“Be transformed by the renewal of your mind.” -Romans 12:2
What is a “renewed mind”? It’s a new mind, a different mind, a mind made new. It’s an outlook you’ve never had, a perspective you’ve never shared. It’s a view of the world based on different premises, making different observations, drawing different conclusions.
The "definition of insanity": doing the same things and expecting different results.
There is some truth to this. It is fitting that, on April Fool's Day, we contemplate leaving such folly behind us.
There is a lot of the insanity in our lives. And the "definition of insanity..." help us see that the problem isn’t just what we do, but our expectations—our assessment of the problem and the solution. It's what we do and where we think it'll take us—the whole mental-construct—that's foolish.
If we don’t get a new mind, we’ll continue to live lives that are just as crazy as the hamster-wheel-spinning world. When Paul says that he has “finished the race,” he wasn’t talking about our “rat race.” If we don’t accept fresh premises, note different phenomenon, and come to different conclusions, we’ll never do anything different. So we’ll get the same results.
We need renewed minds.
Romans is a brainy letter—it presents us with extended logical analyses and inferences. One of Paul’s objectives must be to shift our accepted-facts, point out things we haven’t noted before, and lead us to conclusions different from those we currently live by. So there are many “mind”-related passages in Romans that we could point out.
For example, right away in Romans 12:3 (the next verse to “renewal of your mind”) Paul says, “not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment…” But I would suggest that here Paul is beginning to point out the different sort of conclusions we should be drawing, so that we do different things than we’ve been doing. We have to go backward to find the key and critical mental starting-spot from which grows the Christian life Paul describes later.
So back we go to Romans 6:11. “You must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
Note that this is the first command in Romans. And notice that it has to do with the work of the mind: “consider.” Lastly, this verse kicks off a section of commands, from verse 11 to verse 19, that have to do with “presenting your members” to God and not to sin.
This is significant because the next place Paul issues commands is chapter 12 (note 12:1-2 especially). The commands in Romans 12 begin with the language of "presenting our bodies to God" and then "renewing our mind," just as in Romans 6. In other words, Paul has Romans 6 in mind when he begins Romans 12; or, Romans 6 is the beginning of Romans 12.
Alright, back to Romans 6. Here’s why Romans 6:11 is so important: this is where Paul highlights two essential premises we must get into our minds. These will then kick off a chain reaction that results in new, changed, fresh, different minds and transformed lives.
First, you must consider yourself dead to sin in Christ Jesus.
Second, you must consider yourself alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Next week we’ll discuss the sub-questions this short verse raises—like, What does it mean to consider ourselves “in Christ Jesus,” or “dead” in some way and “alive” in a different way? But as we close this devotional, let’s observe a few ideas and turn them into prayers.
We need and want transformed lives.
We need, therefore, new minds: premises, observations, and conclusions.
We need the Gospel to be where our minds start.
Father, we hear in Romans 12:2 the hope and the promise of transformation. While we are in no way wholeheartedly enthusiastic about this idea, we are also excited to see more of Christ in our lives. And so we ask you to give us new minds—the mind of Christ. We want to know who You are, who Christ is, what you have done for us in Him, and what this means for us today. We want to start all of our mental-processes with Jesus. We don’t want to look at things the same way the world does, do things the way the world does, and end up where the world leads. We want to live in Jesus, like Jesus, for Jesus. In His Name we pray…
