We kicked off our new series Life on the Altar by carefully looking at Romans 12:1 where Paul urges us to look at the mercies of God so that we will be living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to him. But how are we to become a living sacrifice? What does it look like to live life on the altar? The apostle Paul is going to give us a number of instructions and pictures to teach us what life on the altar looks and how we can become the living sacrifices God wants. Please open your copies of God’s word to Romans 12 and we are going to spend our time in this lesson looking at verse 2.
The Goal: Discern the Will of God
If I were to ask you if you want to know God’s will for your life, I feel confident that you would answer yes. We want to know the will of God. We want to know what God wants us to do. What does God want me to do today? What does God want me to do so that I am a living sacrifice? What does God want me to do so that I am doing what is pleasing and acceptable to him? To be more precise, we want to know God’s will for our lives when it comes to our work, our family, our relationships, and our lives. I want us to see in the second half of verse 2 that the goal the apostle Paul is leading us to is being able to discern the will of God. The will of God is not a mystery. It is not that we have been left aimless, not knowing what God wants us to do in this world and in our lives. Notice that Paul says that we can know what is good, acceptable, and perfect. This shows us that God wants us thinking about the will of God. God wants us seeking his will. God wants us testing and proving what is the will of God. The way to know the will of God is through the scriptures. Listen to what Paul said to Timothy:
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16-17 ESV)
There is not another book or another mechanism for you to know God’s will so that you are equipped to do every good work. There is not another source you need so that you can be complete before God. The scriptures are the way to discern the will of God. There is no scripture that is going to teach you another way to know God’s will now that the word of God is complete and is fully revealed. But because the scriptures do not tell me if I should change jobs, or if I should marry a particular person, or if I should move to a new place, we are tempted to look for God to give us answers outside of the scriptures. But I want to emphasize that the scriptures do not teach us to find God’s will another way outside of the scriptures. So how are we to know the will of God? How are we discern what is the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God? What does this look like in practice? Return to the beginning of Romans 12:2.
The Warning: Do Not Be Conformed
Being living sacrifices means not allowing ourselves to be conformed to the thinking and behavior of this world. In other words, do not let the world mold you. Do not let the thinking of the world change your way of thinking. Do not let the world influence the way you think, speak, and act. I think we can underestimate how difficult this fight against conformity to this world can be. There are so many influences that we have in our lives that we can recognize and fail to recognize. We are strongly influenced by our family and friends. The things that they say and do have a very strong impact on the way we think and act. Then we have to consider the overwhelming impact of media and technology. You can check your phone to see how many hours you are using your phone each day. You might be quite surprised at the answer because we are probably not talking on the phone all those hours that your phone says you are using it. According to a number of studies, the average American looks at or unlocks their device about one time every 10 minutes. So the influence of social media and news apps on our phones is quite high. Then we need to think about television influence. Whether we are watching the news or we are watching movies and television shows, these also play a role in influencing the way we think and act. What I am asking us to do is to consider and realize the influences that are trying to conform us into the thinking and behaviors of this world. We can never begin our life on the altar until we consider and admit the influences in our lives that are changing us.
The Method: Be Transformed
Paul tell us that rather than being conformed by the influences of the world, we need to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Rather than letting the external influences of the world change us, we are to change the way we think. Notice that we are told that we to be transformed by having our minds renewed. This tells us that the way we think needs to be transformed so that it is in line with the way God thinks. Paul told the Ephesian Christians that before we come to Christ, our thinking is futile and darkened (cf. Ephesians 4:17-18). Our thinking is faulty and rather than having our thinking continue to be conformed the way of the world, it is to be transformed to God’s ways. Isaiah made the declaration like this:
“Seek the LORD while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the LORD, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.” (Isaiah 55:6-8 ESV)
Notice that the picture is not that we just need to change our thinking on a couple of things. Isaiah describes this renewing of our minds as completely abandoning our ways and our thoughts and completely adopting God’s ways and God’s thoughts so that God can have compassion on us and abundantly pardon us. This is the transformation that Paul is speaking about in Romans 12:2. In fact, the word translated “transformed” is the same word used when speaking about the transfiguration of Christ in Matthew 17:2. The disciples saw a radical transformation in Jesus so that they were beholding his glory (cf. 2 Peter 1:17). We are being called to radical transformation. We are being called to change the way we think.
What this is telling us is that we are not to be led by our emotions or our feelings. We are not to make decisions simply by reacting to the way we feel in the moment. We are to be led by God’s thoughts and ways, not our own emotional responses. Living by our feelings misses the renewal God wants. This does not mean that we do not have emotions. This does not mean that our feelings are worthless or do not matter. But our emotions are not to be the sole basis for our behavior.
I want us to think about why this is such an important process. We make so many decisions that are impulsive and not premeditated. We really do not have a choice in this. We make instantaneous decisions all of the time. I am not premeditating in this moment if I should move my hand in the air in this fashion while speaking to you and if I do, what will be the outcome or impact on you and on the sermon. I just have the impulse to move my hands. Think about a conversation that you have with someone. How much time do you have to premeditate and calculate your next sentence as you talk back and forth? So much of what we say is impulsive. So much of what we do is impulsive. So many of the decisions we make are instantaneous and impulsive. The reason why transformation is so important and we must resist conforming to the world is so that our impulses have been trained by God’s will. This way it will not be my impulse to swing my fist at you if you say or do something. This way it will not be my impulse to say something hurtful or rude when we are speaking to each other. Do you see what I mean? We must have our impulses so trained to a new direction so that what we think, say, and do whether premeditated or impulsively, will be for the glory of God. We are not just making new decisions, which we certainly are. But we are so transformed in the heart that our emotions, impulses, and reactions will be renewed so as to be pleasing to God. For example, this means that we will be transformed so that we are not exploding but patient. We will not be anxious but prayerful. We will not be lustful but purified. We will not retaliate, but we will do good. But God is telling us that the only way this can happen is by having our thinking retrained. What we are doing is taking every thought captive and teaching it to obey Christ (cf. 2 Corinthians 10:5). When it comes to decisions about work, marriage, or moving, we will have been so transformed that we are making those decisions based on a spiritual calculation, not a worldly calculation. This is how we are discerning the will of God in our lives. Our thoughts have been so transformed by God and not the world that we are thinking spiritually and clearly as we make those decisions.
Message
Therefore, when ugliness or evil or sin comes out of us, it tells us that we need more retraining of our thoughts. When we make decisions that do not calculate the spiritual impact but are just controlled by worldly thoughts, then we need more renewal of the mind. When are impulses still react toward selfishness rather than godliness, we are seeing that more transformation from God needs to occur. We need to examine if there were influences that taught us to think and act the way we did. Then we need to change the way we think so that we will have a different mind and different action the next time something like that moment arises again. Life on the altar means that we are constantly adapting and changing the way we think that so that will have the fruit of the Spirit flow out from us. We are going to be so changed so that we will have patient, prayerful, and purified responses. This is where our battle against sin begins.
But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. (Matthew 15:18-19 ESV)
Transformation by the renewing of our minds is crucial for being God’s people. We must change what is in our hearts. How can this change happen? Listen to the words the apostle Paul said to the Corinthians:
And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:18 ESV)
How does Paul say we are being transformed into the image of the Lord? We are transformed into the same image by beholding the glory of the Lord. The more we are looking at Jesus, then the more we will continue the transformation process. We must see that this is not just about changing our actions. We must change the root of the problem. This is about changing our minds, changing the way we think so that we bear fruit of changed actions. If we are beholding the glory of the world, then we are going to be conformed to the thinking of this world. But we are beholding the glory of God, then we are going to transformed to his way of thinking.