Latest / Reformed Thinking / Living Sacrifices in a Conforming Age: The Gospel, the Mind, and the Will of God (Romans 12:1–2)

Transcript

Living Sacrifices in a Conforming Age: The Gospel, the Mind, and the Will of God (Romans 12:1–2) · Reformed Thinking

• 0:00
  Welcome to the deep dive brought to you by Reformed Thinking.
• 0:02
  Hello. Today we are we're turning a
• 0:05
  corner, a really big one actually.
• 0:08
  We're looking at what you could call a definitive structural
• 0:11
  pivot within Paul's letter to the Romans.
• 0:14
  Right. I mean, for 11 straight
• 0:16
  chapters, Paul's just been building this incredible
• 0:18
  structure of doctrine. Yeah, just layer upon layer sin
• 0:21
  the law. Justification by faith, what it
• 0:24
  means to live by the Spirit, and then of course, God's sovereign
• 0:28
  mercy and election. It's massive.
• 0:31
  And now, as we hit Chapter 12, we arrive at the hinge.
• 0:34
  That's a great word for it, because Romans 12.1 and 2 is
• 0:38
  where all of that theological weight, all that truth, gets
• 0:42
  funneled directly into, well, the nitty gritty of Christian
• 0:45
  living. This is a thesis statement for
• 0:46
  the rest of the book, really. It connects that huge reservoir
• 0:49
  of the gospel to the the necessary flow of practical
• 0:53
  obedience. That's it.
• 0:54
  So that's our mission. In this deep dive.
• 0:56
  We want to understand how Paul structures obedience.
• 0:58
  And it's so critical how he does it.
• 1:00
  It's not a list of rules to earn salvation.
• 1:02
  It's presented as this. This affectionate, grateful
• 1:06
  response to the grace that has already saved you.
• 1:09
  And we need to unpack how Paul defines that response.
• 1:12
  It's about whole life, worship and a complete renovation of
• 1:17
  your mind. Yeah, especially in how you
• 1:20
  resist what he calls this age. And if we don't get this
• 1:23
  transition right, we risk misreading the entire Christian
• 1:27
  life. How so?
• 1:28
  Well, Paul is doing so much more than just saying, OK, be good.
• 1:31
  Now he's giving us the theological engine for Christian
• 1:34
  ethics. It's the foundation that
• 1:36
  separates a life of gratitude from, you know, a sterile life
• 1:40
  of just trying to follow rules. OK, so let's jump right in
• 1:42
  Section 1. The ground of it all.
• 1:45
  Mercies before mandate. Let's do it.
• 1:47
  It starts with that opening phrase of Romans 12.1, which
• 1:50
  sets up the whole relationship between what we believe and how
• 1:52
  we live. Therefore, I appeal to you,
• 1:54
  brothers, by the mercies of God. And that first word is carrying
• 1:58
  so much, therefore. That little conjunction out on
• 2:01
  to the Greek. It's doing almost all the work,
• 2:03
  isn't it? It acts as the critical link
• 2:06
  between the indicative, the statements of what God has done.
• 2:10
  Everything in chapters one through 11.
• 2:12
  Yes, and the imperative, the command for what we must now do.
• 2:16
  Paul is saying, because all of this theological truth is real,
• 2:20
  because this is where you now stand.
• 2:22
  There's only 1 logical way to live.
• 2:24
  It's. Not a suggestion, it's a
• 2:26
  necessary conclusion it. Is he gathers up the whole
• 2:29
  argument, our universal guilt, Christ's imputed righteousness,
• 2:33
  the peace we have with God, all of it.
• 2:36
  And he presses that colossal weight down into the motive for
• 2:40
  the Christian life. And I think it's important to
• 2:42
  see that he's not just switching gears here, you know, from
• 2:44
  theology to practical stuff. That's a common way to split it
• 2:48
  up though. It is, but it's misleading.
• 2:50
  He's drawing out the inescapable implications of the doctrine he
• 2:53
  just spent 11 chapters carefully explaining.
• 2:56
  So practical ethics is what the natural expression of true
• 2:59
  doctrine. It's the flower of doctrine, not
• 3:02
  its rival. The moral commands are the
• 3:04
  unavoidable consequence of the theological truths.
• 3:07
  You can't say you believe Romans one through 11 if your life
• 3:10
  doesn't start to look like Romans 12 through 16.
• 3:13
  And the Tony uses here is an appeal, A pastoral urging.
• 3:16
  Yes, Paracolo. And who is he appealing to?
• 3:20
  Brothers. He's talking to family.
• 3:22
  To people who already share in the adoption he talked about in
• 3:24
  Chapter 8, this just confirms that the behavior he's about to
• 3:28
  describe is not a condition for getting into God's family.
• 3:32
  It's the evidence that you already belong to it.
• 3:34
  The entire demand is based on that shared family status.
• 3:38
  OK, so this whole appeal is anchored by the mercies of God,
• 3:42
  and I think it's so helpful that he uses the plural mercies.
• 3:46
  It's not just a vague feeling is.
• 3:47
  It no, not at all. It tells you these are concrete,
• 3:50
  specific saving acts that he has already detailed for us.
• 3:53
  We should probably list some of them just to feel the cumulative
• 3:56
  force of what he's talking about.
• 3:57
  Good idea. So what are these mercies?
• 3:59
  Well, first and foremost, he's pointing back to the free
• 4:01
  justification of the ungodly, the fact that you are counted
• 4:05
  righteous solely by faith in Christ, completely apart from
• 4:09
  your own efforts. That's the big one, and flowing
• 4:12
  from that is the peace we now have with God.
• 4:15
  The hostility is over. Then there's our union with
• 4:17
  Christ, which means we've been set free from the tyranny of
• 4:19
  sin. It doesn't reign over the
• 4:21
  believer anymore, even if it's still present.
• 4:23
  And what about Romans 8? All the privileges of the Holy
• 4:25
  Spirit. Huge the assurance of no
• 4:27
  condemnation being adopted as children who can cry out ABBA
• 4:31
  Father and the absolute guarantee of future glory.
• 4:34
  And you can't forget chapters 9 through 11, that whole defense
• 4:38
  of God's freedom to save. God's sovereign mercy in
• 4:41
  electric choosing a people for himself, Jew and Gentile.
• 4:45
  The just breathtaking undeservedness of it all.
• 4:48
  That is the engine for our obedience.
• 4:50
  So the question he's implicitly asking you, the listener, is how
• 4:54
  could you possibly respond to a cascade of compassions like
• 4:57
  that? There's only one fitting
• 4:59
  response. The whole ethical life is
• 5:01
  grounded in this deep, humble gratitude for what's already
• 5:04
  been done for you. Which brings us to the ordering
• 5:06
  of it all. Mercies first, then mandates.
• 5:09
  This order is absolutely central.
• 5:11
  If you flip it, you ruin the gospel.
• 5:13
  Because it establishes that obedience flows out from grace.
• 5:17
  It's never a condition for grace.
• 5:18
  That's it. The ethical life follows saving
• 5:21
  mercy. It can't precede it 'cause it or
• 5:24
  secure it. And this structure is what keeps
• 5:26
  you from the error of legalism. Right legalism is that deadly
• 5:30
  confusion of making your obedience the reason God accepts
• 5:33
  you. But Paul says no.
• 5:35
  Justification is by grace alone. Through faith alone, we trust in
• 5:40
  Christ's work, not our own. And our obedience, which we call
• 5:43
  sanctification, is just the necessary and natural fruit of
• 5:46
  that justification. So the law of God which used to
• 5:49
  condemn us. Now comes to us in Christ as a
• 5:51
  guide for how to live, how to express our thanks.
• 5:54
  But on the other side of the coin, this ordering also guards
• 5:58
  against antinomianism. Right, it does.
• 6:00
  That's the twisted view of Grace that says, hey, since we're
• 6:03
  saved by Grace, we can just live however we want.
• 6:05
  Paul already shut that down hard back in chapter 6.
• 6:08
  He did. He says if you've died with
• 6:09
  Christ, you can't go on living in sin.
• 6:12
  The only fitting response to such costly mercy is
• 6:15
  wholehearted consecration. So the gospel that stops you
• 6:19
  from trusting in your works. Is the same gospel that stops
• 6:22
  you from being content without them.
• 6:23
  Genuine obedience is the evidence.
• 6:26
  It's the natural expression of a heart that's truly received
• 6:29
  mercy. Think of it like a fountain.
• 6:31
  God's mercies are the inexhaustible fountain.
• 6:34
  And the life of obedience. Is the stream that flows from
• 6:37
  it. You can't have the stream
• 6:38
  without the source. The duties are always a response
• 6:42
  to the Mercy, never a ladder to try and reach it.
• 6:44
  OK, so that's the foundation. Now what does that response
• 6:47
  actually look like? This brings us to the second
• 6:49
  part of verse one, the positive command.
• 6:53
  Having laid that groundwork of mercy, Paul moves right to the
• 6:56
  shape of our obedience. He says present your bodies as a
• 6:59
  living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your
• 7:04
  spiritual worship. That verb to present charistasi
• 7:08
  is really interesting. It's a decisive act.
• 7:10
  It's like dedicating yourself to a new master or a new service.
• 7:13
  It has sacrificial language built into it it.
• 7:15
  Does in the Old Testament rituals the priests would
• 7:18
  present the animals at the altar, and Paul used this same
• 7:22
  word back in Romans 6. Right, We said we should present
• 7:25
  our members not to sin, but to God as instruments of
• 7:29
  righteousness. So this self offering is our
• 7:31
  grateful response to Christo's sacrifice.
• 7:34
  But it's distinct from it. Oh, totally distinct.
• 7:37
  His work was for atonement once for all.
• 7:39
  Our self offering is an act of consecration, not propitiation.
• 7:43
  We're not paying for sin, we're thanking him for paying for.
• 7:47
  It and he says, specifically present your bodies.
• 7:50
  And he uses that phrase very deliberately.
• 7:52
  He's pushing back against any idea that our physical, material
• 7:56
  lives don't matter, or that they're somehow morally neutral.
• 7:58
  Like a Gnostic idea where only the spiritual is important.
• 8:02
  Yes, Paul says. God claims your entire embodied
• 8:05
  existence. If he had just said present
• 8:06
  yourselves, you could maybe spiritualize that away.
• 8:09
  Make it about inner intention only.
• 8:11
  But by specifying the body, he brings God's lordship crashing
• 8:15
  down into our concrete physical reality.
• 8:18
  So this means what we do with our hands, our eyes, our mouths.
• 8:22
  All of it. What you watch, what you listen
• 8:24
  to, the integrity you bring to your work, your sexual purity,
• 8:28
  how you spend your money, how you use your time.
• 8:31
  All of those things are enacted by the body.
• 8:33
  And so all of them fall under Christ's domain.
• 8:37
  It's a direct challenge to any kind of hypocrisy where we claim
• 8:41
  to worship God but keep certain parts of our lives walled off
• 8:44
  from his service. So the question for you is what
• 8:48
  am I presenting my physical self to on a daily basis?
• 8:52
  That's the heart of it, which leads to this incredible phrase,
• 8:56
  a living sacrifice. It's a.
• 8:57
  Paradox, isn't it? It is because it's a direct
• 9:00
  contrast with the Old Testament system.
• 9:03
  Under the Old Covenant, the sacrifice had to die on the
• 9:05
  altar. It was a dead sacrifice.
• 9:07
  But the new covenant sacrifice is living.
• 9:10
  And that works in two ways. First, the sacrifice is offered
• 9:13
  by people who have been made spiritually alive in Christ.
• 9:15
  You've been raised from death to walk in newness of life.
• 9:17
  So you died to sins power and now you live for God.
• 9:21
  And second, the sacrifice is living because it's continuous.
• 9:24
  It's an ongoing day by day. Self offering.
• 9:27
  It's not a one and done moment of surrender.
• 9:29
  No, it's a perpetual state of being.
• 9:31
  It means you have to sustain that consecration throughout
• 9:34
  your whole embodied life. So every morning requires A
• 9:38
  renewed yielding a fresh climb onto the altar.
• 9:41
  It's a deliberate choice every day to keep the totality of
• 9:44
  yourself available for God's purposes.
• 9:46
  It has to be active and persistent.
• 9:49
  And this living sacrifice has a moral requirement.
• 9:52
  It must be holy. It has to be set apart to God,
• 9:55
  and that means it should be increasingly marked by moral
• 9:58
  purity and reverence. An Old Testament sacrifice with
• 10:01
  a blemish was unacceptable. In the same way, our offering of
• 10:04
  our lives has to be aimed at purity.
• 10:06
  No hidden corners, no reserved territory.
• 10:09
  And Paul adds that this offering is acceptable to God.
• 10:13
  Now that can feel like a problem.
• 10:14
  Because we know our best efforts are still flawed, stained by
• 10:17
  sin. So how can our imperfect
• 10:19
  obedience possibly be acceptable to a holy God?
• 10:22
  And here we have to loop right back to where we started.
• 10:24
  The mercies of God, right? The only reason our offerings
• 10:27
  are acceptable is because we are united to Christ, His one
• 10:31
  perfect sacrifice, fully satisfied divine justice.
• 10:35
  So our faltering but sincere acts of obedience become
• 10:38
  acceptable through Him. Our standing is secured by
• 10:41
  grace, and that security is what makes our striving for holiness
• 10:45
  possible and even pleasing to God.
• 10:48
  He is genuinely pleased with the food of the Spirit that He
• 10:50
  himself has produced in US. And then Paul calls this whole
• 10:53
  thing our spiritual worship, or in some translations, reasonable
• 10:57
  service. Yeah, that Greek word lediso is
• 11:00
  so important here. It has a dual meaning.
• 11:02
  It means rational, fitting, logical.
• 11:05
  But it also means spiritual or inward, as opposed to the purely
• 11:09
  external physical sacrifices, the old system or of paganism.
• 11:13
  In the ancient world, a lot of worship was, well, not very
• 11:16
  rational. Not at all.
• 11:17
  It could be bizarre or self mutilating or just going through
• 11:20
  the motions. Paul says this presenting your
• 11:22
  whole living holy body. This is the truly rational and
• 11:26
  fitting response to the truth of the Gospel.
• 11:28
  So this just shatters any narrow view of worship is something
• 11:31
  that only happens on Sunday morning for an hour.
• 11:33
  It redefines worship as the totality of your existence.
• 11:37
  Your ethical life is your worship, lived out every moment
• 11:41
  in grateful response to His grace.
• 11:43
  So if the Christian life is this continuous living sacrifice, a
• 11:48
  full time act of worship, the immediate question becomes.
• 11:53
  How? How do you actually stay on that
• 11:55
  altar? And Paul answers that
• 11:57
  immediately in verse 2, which starts with a negative command
• 12:00
  resistance. Do not be conformed to this age.
• 12:03
  Let's bring that down. What is this age?
• 12:05
  Tuaigeni Tutu. It's a theological term.
• 12:08
  It's not just talking about the current year on the calendar,
• 12:10
  right? It's the present evil order of
• 12:12
  things, the whole moral atmosphere of the world that is
• 12:15
  by default organized and rebellion against God.
• 12:18
  It's characterized by hostility to his truth, and it's always
• 12:21
  trying to substitute the creature for the creator.
• 12:23
  And it stands in direct contrast to the age to come which Christ
• 12:27
  inaugurated with His resurrection.
• 12:29
  And what? About the word formed, the image
• 12:31
  there is pretty strong it. Is the verb suggests being
• 12:34
  squeezed into a mold, like dough being pressed into a shape.
• 12:37
  So if you're passive, if you don't actively resist,
• 12:42
  conformity is the default. It will happen automatically.
• 12:45
  The world is a powerful, ubiquitous press, and conforming
• 12:49
  means you let its values, its assumptions, its priorities
• 12:53
  dictate your thinking and your living.
• 12:56
  And we're not just talking about blatant worldliness.
• 12:58
  No, the real danger is often the subtle accommodation that's way
• 13:02
  more pervasive. What does that look like?
• 13:03
  It's when Christians, maybe without even realizing it,
• 13:07
  absorb the assumptions of secular ideologies more readily
• 13:10
  than they absorb the teaching of Scripture.
• 13:12
  Give us some examples of the molds of this age today.
• 13:15
  OK, well, think about the unquestioned idol of efficiency
• 13:19
  that crowds out prayer or rest. Or the consumerism that says
• 13:22
  your identity is based on what you own.
• 13:24
  The standard of success that measures your worth only by your
• 13:27
  status or your salary instead of by your faithfulness.
• 13:30
  The moral relativism that dismisses biblical truth is
• 13:34
  just, you know, your personal opinion.
• 13:36
  Even things like constant connectivity, letting that
• 13:39
  dictate your attention span. Yes, or prioritizing comfort
• 13:42
  over conviction. Or just using your time and
• 13:45
  money in the exact same ways as your unbelieving neighbors.
• 13:48
  Conformity sneaks in when the world's voices become the
• 13:51
  loudest authorities in your mind.
• 13:53
  And this resistance is necessary because of verse one.
• 13:55
  You can't do both. You can't present your body to
• 13:59
  God as a holy sacrifice and at the same time offer it to the
• 14:02
  world system as an instrument for its agenda.
• 14:05
  The altar can't be divided. It belongs to 1 master or the
• 14:09
  other, and this resistance is rooted in gratitude.
• 14:12
  We resist this age because the mercies of God rescued us from
• 14:16
  it. So nonconformity is the negative
• 14:18
  part that clears the space for the positive work to happen.
• 14:21
  That's it, and the positive command comes next, but be
• 14:23
  renovated by the renewal of your mind.
• 14:26
  Be renovated. That's a strong word.
• 14:28
  Metamorphosis. It's where we get our word
• 14:31
  metamorphosis. It signals a deep inward change
• 14:33
  of form, a Caterpillar to a butterfly, but applied to your
• 14:37
  moral and spiritual life. And it's a present passive
• 14:40
  imperative. What does that mean for us?
• 14:42
  It means keep on being renovated.
• 14:45
  God is the primary agent of this change through the Holy Spirit,
• 14:49
  but the command is to you. You are commanded to submit to
• 14:53
  the process to actively pursue the means God uses to bring
• 14:57
  about this change. And the target of this change is
• 14:59
  the renewal of your mind, the nuts.
• 15:02
  The mind here means the whole inner faculty of understanding,
• 15:05
  judging and evaluating reality. Since the fallen mind is
• 15:09
  naturally darkened and hostile to God, it has to be restored
• 15:12
  and made new. So sanctification is, at its
• 15:14
  core, the redemption of our thinking.
• 15:16
  It is. We aren't called to stop
• 15:18
  thinking, but to dedicate our intellect to God and reeducate
• 15:21
  it. And that's a radical process.
• 15:23
  It is. It's learning to see everything,
• 15:25
  God, yourself, sin, the world through the clear lens of God's
• 15:29
  Word instead of the distorting lens of your culture or your
• 15:32
  fallen instincts. Because lasting change in your
• 15:34
  behavior won't happen unless your thinking is reshaped.
• 15:37
  Behavior follows belief. If your mind is still soaked in
• 15:40
  the assumptions of this age, your outer life will eventually
• 15:43
  get squeezed right back into the world's mold.
• 15:46
  So if the Spirit is the one doing this, how does he do it?
• 15:51
  What are the instruments he uses?
• 15:53
  He primarily uses what we call the ordinary means of grace.
• 15:56
  These are the accessible, repeatable ways He works renewal
• 16:00
  in US. And the centerpiece is the Word
• 16:03
  of God Scripture. The Word is the Spirit's chosen
• 16:07
  tool for reshaping the mind. As you read it, hear it
• 16:11
  faithfully preached, study it, meditate on it, and believe it,
• 16:15
  it systematically dismantles the false categories you've
• 16:18
  inherited from the world and replaces them with God's truth.
• 16:21
  So the renewed mind is one that's been trained by this
• 16:24
  saturation. It starts to interpret life,
• 16:27
  your trials, your relationships, your choices, not by instinct or
• 16:30
  emotion, but by biblical truth. That's how the compass gets
• 16:33
  recalibrated. And prayer is obviously tied
• 16:36
  into that. It's essential.
• 16:37
  It's the act of humble dependence.
• 16:39
  You're asking the Spirit to light up the Word for you, to
• 16:41
  convict you of your wrong thinking, and to incline your
• 16:44
  heart to obey. You're not trying to get new
• 16:46
  private revelations. No, you're asking for help to
• 16:48
  apply the word that's already been revealed.
• 16:50
  And this isn't meant to be a solo project.
• 16:52
  No, it's a communal process. It happens in the context of the
• 16:56
  local Church. Renewal is pushed forward when
• 16:59
  you sit under faithful preaching, when you take part in
• 17:01
  the sacraments, and when you're in relationships of mutual
• 17:04
  encouragement and accountability.
• 17:06
  And this reliance on the word and these ordinary means, yeah,
• 17:09
  it acts as a corrective, doesn't it?
• 17:11
  It does on 2 fronts. First it corrects any kind of
• 17:15
  anti doctrinal piety, which is the error of thinking you can
• 17:19
  have spiritual feelings or change without the hard work of
• 17:23
  reshaping your thoughts with truth.
• 17:25
  And I've been back at. It corrects a cold
• 17:27
  intellectualism, the kind that treats theology like an academic
• 17:31
  hobby that has nothing to do with holiness.
• 17:33
  For Paul, right thinking has to lead to right living.
• 17:37
  The truth revealed in the Word must lead to practical
• 17:40
  obedience. So this whole mechanism
• 17:42
  resisting the world, renewing the mind, is all aimed at a
• 17:45
  single goal. A single purpose, which he
• 17:48
  states at the end of verse 2. That by testing you may discern
• 17:51
  what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
• 17:55
  The goal isn't just separation from the world for its own sake.
• 17:58
  It's a positive, intelligent, and even affectionate conformity
• 18:02
  to God's standard. He renews your mind so that you
• 18:05
  can recognize, approve and embrace His will in the real
• 18:08
  life decisions you make every day.
• 18:10
  Let's look at that word discern dot kimozan.
• 18:14
  It's a technical term. It means to test something, to
• 18:18
  evaluate its genuineness, like a saying of metal to see if it's
• 18:21
  pure gold. And once it passes the test, you
• 18:24
  approve it. So the renewed mind doesn't just
• 18:27
  see God's standard as some external rulebook, it grows to
• 18:30
  where it can test the options, the world and the flesh present
• 18:34
  to it. Against the standard of
• 18:35
  Scripture. And then affirm God's way as
• 18:38
  better, as wiser, more beautiful, more desirable.
• 18:41
  So discernment is both cognitive knowing what's right, and moral
• 18:45
  loving what's right. That's a great way to put it.
• 18:47
  It's perceiving reality accurately and then making
• 18:49
  choices based on that purified perception and.
• 18:52
  What about the content? When Paul says we'll discern the
• 18:54
  will of God, what does he mean? This is a critical distinction
• 18:57
  to make. He's talking about God's
• 18:58
  preceptive. Will, meaning his revealed
• 19:01
  commands, His moral principles, the things laid out for us in
• 19:05
  Scripture? Yes, He is not inviting you to
• 19:08
  try and uncover the hidden details of God's secret decree
• 19:12
  of will. Like who you should marry or
• 19:14
  which job you should take? No, he's not telling you to look
• 19:17
  for mystical signs or omens or special private revelations.
• 19:21
  That pursuit often just leads to anxiety.
• 19:24
  So the goal is to get a mind so saturated with the general will
• 19:28
  of God found in Scripture. That you are equipped with the
• 19:32
  wisdom to apply that general will to the specific practical
• 19:35
  situations of your life. This really points to the
• 19:38
  sufficiency of Scripture. It does.
• 19:39
  The renewed mind trained by the Word becomes the tool for
• 19:44
  intelligent obedience. And then Paul describes God's
• 19:46
  will with three adjectives. And he does this to dismantle
• 19:50
  any suspicion that obedience is a burden.
• 19:52
  Or, you know, undesirable. A lie that this age constantly
• 19:55
  tells us. First, he says, God's will is
• 19:57
  good. It's morally excellent, yes, but
• 20:00
  it's also beneficial for you. This is the direct counter to
• 20:03
  the lie that God's commands are just there to restrict you and
• 20:06
  steal your joy. God commands what is good for
• 20:08
  us. When you obey, you're aligning
• 20:10
  yourself with the way the world was designed to work.
• 20:13
  It leads to human flourishing, to true happiness.
• 20:17
  The renewed mind learns to see that even the hard commands are
• 20:20
  for our ultimate well-being. That changes obedience from a
• 20:23
  reluctant burden to a pursuit of our highest welfare.
• 20:27
  It does. Second, he says God's will is
• 20:30
  acceptable, which means it's pleasing to God himself.
• 20:33
  And this forces you to reevaluate your audience.
• 20:36
  Who are you? Trying to please this
• 20:38
  discernment process moves you beyond seeking the approval of
• 20:41
  your peers or culture or chasing worldly status.
• 20:44
  The main motivation becomes the desire to honor the God who
• 20:48
  showed you such immense mercy. The renewed mind wants God's
• 20:51
  pleasure more than man's approval, because it knows only
• 20:54
  his approval lasts. And third, God's will is
• 20:57
  perfect. It's complete.
• 20:58
  It lacks nothing. His revealed law is a perfect
• 21:00
  rule for righteousness and wisdom.
• 21:02
  There's nothing defective or missing in God's standard for
• 21:05
  living. To embrace that is to recognize
• 21:08
  that if you follow God's will, you lack nothing essential for a
• 21:11
  life that honors Him and secures your eternal good.
• 21:14
  It's a perfect standard, unlike the shifting, contradictory
• 21:18
  standards of this age. So the goal of all this
• 21:21
  renovation is not misery. No, it's a deep, sustained joy
• 21:25
  that comes from intelligently conforming to this good,
• 21:29
  pleasing and perfect standard. So let's bring it all together,
• 21:33
  the relationship between resistance and renewal.
• 21:35
  They work together. They're locked in this
• 21:37
  continuous dynamic reinforcing cycle.
• 21:41
  Resisting the outward pressure of the world, the non
• 21:43
  conformities, the prerequisite, it clears the ground.
• 21:46
  That's it. If you're constantly letting the
• 21:48
  world's input shape your judgement through media, through
• 21:50
  your social circles, through ideologies you absorb, you're
• 21:53
  just undermining the Spirit's work through the Word.
• 21:56
  But once that ground is cleared, the inward work of mental
• 21:59
  renewal can happen. And that renovation which the
• 22:01
  Spirit does then gives you the wisdom and the strength to
• 22:04
  actively choose against the world's patterns.
• 22:07
  So it's a self reinforcing dynamic.
• 22:09
  It is the renewed mind affirms God's perfect will, which
• 22:13
  strengthens your resolve to resist the world.
• 22:16
  Resistance enables renovation and renovation empowers more
• 22:20
  resistance. It's like that water filter
• 22:22
  analogy. You have to stop pouring
• 22:24
  polluted water through. It.
• 22:25
  That's the nonconformity. So that the internal filter
• 22:27
  mechanism, the renewal of your mind, can actually work.
• 22:30
  And only then can the output your daily choices be clean and
• 22:35
  useful to God. Romans 12.1 and two, then, is
• 22:38
  just this, this masterpiece of theological compression.
• 22:43
  It's the whole architecture of the Christian life in 2 verses.
• 22:45
  It is, It establishes once and for all that obedience is the
• 22:49
  necessary consequence, the living response that flows from
• 22:52
  being justified by grace alone. It guarantees that the life of
• 22:56
  duty is always built on the freedom of mercy.
• 22:58
  It gives us a total vision, a life anchored in gratitude,
• 23:02
  expressed through continuous worship, defined by active
• 23:05
  resistance to the world, and made possible by constant mental
• 23:08
  renewal through the Word. It's where doctrine, worship and
• 23:11
  ethics all meet. And this structure is what
• 23:14
  safeguards you. It keeps you from the legalist's
• 23:16
  error of trusting in your own work.
• 23:18
  And from the antinomian's error of treating grace like a license
• 23:22
  to live without work, our duties aren't burdens.
• 23:25
  They're this stream of life flowing from the fountain of
• 23:28
  God's saving X. So here's the final thought for
• 23:31
  you to carry away from this deep dive.
• 23:33
  If the altar of your life belongs to 1 Master or the other
• 23:36
  Christ or this age, consider where the squeeze of the world
• 23:40
  is most effective in your own life.
• 23:43
  Where in your daily habits, your use of time, or maybe even in
• 23:46
  your unquestioned social and political assumptions are you
• 23:49
  still allowing the world's mold to squeeze you into its shape
• 23:52
  instead of proactively submitting to the renovation of
• 23:55
  the Word? What is the most specific,
• 23:57
  subtle accommodation you need to resist this week so that your
• 23:59
  life can truly be a living holy sacrifice?