Romans 12:1-2

Romans 12:1-2:
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.
2 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.

In this verse, Paul instructs his readers not to be conformed to this world but to be transformed by the renewing of their minds. The verbs are in the same passive voice--"do not (allow yourself to be transformed [conformed to this world]). We allow it and participate in it, but God actively does it in us with our cooperation. It's His work. Most of the battle is in our thought life--that's where Satan can manipulate people toward his ends discreetly and invisibly. If he can distort our thoughts, our emotions, and our knowledge, then our behaviors and relationships will fall the way he wants them to. And even if he desn't manage to turn us to overt evil, a little bit of distorted thinking can neutralize us and render us practically ineffective. Human thinking is ground zero in this war., and if we haven't been diligent to fill our minds with God's truth and operate out of what he teaches us, we lose. The helmet of salvation guards the most influential organ in the invisible wart. --Chip Ingram; The Invisible War; page 133

Franklin Graham

Now more than ever in my lifetime, people are obsessed with their identity. Race, gender and sexuality have become the throne to which our culture bends the knee. Humanity worships the created instead of the Creator. But God’s grace and forgiveness offers more than freedom from slavery to sin. His life-transforming power enables those who love Him with all their heart, soul, mind and strength to be in the world but not conformed to it. That’s why the Apostle Paul encouraged God’s people in Romans 12:2: “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.” There is nowhere on the face of the Earth where freedom is experienced any greater than in the center of God’s will. Moses obeyed God even while under Pharaoh’s rule in Egypt. Noah worshipped on an ark tossed about in a global flood. Daniel worshipped in a lion’s den. Joseph served God while a slave to Potiphar. David praised God before a towering giant named Goliath. Paul freely worshipped God while in prison, shipwrecked, and while being beaten nearly to death. Freedom in Christ is what empowered Jesus’ disciples, following His ascension to Heaven, to evangelize much of Asia, Africa and Europe. In the face of ruthless governments and hostile religious leaders, Christ’s ambassadors persevered for God’s glory even unto death.
 --Franklin Graham; 9.1.23

John D Ferrer

This battle is not against “flesh and blood” (other people), but ultimately against “the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (See Ephesians 6:12). So we need to be suited up for that kind of battle, wearing our “spiritual armor” (Eph. 6:11). In this way, training the Christian mind is part of our discipleship, just as equipment, boot camp, and field experience are part of battle-readiness. In biblical language, this battle-ready discipleship is the “renewing of our minds.”
“Be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God.” (Romans 12:2; ESV)
In this battle of the mind, Christianity dictates that our loyalties are to God. We fight under the banner of Christ and no other. We engage in intellectual warfare to the glory of God. Put another way, our minds are designed for worshipping God. This reality shouldn’t be surprising since everything we “do, in word or deed,” should be “in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Col. 3:17). Scripture expresses this homage as “loving God with our minds.”
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27)
The soldier’s zeal for battle is drawn from his loyalty to his fellow soldiers (akin to Christian fellowship), and his passion for the cause (i.e., the glory of God). And if he charges into battle half-heartedly, or as a half-wit, then he is just a casualty waiting to happen. Warfare is no joke. It demands total commitment because it’s a total sacrifice. -John D Ferrer; Intelligent Christian Faith; Redeeming The Christian Mind; Part 3

DA Carson

Thinking differently from the “world” has been part of the Christian’s responsibility and agenda from the beginning. The language Paul uses intimates that this independence of thought will not be easy. The assumption seems to be that the world has its own patterns, its own structured arguments, its own value systems. Because we Christians live in the world, the “default” reality is that we are likely to be shaped by these patterns, structures, and values, unless we consciously discern how and where they stand over against the gospel and all its entailments, and adopt radically different thinking. More: our response must not only be defensive (Rom. 12:2), but offensive, aiming to “demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God,” aiming to “take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5). . . . If we are to be transformed by the renewing of our mind, then we must be reading the Scriptures perennially, seeking to think God’s thoughts after him, focusing on the gospel of God and pondering its implications in every domain of life.

John D Ferrer

Sure, there’s a lot going wrong in the world regarding gender-confusion, grooming, and sex-stuff. But as Christians we don’t have theological permission to be pessimists, not ultimately. For us, realism IS optimism. Or to put it another way, we are optimists because we’re realists about the promises of Christ. If God is who He says He is, then ultimately everything He promised will come true, everything wrong will be made right, and we our hope is anchored in reality, ultimately reality.
This is not a naive, escapist fantasy either. We can fully admit hardship and sin-struggles. We know that “in this world you will have trouble” but we need not despair because Christ “has overcome the world” (John 16:33). We have a Christian hope:
“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Romans 15:13.
That Christian hope isn’t just an emotion either. It’s a reassured knowledge, bolstered by evidence (for the Bible, for the resurrection, for Christian living), and it’s enlivened by active life in Christ (i.e., pray, Scripture, Christian fellowship).
-John D Ferrer; Intelligent Christian Faith; Christian Hope Vs Pessimissm 10.22.22

David Platt

“Radical obedience to Christ is not easy... It's not comfort, not health, not wealth, and not prosperity in this world. Radical obedience to Christ risks losing all these things. But in the end, such risk finds its reward in Christ. And he is more than enough for us.”
― David Platt, Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream

"But I say the power of habit is rooted in the deepest recesses of our minds, well below the areas of quick recall...All of our skills are developed by good practiced habits. It gets down into our subconscious mind and controls us. As long as you drive your car having to think about everything you do, you are a dangerous driver. But by "practicing" your driving, it becomes habit. Once you establish the habit of driving, you become a very good driver. How do you do this? By practice....
The thing we don't realize is that by the same way we can develop bad habits. Baseball players sometimes develop bad habits. That is what coaches are for; they spot a player who is developing a bad habit and they work with them until they eliminate it. You can understand that but the thing you probably do not stop to think about is that by this same identical process we develop emotional habits; both good and bad...
We understand this a little more clearly if we talk about anger. Anger is a learned response. I know, for I had a problem with anger for over twenty years....I got that way by habitual response. I learned to do it. The more I practiced at it, the better I got at it. Well, I had to learn how to reverse it...
We can train our minds to act any ways we want them to act, up to a given point. But there is a thing in the Bible called "sin" that interrupts your control because God has given us a book of directions and instructions on how to deal with those things." --Nelson E Hinman; Never Beyond What's Written

AW Tozer

"If I look at the world, I will conform to the ways of the world. If I look at the Word, I will conform to the will of God."
– AW Tozer – from A Man of God

Roger E Olson

I’m not saying here that “the way we were” was perfect or even all good. We, conservative evangelical Christians of the 1950s and 1960s, were, like everyone else, a mixture of good and bad. I’m talking here, now, about our way of life then. I’m afraid we American evangelicals have largely lost our way. Is our new way better than the way we were? I’m not sure; I actually doubt it. We have largely succumbed to the world, allowed it to press us into its own mold, contrary to Romans 12:2 (Phillips paraphrase). We do largely conform to this world (secular and pagan society around us), contrary to 2 Corinthians 6:17 that calls Christians to come out from among “them” (secular and pagan people) and be separate.
--Roger E Olsen; The Way We Were; 7.8.23

Richard L Ganz

Take your disabling thoughts captive through confession. Paul urges us to "take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ" (Rom. 12:21). Confront your disabling thoughts. Turn them over to God and become who He sees you can be. It will take work to take your thoughts captive each time they pop into your mind. But it is possible with the help of the Holy Spirit.......It is possible. It is not easy to retrain your thoughts or to respond in new Christ-like ways. Take heart: as God empowers you to focus your mind on the right things, it will become easier. You can develop a new frame of reference, based on what is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy. --Richard L Ganz

Joshua 1:8
Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.

Philippians 2:5
Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.

Psalm 1:1-3
Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; 2 but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night. 3 He will be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season; its leaf will not wither, and whatever he does will prosper.

Micah Colbert

Mark Noll famously stated, “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.” Sadly, rooted thinking, even within the church, has fallen on hard times. We’re more concerned with how we feel than how we think. The Bible, however, makes it clear that renewing our mind is indispensable to growing in grace (Ro. 12:1-2; Eph. 4:22-24). God’s Word provides us a worldview that enables us to see life from a Godward perspective. We may not be able to do a lot in a book like Judges, but there are weighty truths about God, man, and our need for a Righteous King that have profound implications for how we think and live as the people of God. --Micah Colbert; Rooted Thinking 4.12.22

"Because we have been so willing to accommodate the message of the Bible to the limitations of contemporary culture, the modern world does not regard the church as a threat; I suspect that it regards us as merely boring. We are giving the modern world less and less in which to disbelieve because it senses no difference between what the church is saying and what is being said by a variety of secular voices. Thus, the modern world is not called up actively to decide for or against the church, because it sees so little against which to take a stand. The world which once imprisoned our Christian ancestors now responds to an utterly enculturated church with mere indifference." (Shaped by the Bible. Christian Today).

Christina Patterson

“Our thoughts lead to our beliefs, which lead to our actions, which lead to the quality of our lives. Our thoughts have too great of an impact for us not to guard them and keep our mind on God's will.” -Christina Patterson

“Reasonable” is the Greek logikos, from which we derive our word “logical,” and “service” is the Greek latreian, referring to service as a priest. We have been made “an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ” (I Peter 2:5), and it is perfectly logical that we render such lifelong service.
Some translations use the words "true worship" in place of "reasonable service." They essentially both mean the same: Your logical service is also the definition of true worship: to submit to Him as a sacrifice.
Instead of the world and culture around us, fix your attention on God. Your spirit will be renewed from the inside and will readily be clear on the outside. You will then be able to understand what He wants from you and respond. The world will continually drag
you down but God will bring out the best in you. We need not be a product of the system. We live in the system, but are not a product of it. Don't let the world squeeze you into its mold.
An ideological virus is infecting minds with the belief that if someone disagrees with you, they are oppressing and threatening you. The popular belief that a differing perspective needs to be combated with a hateful response is resulting in division and false feelings of validation.The Bible tells us to battle the virus by not becoming “conformed to the patterns of this world. “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.” (James 1:19).
Our mind is renewed through training in wisdom and meditation upon the Word of God,
Thomas Scheck’s translation, in Origen: Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, Books 6-10 [Volume 2, Book 9, chapter 1, section 12, p. 196]; commenting on Romans 12:2; published by The Catholic University of America Press, 2002: Our mind is renewed through training in wisdom and meditation upon the Word of God, and the spiritual interpretation of his law. And to the extent it makes daily progress by reading the Scriptures, to the extent that its understanding goes deeper, to that extent it becomes continuously new and daily new. I do not know if anyone can be renewed who is lazy in respect to the Holy Scriptures and training in spiritual understanding, by which it becomes possible not only to understand what has been written, but also to explain more clearly and to reveal more carefully.
CONFORMED="summorphos: in the greek and mean similar, conformed by sharing the same inner essence-identity (form) showing similar behavior from having the same essential nature. Jointly formed. To change into another form
TRANSFORMED="metamorphoó" in the greek and mean change, I transform, transfigured.
RENEWING-"anakainoó" in the greek and mean I renew or make new again....to be changed into a new kind of life, opposed to the former.

When you are shaped into the pattern of the world, you will eventually look like the world and the ways of the world rub off on you.
The pattern of this world is ungodly. The devil who is the ‘god’ of this world has created an ungodly atmosphere that leads people to sin. His aim in creating such an ungodly atmosphere is to make people follow such unholy patterns leading to sin.
You can never get God’s best when you conform to this world because you will always settle for less compared to what God has prepared for you (I Corinthians 2:9-10).
As Christians, we must be sensitive to the atmosphere around us recognizing who we are in Christ, have love for God, and reject the ungodly lifestyle the devil might want to force on us daily.
If you conform to the standard of the world, you will not experience God’s will and desires for your life. For the things of this world are temporary. [SOURCE: Christian Walls}

The Bible does not tell you which person to marry, or which car to drive, or whether to own a home, where you take your vacation, what cell phone plan to buy, or which brand of orange juice to drink. Or a thousand other choices you must make.
What is necessary is that we have a renewed mind, that is so shaped and so governed by the revealed will of God in the Bible, that we see and assess all relevant factors with the mind of Christ, and discern what God is calling us to do. This is very different from constantly trying to hear God’s voice saying do this and do that. People who try to lead their lives by hearing voices are not in sync with Romans 12:2.

There is a world of difference between praying and laboring for a renewed mind that discerns how to apply God’s Word, on the one hand, and the habit of asking God to give you new revelation of what to do, on the other hand. Divination does not require transformation. God’s aim is a new mind, a new way of thinking and judging, not just new information. His aim is that we be transformed, sanctified, freed by the truth of his revealed Word (John 8:32; 17:17). So the second stage of God’s will of command is the discerning application of the Scriptures to new situations in life by means of a renewed mind. [SOURCE: John Piper}

To discover God's plan, all you have to do is ask. The Bible says that "if any of you need wisdom, you should ask God, and it will be given to you" (James 1:5). When we ask God for wisdom, His desires will become the focus of our prayers. "Let God change the way you think. Then you will know how to do everything that is good and pleasing to Him" (Romans 12:2).

Unless what I believe inwardly in my mind actually influences the way I behave outwardly in the world, my life will lack integrity. We need not be a product of the system. We live in the system, but are not a product of it. Don't let the world squeeze you into its mold.

The influence of world culture on Christian beliefs is insidious. It is much like that old Southern adage about boiling a frog—you start out in lukewarm water and turn it up gradually. The frog will boil to death without realizing it is happening. Even in Paul’s time this was an issue, and he is addressing it in this verse. This is difficult to discern at times when much of what God says in His Word is anti-world culture, thereby anti-human nature. Therefore Christians have to stay close to God’s Word, renewing their minds, so that they can distinguish the difference between the two. Otherwise we run the risk of being lost in a sea of lukewarm water, languishing placidly amongst truths. When the tide shifts, these truths will be shuffled around in life’s waves. If we haven’t secured our minds onto the only steady and perfect truth of God’s Word, we will find ourselves in the deep waters of conformity, drowning in the sea of half-truths and deception. As the psalmist sang in Psalm 119:104, “Through your precepts I get understanding; therefore I hate every false way.”--Love Everlasting

The Rev. Chip Ingram, a best-selling author and radio personality, wrote a book called, “Culture Shock.” In his book, he states, “Traditional values have been increasingly abandoned as our culture has moved toward moral relativism, individual self-centeredness, personal happiness, instant gratification, tolerance, personal comfort, and the right to make choices that serve one’s self-interest above the interest of others.” In reflecting upon the daily news reports I see, I have come to the conclusion we are in great need of a spiritual revival in our nation. Our culture is in transition and it isn’t for the good. Is it time for those of us who say we are Christians, or Christ-followers, to examine our lives and see if we have embraced the morals and values of our culture, rather than those in the Word of God? The Bible has admonished us in Romans 12:2, “not to allow the world to squeeze us into its mold.” This Scripture always reminds me of the story of the frog. You put a frog in a pot of hot water and it will hop right out. If you put a frog in cool water and gradually turn the heat up, you can cook the frog to death. The frog was desensitized. It seems we too are being desensitized, and maybe embracing the values of the culture around us, rather than allowing God to mold us according to His Word. -Dr. Claudia Brantley

Jay Adams

"Counselors must recognize that too many Christian give up. They want change too soon. What they really want is change without the daily struggle. Sometimes they give up when they are on the very threshold of success. They stop before receiving. It usually takes at least three weeks of proper daily effort for one to feel comfortable in performing a new practice. And it takes about three more weeks to make the practice part of oneself. Yet, many Christians do not continue even for three days. if they do not receive instant success, they get discouraged, they want what want now, and if they don't get it now, they quit....
We have seen, therefore, that breaking a habit is a two-sided enterprise that requires regular, structured endurance in putting off and putting on. Dehabituation is more than that; it also involves rehabituation. When a counselee turns his back upon his old ways, at the same time he must turn to face God's new ones." ---Jay Adams; The Christian Counselors Manual; 1973