The Renewing of Your Mind

Romans 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 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.” KJV

Today there is a crisis of the mind. This culture preaches to its followers the creed of “living by emotion”, when the true way to the transformed heart is through the renewing of the mind. The world says, “if it feels good, do it”. But the Bible tells us to sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you (3Peter 3:15). I heard today that the heart that responds to something which it has no intelligible understanding is pure emotionalism. A true heart-felt passion only happens through understanding. We seek and serve the Lord that we may grow in grace and mature in the knowledge of Jesus Christ. We can not have it in the heart until we first have it in our mind, and how can we tell other that which we do not know? We can not love what we know nothing about. It is not about how we feel, but what we think and understand.

1Peter 1:13-16 tells us, “Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; as obedient children, not conforming yourselves to the former lusts, as in your ignorance; but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, “Be holy, for I am holy.” It is about the ethic of God, not the ethics of this sinful, God-rejecting world. Morality is the study of how people act in a given culture. Ethics is the study of how people should act. God is concerned about what we are doing, not what everybody else (the sons of disobedience) is doing. The world would not have us think in terms of ethics, but in terms of morality because morality is defined in the indicative, where ethics are defined in the imperative. We are to gird our minds and guard our hearts against the patterns of this world by discerning the difference between these patterns and the patterns which we are called as Christians; not mindlessly, but mindfully. To be growing daily by the continuous act of sanctification, being changed through the rebirth transformation of our minds by the Holy Spirit. Remember who we belong to, and what it means to be a Christian. Be holy as our Father in Heaven is holy – pure and set apart from sin, as an obedient Child of God. God (Father, Son & Holy Spirit) is Lord; not this world.

In Christ, Brian