Transformation by the Renewal of Your Mind

But today I want to focus on the phrase in Romans 12:2, “by the renewal of your mind.” “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 are perfectly useless as Christ-exalting Christians if all we do is conform to the world around us. And the key to not wasting our lives with this kind of success and prosperity, Paul says, it being transformed. “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed.”

That word is used one time in all the gospels, namely, about Jesus on the mountain of transfiguration (the mountain of “transformation”—same word, metemorphōthē): “And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light” (Matthew 17:2 - Mark 9:2).

The Transformation Is Not Just External

I point this out for one reason: to make the point that the nonconformity to the world does not primarily mean the external avoidance of worldly behaviors. That’s included. But you can avoid all kinds of worldly behaviors and not be transformed. “His face shown like the sun, and his clothes became white as light”! Something like that happens to us spiritually and morally. Mentally, first on the inside, and then, later at the resurrection on the outside. So Jesus says of us, at the resurrection: “Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matthew 13:43).

Transformation is not switching from the to-do list of the flesh to the to-do list of the law. When Paul replaces the list—the works—of the flesh, he does not replace it with the works of the law, but the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:19-22). The Christian alternative to immoral behaviors is not a new list of moral behaviors. It is the triumphant power and transformation of the Holy Spirit through faith in Jesus Christ—our Savior, our Lord, our Treasure. “[God] has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Corinthians 3:6). So transformation is a profound, blood-bought, Spirit-wrought change from the inside out.

The Freedom of Being Enslaved to Christ

This is why the Christian life—though it is utterly submitted (Romans 8:7; 10:3), even enslaved (Romans 6:18, 22), to the revealed will of God—is described in the New Testament as radically free. “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom”
(2 Corinthians 3:17). “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1). You are free in Christ, because when you do from the inside what you love to do, you are free, if what you love to do is what you ought to do. And that’s what transformation means: when you are transformed in Christ you love to do what you ought to do. That’s freedom.

An Essential Means of Transformation: The Renewal of Your Mind

And in Romans 12:2 Paul now focuses on one essential means of transformation—“the renewal of your mind.” “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.” Oh, how crucial this is!

• If you long to break loose from conformity to the world,
• if you long to be transformed and new from the inside out,
• if you long to be free from mere duty-driven Christianity and do what you love to do because what you love to do is what you ought to do,
• if you long to offer up your body as a living sacrifice so that your whole life becomes a spiritual act of worship and displays the worth of Christ above the worth of the world,

then give yourself with all your might to pursuing this—the renewal of your mind. Because the Bible says, this is the key to transformation. “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.”