Romans 12:2 “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”
It is one thing to be made the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus, but it is an entirely different thing to walk in that righteousness. Many saints love to proclaim the truth that they have been made the righteousness of God in Christ, but sadly their lifestyles do not reflect His righteousness. So why is that? The reason is because although their spirits have been born-again and made righteous in Christ, their minds are still carnal. In other words they still think and thus still behave as this world does. We have seen in a previous section that all believers are born into the kingdom of God with a carnal mindset. In other words all through our lives up until the time we are born-again, our minds have been trained to think in a certain way. The bible calls it carnal thinking, and that thinking is in direct opposition to God’s laws. And so once we are born-again, God expects us to discard our carnal thinking and begin to set our minds on the things of the spirit. In the above quoted passage of scripture the apostle Paul teaches us to renew our minds, so that our lifestyles can be transformed to display God’s righteousness. This is not an overnight process however, for it took us our whole lifetime to develop a carnal mindset, and so to renew our minds to a spiritual mindset takes time and it also takes diligence. Nevertheless the process must be started the moment we come into the kingdom and the saints must be diligent to continue that process throughout their time here on the earth.
Ephesians 4:22-24 “that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, (23) and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, (24) and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.”
In the above quoted passage of scripture the apostle Paul teaches us the same concept of renewing our minds. In this passage Paul explains that it is through the mechanism of the renewal of our minds, that we can begin to discard the lifestyle practiced by our old wicked spirit before we were born-again, and begin to adopt the lifestyle of our new born-again spirit which has been created in true righteousness and holiness in Christ. But I want you to notice from this passage that unless we renew our minds we will not transition from the practices of the old man to the new, even though we have been born-again. The reason for that is because our old man had his ways programmed into our minds by the neural pathways that were formed in our brains over the course of our lifetime in the flesh. And so we see that before we can begin to walk in true righteousness and holiness, those old neural pathways have to first be erased and new ones formed according to the desires of our new man which has been created in the image of Christ Jesus.
2 Corinthians 3:15-16 “But even to this day, when Moses is read, a veil lies on their heart. (16) Nevertheless, when one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.”
So how do we go about renewing our minds? Our minds have to be renewed to think in line with God’s word, and so the first step to having our minds renewed is to have spiritual understanding of His word. Although we do not receive new minds when we are born-again, there is nevertheless something that does change with regards to our understanding. For once we are born-again; the scriptures start to make sense to us for the very first time. The reason for that is because, as the above quoted passage of scripture declares, the veil that lies on the heart of all unbelievers is taken out of the way and Jesus begins to open our understanding to His word. And so whereas before we came to Christ the bible remained a closed book to us and no matter how many times we may have read it we could not understand it because our thinking was carnal and not spiritual. But nevertheless when we turned to the Lord He removed the veil and we were able to start understanding the bible for the first time. And so we see a principle revealed, which is that unless Christ removes the veil the bible remains a closed book and our minds cannot be renewed.
Michael E.B. Maher
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