Romans 12:1-2 | "Societal Transformation"

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Dear brothers and sisters, please open your Bibles to Romans chapter twelve.

A few years ago, the European Space Agency launched a space probe called Rosetta, which finally, after almost twelve years of flying through space, reached its destination.

The destination was a comet, simply known as Comet 67P.

I thought this is pretty amazing chasing a gigantic piece of rock traveling at get this 135,000 kilometers an hour.

They of course use the metric system because you cannot do this type of thing without the metric system.

Some of you are awake.

Finally, after chasing this thing for thousands and thousands of kilometers, it finally landed on this gigantic piece of rock flying through space.

And they celebrated the discovery of what?

Ammonium salts.

This is what Dr.

Andrea Raponi, an Italian astrobiologist who worked on the project, said.

And I want to be gracious because the Italians did, after all, invent the pepperoni pizza.

But Dr.

Raponi believes that the ammonium salts discovered on this rock was essential because it gives us an understanding of life on Earth as we know it.

Because these, according to German uh astrophysicist Dr.

Schwimm, who was also part of this project, and I want to be respectful because the Germans did invent the pretzel.

But he too concluded this was a huge success because it explains how life came to Earth.

Wow.

All this speculation came at the price tag of 1.3 billion euro, about 1.8 billion dollars, to the European taxpayer.

And I would have taken these guys out, maybe if I knew about this, four pizza and pretzels, and say, guys, we got to talk.

I could have saved you a lot of money.

Genesis 1:1.

Genesis 1:1

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

You don't need to spend 1.3 billion to figure that out.

But then again, they might have said, Anton, we appreciate your opinions, your values, and we know that your Christian beliefs are precious to you, but those are mere values.

They have no place here in science, and science deals with facts.

You see, your Bible deals with values and religious things.

It has no bearing in the laboratory.

And so we as Christians think that way too.

We believe that our faith and our religion and our scriptures and our doctrine and our theology belongs to the privacy of personal life.

It does not belong in the place of the public square, which, quote unquote, only deals with objective facts, not values.

Have you heard people say, oh, religion is private, it's personal.

We never talk about two things, right?

Religion and politics.

It's because we have a false view, a false dichotomy, and thinking that our faith offers no value to the culture out there.

We just think that Christianity is about morality and spiritual fulfillment and comfort and inner peace.

And yes, that is true, but it is not the only thing that this religion has to offer a decaying world.

Are we not the preserving salt to a decaying earth?

Are we not to be the light in an ever-darkening culture?

Well, if we are to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world, we gotta tell scientists that yes, they may find ammonium salt in deep space.

But Christ came to seek and save the lost.

Please turn to Romans 12, verse 1, and I want to show you a few things here from Romans 12, and we are going to move at astronomic speed through this passage.

Romans 12:1

Romans 12, 1.

I appeal to you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

Underline that word, spiritual worship.

Do not be conformed, underline that, 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.

It is the building blocks for societal transformation.

The preceding 11 chapters, Paul lays down the doctrine of justification, namely how sinful, the sinful individual can be made right in the eyes of God, not by works, but by faith.

Thank you.

However, here in chapter 12, there is a definite transition.

And from verse 3 onwards, there's this transition from the inward, the individual, to the outward, to the world.

Note Romans 12, 3 deals with Christians dealing with Christians.

And there later on in verse 12, how Christians are to deal with the world at large.

If it is possible on your part, live at peace with everyone, and that everyone means the world.

Being at peace with the world certainly does not mean silence, dear brothers and sisters, but rather thinking right, thinking biblical, and speaking that truth in love to the society that we live in.

But it all begins with this inward, spiritual, intellectual transformation in the heart and the mind of the Christian.

And that individual will have a salting effect, a preserving effect, a light-bearing effect in the society he or she lives in.

What have we witnessed the past eight months at light speed happening around us?

Is it not the crumbling of society?

Not only the traditional values of society is being dismantled, but history itself is being erased like it was a project on an etcher sketcher.

Can we as Christians have anything preserving, reforming, and transforming to offer?

My answer is for sure, because the Bible tells me so.

But transformation, societal transformation, dear brothers and sisters, does begin with an inner spiritual transformation, but that spiritual transformation involves an intellectual transformation.

And there are two gears in this big machine called societal transformation, God's way.

And it's in verse 1 and 2 of Romans 12.

Number one, in verse 1, a proper view of worship, spiritual worship.

And the second gear is a proper way of thinking, be transformed by the what?

The renewing of what?

Yes, not your socks, your mind.

I have no doubt that Paul wrote this to Christians in Rome, and Rome was a debauched society.

But I think Paul is of less concern about that.

He is more concerned about the Greco-Roman culture, their philosophies, and the corrupting ideologies impressing itself on the Christian mind.

The corruption is an intellectual corruption.

And therefore, Paul says, renew your mind.

Let's begin there with verse one.

I appeal therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God, which is this is your spiritual worship.

Now let's break down this idea of spiritual worship.

This concept of spiritual worship deals with the nature, the scope, and the sphere of Christian worship.

Let's think of the nature of spiritual worship.

It is spiritual, of course, as Jesus says in John 4.23.

He says, the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.

So of course, spiritual worship is spiritual because God is spirit, but it has to be in truth.

And truth is a matter of the mind, of the intellect.

So in other words, the heart and the mind is engaged in the worship of the living God.

Then he says, present your what?

Your bodies.

Your bodies.

The scope of spiritual worship logically involves the soul and the spirit, the joint and the marrow, the mind and the heart.

The whole person is to present it on the altar of worship as what?

A living sacrifice.

The sphere of spiritual worship is in the sphere of the living, wherever the body, the living body finds itself.

Where does your living body find itself now?

In church.

Where does your living body find yourself, itself?

At noon?

Eating.

Wendy's.

When your body is outside this building.

Paul defines for us the sphere of spiritual worship is as Jesus said to the women at the well, it's neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem, but you will worship your father in spirit and in truth, which means everywhere is a place for sacrifice.

In the Old Testament, you would take a sacrificial animal, you would bring that to the temple, the priest will take that, slaughter it, sacrifices, and as long as that smoke is burning and going up, it is a sweet-smelling act of worship to God.

But then it stops.

But New Testament worship is on the altar of life.

It goes beyond the building, it extends into the office, the workplace, the classroom, the courtroom, and the laboratory.

Every act of life, every sphere of life is to be given as a sacred act of worshiping the Lord Jesus Christ, who created the world that you and I live in, but also sent to die for this world.

And so now that we think of this first gear of societal transformation, the primary thing here to remember is the Lordship of Jesus Christ in all life.

No matter where you are, you are to worship him.

There is no area of life considered secular and no other areas considered sacred.

All areas of life is sacred and has to be brought to the subjection of the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

The reformers used the word quoramdeo, which means living before the face of God.

Every moment, every act, every place is before the face of God, an act of worship.

Here's another thing that turns the wheels of social transformation, dear brothers and sisters, and that is right thinking.

And right thinking begins with us.

It begins with us before we can address societal issues.

There needs to be transformation of thought.

And I've broken it down as follows.

There is a caution in verse 2 against worldly conformity.

There is this commission to renew our minds.

And thirdly, there is this confirmation of what is good and acceptable and perfect.

I made it simple for you.

That outline is pasted in your bulletin, caution, commission, confirmation.

We'll walk through that very quickly.

The caution is nonconformity.

But it's not nonconformity in behavior and conduct.

This goes beyond behavior and conduct.

It is about thought.

Because if we read the complete sentence there, it says, renew your minds.

Transformation comes through the renewal of mind.

And so the caution here is obviously a caution to protect the assault on the intellect.

The world bombards the Christian mind with its false ideas and ideologies.

Yes, the city of Rome was a cesspool of corruption, as many of our own cities are.

But Paul's primary plea here is not mere external behavioral conformity or nonconformity, but rather intellectual nonconformity.

The idea here is worldview, dear brothers and sisters, because Paul says in Colossians 2.8, see to it that no one takes you captive through what?

Philosophies and empty deception, which are based on human traditions and not on Christ.

You know that word conform there in verse 2 is where we get the English word schematic from.

After all, who reads the manual, but sometimes those wiring diagrams are very helpful.

Those of you who work on your own cars and service them, you open up that schematic and you can see how the engine fits together.

It's like the architectural drawing or this schematic of the engineer.

And Paul says the world has this schematic, this plan, this scheme, and it wants to conform your mind to that scheme.

And if you rebuild an engine, you're gonna rebuild the engine of your car according to the engineer's schematic.

Paul says, do not be conformed to the world's schematic.

Now I want to take you to that word world.

Do not be conformed to this world.

Now, interesting, it's a different world.

Yes, it is a different world, but it's a different word too.

The Greek word here is not cosmos.

The common word for the physical word is the Greek word cosmos.

Paul uses the word eon, which more refers to the age.

The ideologies of this age, not the physical words, but the age, the time.

The Germans have a term for it, Zeitgeist, Zeitgeist.

It refers to the schema of prescribed things which culture and society believes to be acceptable, good, and perfect.

We see that in fashion, we see that in morality, we see that in ethics, and we even see it in science, quote unquote.

The best phrase for this nonconformity is the nonconformity to the mighty flood of thoughts, opinions, feelings, speculations, hopes, impulses, and principles of action.

And our world indeed right now is flooded with thoughts and opinions, feelings and speculations.

Make your pick Marxism, existentialism, humanism, secularism, atheism, relativism, or whatever ism is out there.

That is becoming the driving force, and dear brothers and sisters, it seeks to shape and form your mind like it is a piece of play-doh.

I hear journalists speak of this thing called the collective consciousness.

Have you heard the reporters?

Yeah, the collective consciousness, the collective morality.

What they're saying is society will tell us what is acceptable and good and perfect.

William MacDonald explains it in his commentary as follows.

He says, as the society or system that man has built in order to make himself happy with God.

Whatever ism is out there is happiness without God.

It is antagonistic to God, not friendly to God, which means it's antagonistic to you as a Christian and not friendly to you.

However, we are sent into the world to testify that its works are evil and that salvation is available to all that put their faith in Jesus Christ.

There is the building blocks of life and new life.

You see, my dear brothers and sisters, culture and this collective consciousness, this collective morality is like a giant boa constrictor.

It seeks to squeeze and shape your mind into conformity with its self centered, self pleasing, self indulgent, and self concerned ideas.

Ideas how to be happy without God.

But have we forgotten that we are not waging war according to the flesh?

For the weapons of warfare are not of the flesh, but of divine power to destroy strongholds of the mind.

We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised up against the knowledge of God to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.

Culture is at war with us.

Are we at war with culture?

According to Second Corinthians 10, we are.

It is not the event that is seen, but an edited symbol, an edited image of the actual.

There is an aura, an illusion of adjectivity.

But it's not the case.

You see, even if people claim to be completely neutral and impartial, just simply observing it is an interpreted reality.

News and media has been used very effectively to shape and form the mind.

And even the mind of Christians are in its sway.

But we are commissioned to be at war with this culture, and this war begins with the renewal of our mind.

Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

And the Greek word here for transform is the word metamorphosis.

It is imperative, it's a command, but it's a it is a passive command, which means allow yourself to be transformed.

And how are we transformed in our ways?

We are transformed through our thinking.

Our thinking is renewed.

The instrument is the Holy Spirit, and he uses the what?

The word of God.

The Holy Spirit will take the word of God, which is the revealed will of God, the mind of God, and he will impress that on our hearts and on our mind, whatever is true.

In other words, we as Christians, rather than saturating our minds with the opinions and edited forms of news reporting, we are to rather saturate our minds with the right thoughts, the mind of God.

You want to read morning news?

Begin here.

The word of God.

If we can think clearly, dear brothers and sister, we as Christians will have something to offer, whether it's a movement or a moment in life.

Be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God.

You see, the renewal of mind of the mind will demolish every human argument, every lofty opinion that sets itself up against God.

But if we take our minds captive and we go to Scripture and we make every thought in this mind obedient to the will of Christ, then my dear brothers and sisters, you will be transformed, and you will be very likely to play a role in societal transformation.

That's indeed if you believe you are the salt of the earth and the light of the world.

Unfortunately, the contemporary evangelical mind by and large has been bewitched by the foolishness of this age.

It seems that the collective consciousness of this day has more influence on the local church than the preacher of the local church.

I have seen and heard one evangelical pastor after another open their mouths to reveal their true allegiance.

You see, their minds have belt to the ideologies of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels and Carl Jung.

While they sound like Jesus Christ and the Apostle of Paul, you know how they think.

And our mission and our commission is to speak the truth in love so that we can show people what is really good and what is truly acceptable and generally perfect for society.

And that is our final part of our passage.

So that you may demonstrate what is good and acceptable and perfect.

It is not saying that God's will is good, acceptable, and perfect, though that is implied.

The idea is that we demonstrate and we show the world what is ultimately good and what is ultimately acceptable and what is ultimately perfect.

It is in a sense saying, Yes, I know that is what you're thinking, but let me tell you what is real and what is true and what is accurate and what is proven.

What the scripture says about life and godliness.

Where is the wise man?

Where is the scribe?

Where is the debater of the age?

Has God not made foolish the wisdom of the world?

I will venture those astrophysicists and that astrobiologists at the European Space Agency would eventually bow the knee and say, in the beginning, God created.

If the divine mind and the divine will, as revealed in Scripture, is only valuable to determine what is good and what is acceptable and perfect for what is in the confines of these four walls, and what is good and acceptable and perfect for me personally, then I'm impressed to ask you: does it have any value at all if it does not cover all of life?

What is the old saying?

If Jesus is not Lord of all, he is not Lord at all.

Thank you.

You see, in discerning God's will comes through comparing and contrasting everything you hear and see with what this says.

And guess what?

If this disagrees with what you hear and see in culture, guess who's right?

Always.

Always.

And discerning the will of God, there will be this confirmation, demonstration, ultimate manifestation to culture and society, what is truly good, what is truly acceptable, and what is truly perfect.

But only the transformed person in his or her thinking can say this is divinely approved, good and acceptable.

And thereby, dear brothers and sisters, we will be the salt of the earth and the light of the world.

And you might not be able to see that saying up there, but as one seminary professor wrote, he says, the renewed mind discerns the appropriate ethical judgment at each given moment and every movement.

Every moment and every movement, the renewed mind knows what is right.

But here's a quote from Professor Ernst Kessemann, a very liberal German theologian who died in 1998.

Just about everything he had to say about the Bible is wrong.

But this, he is right.

Worship services and the sacraments are no longer, as in the Old Testament, sacrifices fundamentally separated from everyday life.

Either the whole of Christianity and the Christian life is an act of worship, and the gatherings and the sacramental acts of the community provide equipment and instruction for this, or these gatherings are in fact pointless.

So what is Dr.

Kessemon is saying here?

He is saying if what this scripture has to say has no value and no bearing in the world out there, whether it's this field of science or anthropology or geology or whatever the case might be, if it has no value, whatever we do here is pretty pointless.

Because it's just about me.

And that's the beginning and the end.

And by the way, if that is the case, what is the purpose of worship?

If the whole life of the Christian is not an act of worship, what is the purpose of our worship here?

Is it not pointless?

If the equipment we get through reading the Bible and being taught theology and doctrine, if it only offers good values and good morals inside the church and then the privacy of our homes and has no bearing on culture at large, is it not a pointless endeavor?

If the mind of the Christian cannot discern between cultural thought and the will of God, can we indeed prove what is true, good, and acceptable and perfect?

And if we can't, I will read you the words of Jesus Christ and you decide.

But what good is salt if it has lost its flavor?

Can you make it salty again?

No, once that mind has been conformed, it is a done deal.

It will be thrown out and trampled underfoot as worthless.

What we are busy with here is more than a ticket to heaven.

It is the key to societal transformation.

Dear Heavenly Father, let your kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day what we need to be renewed in our minds.

Give us the strength and the wisdom and the understanding to withstand the pressures from culture.

May we not conform.

We pray this in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, the creator and the savior of the world.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.