of the mold, and there it is, a perfect Jello turkey, just in time for Thanksgiving dinner dessert.

That’s what being conformed to this age is.  We allow ourself to be poured into the mold of this world.  The Jello, but then the butterfly.  So the not very attractive-looking caterpillar all of a sudden emerges as the beautiful, graceful, poetic even, butterfly through metamorphosis. 

So what a picturesque way to remember this text, the Jello and the butterfly text.  Well, today, this morning rather, it was Jello and tonight it’s the butterfly.    

He tells us that this transformation that is to take place, that we are commanded to do, happens by the renewal of your mind.  That is very important because I think as you study religious phenomenon, or you study religious experience, there is a vein that runs through a significant amount of religious phenomenon and it’s the ecstatic experience.  It’s the almost irrational experience.  It’s the detaching from one’s irrational self and allowing the passions and the affections and the emotions to be unchecked and to be free in their expression and almost as if one were controlled by it and in an ecstatic experience.

It was true of the mystics dominating much of medieval church history.  They would write of their visions and how they experienced God.  They were not writing systematic theologies of teaching about who God is but they were writing manuals of how to find yourself in a situation where you could have this nearly beatific vision, transported as it were, out of yourself and have this experience with God that would then be your anchor or your impetus to then live for God.

But Paul says the renewal of your mind.  Now this does not mean that Paul wants us to be all brains on a stick.  He knows, he knows that we are to love the Lord our God with our whole selves, with our body and our mind and our heart, that we love God as a whole person.  But Paul also recognizes, however, that the battle is in the mind, that the battle is for the mind. 

I’ve been introduced, we’ve talked a little bit about Reformation Bible College.  I think I was asked why R.C. started it and I gave a very long, academic answer.  I can tell you the answer in four words.  R.C. said, “I want their minds.”  I want their minds.  I want their minds to be shaped by the Word of God and by theology, which is nothing more than the systematic expression of the teachings of the Word of God.

It doesn’t mean that the Christian life begins and ends with the mind, but it does mean that it begins there, that as the mind is transformed, and the passions and the affections are engaged, and the heart is stirred and it spills out to the fingertips and it works its way out into the practice and the behaviors of our life.

Paul will get to the list of do’s and don’ts, very quickly he will turn to it.  At verse 9 it begins, of chapter 12.  But he wants to start in the mind.

The fact that Paul is thinking about the rationale and mental activities is underscored when he goes on to say that by testing you may discern.  That’s a mental activity.  An activity of judgment, an activity of discernment.  We discern among choices and we discern among paths and we discern among which is the best way to go.  In this case, Paul wants us to discern what is the will of God.  A tall order.

What is the ultimate will of God?  The ultimate will of God as theologians will tell us, that’s the decree of God.  I don’t think Paul is calling us to discern the decree of God.  We study it and we learn it, but I think he has something else in mind here.  I think he has in mind here what we say the will of God for our lives, which plays out within the context of the decree of God and the will of God for all things and for His creation, which is headed like a bullseye to the target that God has predestined for His people and for His creation.

But this is what people write books about for teenagers, how to discover the will of God for your life.  And we all don’t want to be out of God’s will, we want to be in God’s will.

Then Paul goes on to say that we are then in the good, and then the acceptable, and then the perfect.  It’s not as if Paul is building from good to acceptable to perfect as if these are stages – these are three separate things. 

The good is the morally good.  The just, the ethic.  The Greek word for ethics literally means habits.  The Latin word for ethics is habitus.  We bring it right into English as habit.  The habits of the mind, that we live justly and ethically and morally and that we have a mind that can discern what is just and ethical and moral.  All, of course, according to the guardrails of God’s Word.

We think about this for a moment.  We can have, if ethics is habits, we can have bad habits and we can have good habits.  We all know the answer to this, but how hard do we have to work at cultivating bad habits?

When I moved to Florida, I realized that everything grows all year long.  Weeds, grass, trees, bushes…  They grow a lot and they grow all year long.  In Pennsylvania I could take a break.  Get to November, stop, not have to pull that mower back out until April, May.  No.  I’ve learned something over the years.  You don’t have to do anything to grow weeds.  You don’t have to work at it, you don’t have to plant them, you don’t have to mulch them, you don’t have to fertilize them.  You don’t have to cultivate bad habits.  If you want to be lazy, you don’t have to do anything.  Just let your natural inclination take over.

But it takes work to cultivate good habits.  I think it’s brilliant that the Greek word for ethics means habits.  It takes work to pursue that which is the good.

Then acceptable.  If we go up to verse 1, we realize exactly what Paul is teaching.  He’s talking about a sacrifice.  He’s talking about a sacrifice that is acceptable to the highest standard – God.  We have this picturesque expression of an acceptable sacrifice in the Old Testament, don’t we, as a pleasing aroma.  We have an anthropomorphism so that we understand our relationship to God that as we are obedient to Him in the sacrificial system that He has decreed and revealed for us, that as we are obedient to Him in making these sacrifices from a pure heart, that it is a pleasing aroma to God.  That is an acceptable sacrifice.

Then perfect.  The Greeks loved this expression of the perfect.  They referred to the perfect with this Latin expression summum bonum, the highest good.

It’s not necessarily in the realm of ethics or morality.  One way we could look at this is there are probably 20 different things you could do with your life, given your capacity and your gifting and your context, there are probably 20 different paths you could take, give or take.  And probably all of them are good.  But one of them is the best.  That’s the perfect.  That’s the summum bonum.

There are a number of things we can live our lives for, but what is the ultimate best thing?  So what Paul is saying here is this takes discernment.  This takes discernment to live the good life and a life that is an acceptable sacrifice and a life that is the best life we can live.

So we need our minds renewed.  Scripture will teach us how to live.  Paul will show us in these next couple chapters ethical commands, ethical standards.  He will show us behaviors that will mean we are living our lives in a way that this is an acceptable, living sacrifice before a holy God and he will show us a more excellent way to be Christians and to be the Church in a decadent culture that is not moral, is not concerned with acceptable sacrifices to God, and is on an entirely wrong path.

So Scripture gives us commands, but we know this and you that have been a Christian for decades know this – it’s not always clear how to apply those commands in the situations of life.  There are some people who will come along and they will sometimes even be very loud about saying you apply this biblical principle or this biblical command in this very specific way, and if you want to be a faithful Christian you must live this very specific way.  And sometimes in doing so they push beyond the explicit teaching of Scripture.  We know we need to be godly husbands, godly wives, and godly parents.  But to say here’s the biblical method that’s the key and follow these steps and it will work, it’s not here.  It takes wisdom, doesn’t it?  In those real world, real life situations, real time situations, to bring the principles of God to bear upon those situations, that’s wisdom.  It takes discernment.

That’s following the will of God.  Not praying which state should I move to, which car should I buy, not those kinds of ways of discerning God’s will, but engaging with the Scripture in a way that we want to live it in our lives, live it out in our lives, faithfully.  And that takes the renewing of our minds.  The replacement of our old ways of thinking with our new ways of thinking.  The replacement of the values that saturate the culture around us and sometimes seep into our thinking, the replacement of those values with the biblical values.  The replacement of what we might say matters most in life.

Again, as influenced by the world in which we live, the air that we breathe, with what Scripture says matters most.

It’s not some mystical key, it’s not something discovered in seven steps – it’s a lifetime of giving our thoughts over to the structures and thoughts and guard rails of Scripture.  It’s a daily grind of peering into God’s Word to challenge our thinking and challenge our approach and challenge our perspectives on life. 

This is what Paul is calling us to do.

And I think in many ways we can feel at times that we’ve failed in this, that we haven’t sufficiently renewed our mind, that we have like a groove, we’ve sort of slipped into that old groove.  I don’t know what your particular sins, temptations are that can weigh you down and keep you from transforming, but you know them.  You know as that situation arises and all of the tells are there and we want to have victory over this and we want to so strongly not just slip into that groove, but we do.

So I believe what we have here is a process of transformation, a process of renewal, a process of growth.  That’s what Paul is calling on us to do.  

Justification is a once in a moment act, but sanctification is a process.  Coming to Christ is one moment we’re in Adam and the next moment we are in Christ.  It is instantaneous conversion.  Maybe for some they’re not aware of that moment.  Maybe some of you grew up in a church and you’re not entirely aware of when that moment happened.  If you had to sign the decision card and write in the date and the time and the weather and the temperature, you wouldn’t be able to do it.  But nevertheless it happened.  Your conversion was not a process, but sanctification is.  It is the process of spending time in God’s Word and allowing God’s Word to transform our thinking.  

It’s very interesting as I read through this afternoon, chapters 13, 14, and 15, as it got to 15 it just sort of struck me, and the heading I know is not ordained, or inspired rather, I know the headings are not inspired, but they are written by the good folks at in this case of the ESV the good folks of the editorial team there at Crossway and the scholars who gathered together to give us this ESV.  So they put over these verses the example of Christ.

I think back on how many times I’ve heard sermons on Romans 12:1-2 and how many times I was told I need to transform my life and give up all those old patterns and adopt new patterns and give up those old practices and adopt new practices, and we feel the burden of it.  Don’t we?

I wonder if Paul isn’t trying to tell us something here in the midst of all of these commands.  He says it subtly.  Verse 3 he says for Christ did not please Himself but as it is written the reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me.

Well, there’s our example.  There’s our model.  There’s one, and you take a number of these ethical commands, you take a number of the morality and moral and ethical principles of what it means to be good and just means to truly love our neighbor, to not be always asserting the self and asserting my rights and my privileges.

And there’s Jesus.  Verse 7.  Welcome one another.  These chapters are full of hospitality.  These chapters are full of caring for one another in the Christian community.  These chapters are a blueprint on how the Church should be the Church.  It’s orbiting around this idea of hospitality and caring for one another and welcoming one another into this community of the Church.

Why should we do it?  Well, Christ has welcomed us into the fellowship of the divine triune being.  There was only one person who ever lived who did not conform to this world.  There is only one true nonconformist who ever lived.  It was Jesus Christ.  And there was only one person on the face of this earth who ever lived a fully transformed life and it is Jesus Christ.

So as we think about this doctrine of sanctification, we think about all these chapters that precede and we are reminded of our union with Christ.  We are dead to our sins and we are raised in new life in Christ.

So it is not us alone.  We can pull in the entire triune God here.  Can’t we?  Here we are again back to 11:36 – everything is from Him, the Creator, everything is through Him who provides for us, and everything ultimately is toward Him.  The Puritans would tell us that we must live the God-ward life, the life directed towards God, the life lived for God. 

In fact, William Ames in his wonderful theology, The Marrow of Theology, which you have to love the title, that life-giving substance in our bones, that’s what theology is.  He wants to get to the marrow.  He would tell us that the good life is the God-ward life.  See.

So we can’t be sanctified apart from our life in the triune God, apart from God the Father and the power of God the Father in us; and we can’t be sanctified apart from our union with Christ, our high priest who sympathizes with our weaknesses, who is fully aware, entirely cognizant of the challenges of living a faithful life in a fallen world, fully aware of the challenges of being transformed and renewing our mind and doing that which is good and acceptable and perfect because He walked among us and He lived among us and He was truly human.

Then Paul waits in Romans to get to the Holy Spirit.  He speaks of the Holy Spirit in chapter 1, but he sort of waits.  But when he gets to chapter 8, it’s as if the Holy Spirit just literally pours out upon the pages.  We understand Paul’s teaching not only here in Romans but as we put together the corpus, we understand that ultimately the Christian life is walking with the Spirit, being led by the Spirit, being filled or controlled by the Spirit, and ultimately the Christian life is life in the Spirit.

To do this, to do this in Romans 12:1-2 is the entire triune God at work in us.  It is the power of the triune God who helps us not be Jello and conformed to the world, and it’s the power of the triune God who helps us to be butterflies and beautiful testimonies, not to the good things that we can do in our power and strength, but ultimately we are beautiful testimonies to the grace of God at work in our lives, daily transforming us, daily changing us, daily bringing us into that discernment of knowing what the will of God is for our lives.

So we can live lives that are good and acceptable and ultimately the best life that we can live for a holy God.        

Our Father and our God, we thank You for this text.  We thank You for the power of these commands, the clarity and even the simplicity of these commands.  We pray that we would be reminded of the therefore and all the means by which we can live out these commands in gratitude to You for Your transformative grace in our lives.  We pray these things in Christ’s name.  Amen.