Bible Text: Romans 12:2 | Pastor: Eric Danielson | Series: Romans 12-15 | People are watching our lives, and God wants us to live in such a way that we represent Jesus well to the people around us. But oftentimes Christians turn people away from Christ because of how they live without even knowing it. What about your life?

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Representing Jesus

Romans 12:2

The ‘Education Guy,’ Martine, came to visit us this past week – some of you know who he is. He’s a door-to-door book salesman for Southwestern Advantage. I wasn’t interested in what he was selling, but I was intrigued by his sales pitch. I was impressed how he went from knocking on our door and introducing himself to me – a total stranger who was on my way to work and not wanting to talk – to ending up talking with our entire family sitting on our patio for about 30 minutes. He knew what he was doing to draw everyone into the conversation, make us feel comfortable, make us feel important, make us feel part of something that a lot of our friends were doing, and make his product look appealing. Even though we didn’t end up buying anything I would say that it was a positive experience – something I think would be difficult to pull off in his situation. He had been trained well. He was very polite and did not make us feel pressured to buy anything. He represented his company well and left a good impression.

That idea is similar to what God wants for us to do with our lives. Not that he wants us to go door to door and give a sales pitch, but he wants us to represent him well in the world – to leave a good impression that matches up with how Jesus really is so that people are drawn to him. He wants us to be Christ’s representatives, to live winsome lives that are distinct from fallen humanity and accurately reflect Jesus’ character – his love, compassion, integrity, honesty, and courage. If people are going to reject Jesus or the gospel, it should come from their own hardness of heart and not because we have made him out to be a stench in their nostrils. Our lives should attract people to Jesus.

I think this is especially important right now because it seems like people are really watching us. It seems like people are looking for Christians to screw up so that they can point out how hypocritical or hateful or stupid we are. We aren’t in spiritually neutral territory. There’s a war going on and we have an enemy that wants to destroy the church and the Christian witness and unfortunately he often uses us to do that. Each of us needs to ask ourselves, “What about me? Is the enemy using my life to turn people away from Jesus? Or am I accurately portraying his character and turning people toward him?” People are watching and we have the opportunity to demonstrate his beauty. How do you know if your life is causing Jesus to become a stench or a sweet aroma?

Last week we started a new sermon series on chapters 12-15 of Romans and we looked at how God is calling us in Romans 12:1 to offer our lives to him as a living sacrifice that is holy and acceptable to him. Compelled and transformed by the amazing mercy we have experienced from him (that Paul wrote about in Romans 1-11), we are to surrender our lives to Jesus to live for him in a way that that demonstrates his beauty to the people around us. But how do we do that? The Bible is filled with specific instructions and as we study through these chapters in Romans we will see many of them. But in Romans 12:2 Paul gives us a general pattern to live by that will keep us going in the right direction even when we don’t have specific instructions to guide us. So after calling us to present our bodies to God as living sacrifices that are holy and acceptable to him, Paul gives us a pattern in Romans 12:2.

Read Romans 12:2.

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.

Paul points out three keys we need to follow in order to live lives according to God’s good, acceptable, and perfect will so that we reflect Jesus well to the people around us. The first is that we are not to be conformed to this world. To be conformed means to pattern your life after something. This is a common trait among us. We tend to become like the people around us and the society we’re in. It’s just easier if we fit in at school and work. We learn values from our community and society. Things are set up to work a certain way in our world and in order to fit in you naturally conform to that way.

But there’s a problem with that. There is an unseen spiritual realm that is heavily influencing the pattern of the world that we’re conforming to. Ephesians 2:1-3 says “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” Satan, who is the prince of the power of the air, is at work in the systems and direction of our world to the degree that to follow the course of this world is to fit along with his schemes. To go with the flow of society is to fit into a pattern that Satan is guiding. If you picture humanity and the way we’re going, you could imagine a huge river moving downstream – constantly moving away from God’s way. And all of humanity is in it. You don’t have to do anything to float down river; it just happens. Not that everything about society is Satanic and evil, but there is an underlying direction that things are going that leads away from God, focuses on self and humanity, and caters to our sinful nature.

John talks about it in 1 John 2:15-16: “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.” James refers to the same thing in James 4:4 when he confronts the people he was writing to: “You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.” You can see that in general, there is something wrong with the course or direction of this world and the problem we have is that each of us was born and raised in it, so to us it doesn’t seem like there’s anything wrong with it: So we naturally end up conforming to the patterns of the world. We don’t even have to try to do it.

Jesus did not conform to the patterns of this world so if we are going to show the world what he is like we too are going to have to learn to live that way. But how are we going to do that? If we automatically conform to the patterns of the world that means it’s going to be really hard for us to see what they are in order to do that. So how are we going to see more clearly?

That ties in with our next key from Romans 12:2: “Be transformed by the renewal of your mind.” This indicates that there needs to be a major shift in how we think and look at life. We need to shift from looking at life the way that everyone else does and the way we used to, to looking at life the way God sees it. We need to experience renewal in our minds so that we live differently – in a way that is pleasing to God and represents Christ well.

The renewal of our minds happens through a combination of things I see in Scripture. And one of the places that I see them mentioned together is in 1 Corinthians 2:10-16. Paul is writing about the gospel he preached to the people in Corinth and telling them about where it came from: “these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. 11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. 13 And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. 14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. 15 The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. 16 “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.”

So, in Paul’s example I see three things involved in the renewal of our minds. First of all is the revelation of the Holy Spirit. In verse 10 Paul says that God revealed things to him through the Spirit. And even though I believe Paul and the other apostles were unique in the clarity of revelation they received and the authority by which they could claim their revelations were from God, I also believe that the Holy Spirit reveals things to each of us as well – every person that is “spiritual.” Every person that is born of the Spirit and has the Holy Spirit living in them can hear directly from the Holy Spirit. He speaks to us in our spirits to make us more like Christ and we need to learn how to listen to his voice. That is one way that our minds will be renewed. But that’s never to be taken on its own. We can think the Holy Spirit is speaking to us when it’s nothing more than our own random thoughts, or even the enemy. So in the process of renewing our minds, we need other things beside what we think may be the revelation of the Spirit.

We also need the teachings of Scripture. In verse 13 Paul said that he was imparting the things revealed to him by the Spirit. He was writing them down in the letter he was writing. That letter and several more writings of his and the other Apostles have been compiled into the Scriptures that we hold in our hands. And I would say that the primary way we should be involved in renewing our minds is to be searching and studying the Scriptures to see what the Holy Spirit revealed to the Apostles and Prophets. God has revealed his will and how we can live as good representatives of Christ throughout the sacred writings of Scripture. This ought to be our starting point when it comes to the renewal of our minds. Study the Scriptures and listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking to you. The two must go together and they must agree and when they don’t, you can always know that what you thought you heard from the Holy Spirit was wrong. Scripture is the standard by which we measure every revelation we receive from the Holy Spirit. But even these two aren’t always enough when it comes to the renewal of our minds because I’ve heard people come up with all kinds of crazy things that they believe God told them that they twist Scripture to confirm.

We also need fellowship with other believers that includes discussion of spiritual truths. Paul says in verse 13 that part of what he was doing was “imparting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual,” and talks about the difference in understanding between the natural person and the spiritual person. If the Holy Spirit is speaking to you and revealing things about God to you through the Scriptures, he’s also doing the same thing with other people who have been born of the Spirit, and another incredibly beneficial way of renewing your minds is by getting together with those people to talk about what you’re learning. This is why small groups and Bible studies are so important. You can learn from others and others can learn from you and you can test what you are learning from Scripture and hearing from the Holy Spirit with other spiritual people to see if you’re on the right track.

It is through an ongoing process of listening to the Holy Spirit, searching the Scriptures, and seeking the insight from other mature believers that we experience the renewal of our minds. And as our minds are renewed we can see how we’ve been conforming to the world and no longer live that way. Those are the first 2 keys of the pattern Paul gives us in Romans 12:2 for how to live according to God’s will and represent Jesus well and it includes just one more key, which I think is already assumed.

At the end of Romans 12:2 it says: “that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” So this final key is testing, and I think what he has in mind is testing the things in your life – things you may already be doing, or things that come before you – how do you know if those things are pleasing to God? How do you know if doing them will help you represent Jesus well? By testing them. “Is this something Jesus would do? Or am I conforming to the patterns of the world?” As your mind is being renewed by the Holy Spirit, you can test the things that come before you to discern what God’s will is and become more like Jesus.

Don’t conform to this world, be transformed by the renewal of your mind, and test the things that come before you to discern if they are the will of God. That’s the pattern we need to live by to keep going in the right direction and represent Christ well to the people around us. If there was one thing I would challenge you to do in response to this sermon, it would be to see that you are immersing yourself in Scripture, both by yourself and in fellowship with other believers. Get plugged in to a small group Bible study. You can start one on your own or join one that’s happening through the church. By renewing our minds in Scripture, the Holy Spirit will guide and direct us so that our lives will show the beauty of Jesus and point people to him.