No.1. The need for its Assessment.
We hope to write a number of articles on “The Will of God”. This is a subject which is perplexing, perhaps particularly to young believers. At the outset, let us be quite clear that this is not the easy matter some would have us believe—save in its fundamental aspect, “This is the will of God, even your sanctification”. We are well aware we have taken this out of its immediate context in I Thess. iv. which is that of moral impurity. Nonetheless the sanctification of the believer, is, above all else, the will of God for him. Many are the references to bear this out, e.g., I Pet. i. 15,16:
“As He which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; because it is written ‘Be ye holy; for I am holy’.”
In the context of the knowledge of the will of God, Rom. xii. 1, 2 is particularly apt, for it outlines the pre-requisite of this knowledge:
“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God.”
That this is particularly important is shown by Paul’s appeal to the ‘mercies of God’. Surely there can be no stronger appeal to a believer than the mercies of God, involving, as they do for us, the death of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. Yet in this epistle Paul musters a great ‘weight’ of the mercies of God; in the earlier chapters he deals with the believer’s deliverance from sin and its power, with justification by faith, the believer’s identification with Christ in His baptism into death—in short, with many of the fruits of Christ’s death on our behalf. Often chapters ix.-xi. are referred to as a parenthesis—the appeal being back to chapter viii., yet who can deny that these three chapters also deal with the mercies of God? What are these chapters but the exposition of the particular mercies of God applied dispensationally? The believer is reminded of God’s absolute faithfulness to His Word and Covenant, though man may be faithless; is reminded of the extension of His mercies to others in spite of, and indeed by reason of, the failure of His Chosen People.
It is on the basis of such incredible mercies of God—to ‘speak as a man’—that Paul makes this appeal: “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the compassions of God, that ye yield your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, well pleasing unto God, which is your rational service . . . . . to your assessing what is that good, and well pleasing, and perfect will of God”.
The mind needs renewing (of which more later) in order that the believer may assess what is the will of God. Not only that he may be able to weigh up the situation and decide “this is His will for me”; but also, and more importantly, be able to discover the ‘sterling worth’ of the will of God. The word translated ‘prove’ in the A.V. is one which can be used of ‘assaying’ metals, proving their value. No one can know how good, how well pleasing and perfect is the will of God, unless he presents himself a living sacrifice to God—as the old saying has it, “The proof of the pudding is in the eating”, so the proof of the will of God is in its performance.
Present your bodies a living sacrifice. The word translated ‘present’ in the A.V. is rendered ‘yield’ in Rom. vi. 13, 19, and in this sense implies that this, also, is the will of God for the believer. The primary sense is ‘to stand beside’ (hence, to yield), and in the days in which we live, how essential it is that in yielding to the mercies of God, we also take our stand beside Him! Unless we are prepared to do this, we shall never be in the position to ‘assess’ how good, well pleasing and perfect is His will.
In Rom. xii. 1, 2 Paul mentions two aspects of yielding—one negative, ‘be not conformed’, the other positive ‘be transformed’.
Be not conformed to this world: more accurately, be not conformed to this age. Basically the word for age has the significance of a long time, but a time with definite limits to it, and therefore, according to context, can have the significance of an age, a generation, or a lifetime, and in the latter sense speaks particularly to us: do not be conformed to the things of your lifetime. In the course of a lifetime many things change, and not always for the better. In the course of our own lifetime we have seen many things change in connection with Christian life and witness, conforming to current fashions and trends, and know from experience something of the pressures, both deliberate and incidental, to conform to the things of one’s lifetime.
The word ‘conform’ is one which occurs only twice in the whole of the N.T., and is not found in the LXX version of the O.T. The only other occurrence is I Pet. i. 14 “As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance”—not conforming to former desires (the word does not necessarily have the implications associated with our normal use of ‘lusts’) when we knew no better. Rather, as Peter continues in the following verse, “as He which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; because it is written, be ye holy; for I am holy”. The basic thought of ‘holy’ is separation—“Be separate from the things of your former conversation” Peter says in effect, and this is Paul’s thought when he exhorts “be not conformed to the things of your lifetime”.
Dr. Bullinger’s Critical Lexicon defines “conform”: ‘to form, fashion, or shape one thing after or like another’. Perhaps we might put it this way: Do not ape the things of your lifetime. The word also has implications of unreality and pretence, so that we could also put it “Don’t try to be what you are not: don’t pretend to be like others”, for the believer is a new creature in Christ; he is not of the world, and he should be like Christ.
The word translated ‘conform’ is a compound one suschematizo, ‘su’ being a form of sun meaning in conjunction with, jointly, the whole word, therefore, signifying here to fashion oneself like the world in conjunction with the world. The world plays its part in so fashioning the believer who wishes to conform to it, and in conforming, the believer becomes a part of the world. How can the believer do such a thing? In Rom. vi. 2 Paul says “How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?”, and in Gal. vi. 14 he boasts “in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by Whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world”. If the believer is indeed ‘in Christ’, then the world is dead to him, he sees it as something lifeless and corrupting; but also he is himself dead to the world, there is nothing in him now to respond to anything in the world. How indeed shall we that are dead to the world, or to the things of our lifetime, live any longer therein?
Do not join the times in which you live by aping their ways . . . . . but be ye TRANSFORMED by the renewing of your mind. The transformation is the result of the renewing of the mind. The original does not give ‘the renewing of your mind’, but ‘the mind’. If your mind is renewed, it is the mind of the old nature which is reinvigorated, and clearly this is not in Paul’s thought here. There is a significant hint in the word used for ‘renewing’ which is anakainosis, the latter meaning ‘to make new’, while ana indicates motion upwards—a new mind which is higher, the whole word have the meaning of ‘making other and different from that which had been formerly’. “We have the mind of Christ” says Paul in I Cor. ii. 16, and surely it is the mind of Christ which needs to be constantly renewed in the believer, transforming him from what he was into the new creature he is in Christ. We can do no more here than to say that the renewal of the mind of Christ in us comes as the result of searching the Scriptures, through prayer and by setting our minds on things above where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. The result will be transformed lives.
Like the word for conform, transform also is little used in Scripture. Apart from the use in Rom. xii. 2, and by both Matthew and Mark in their description of the Transfiguration of the Lord Jesus Christ, it occurs only in II Cor. iii. 18:
“But we all, with open (unveiled) face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed (transformed) into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.”
Moses’ unveiled face shone with the glory of the Old Covenant, when he returned from the mount. The believer’s life should shine with the glory of the Lord. Far from being ‘like the world’, the believer should be ‘like Christ’. The believer who is like the world, like those of this lifetime, is one who has not yielded himself a living sacrifice to God. Several years ago a young believer, clad in the rags of the latest fashion of the pop scene excused his appearance and practice, by claiming it was a sacrifice for him to do and be so—“I don’t like it; I do it to reach the unconverted!”. The magnet which is de-magnetized will never make another piece of iron into a magnet.
The Companion Bible defines “transform” thus: “to change to a new condition”—a very different thought from aping the world, albeit on the pretence of winning others for Christ. This word has also its own implication—of beauty. Paul is appealing on the basis of the compassions of God, for the believer to live a life of beauty before the Lord. When we recall the Psalmist’s words (xxix. 2) “Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness”, there can be little doubt that Rom. xii. 1, 2 is an appeal for a life which is beautiful with holiness—beautiful in its separation from the things of this life.
Again, like the word for ‘conform’, the word translated ‘transform’ is a compound: meta-morphoomai, meta having the significance of ‘in the presence of’ or ‘in the midst of’. The perfect illustration of the whole word is to be found in the account of the Transfiguration, where both Matthew and Mark make the clear statement, He ‘was transfigured before them’. He changed to a new condition before the disciples, and at that moment was not associated with them in any way. So the believer should be changed to a new condition before the world, in no sense in association with them. It is not surprising to discover that the word Paul has used is exactly the word used by the evangelists to describe the change which took place in the Lord: Be not conformed, but be transfigured. The Lord became obviously different from the disciples; the believer should increasingly become obviously different from those of this age. This is what Paul desires for the believer, that he should become obviously different from those in the world among whom he lives.
We have already said that the believer’s relationship with the will of God is not as easy as some would have us believe. This Scripture makes this point quite plain: “Yield yourselves a living sacrifice”. It is a sacrifice which goes on day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year: there is a cost to the reasonable service. Yet compared with the compassions of God, and in the light of the increasing assessment that the will of God is good, and well pleasing, and perfect, how small is the cost! Nonetheless, the cost must be faced squarely first.
This aspect has to be faced before transfiguration can begin. The Lord Himself faced this question before His transfiguration.
“From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto His disciples, how that He must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed . . . . . And after six days Jesus . . . . . was transfigured before them” (Matt. xvi. 21 and xvii. 1, 2).
And there, on the mount of Transfiguration He entered into a foretaste of the joy that was set before Him. He, ‘for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame’ (Heb. xii. 2). He knew the will of the Father to be good, and well pleasing, and perfect, and that its fulfillment could only result in glory.
Considering the compassions of God, and the eternal weight of glory which will result from our fulfillment of the will of God for us, in spite of the sacrifice involved, we should be living a transfigured life, which is a foretaste of the joy and glory which is set before us.
By the mercies of God, I beseech you! What compassion God has shown to us! He gave His Son for us a Sacrifice for sin on the cross; by Christ’s death on the cross we are justified by faith and the righteousness of God is reckoned to us; we are members of the Church which is His Body; hence, we are blessed with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places; our hope is to be manifested with Him in glory. So we could go on. But all begins with the cross: with the sacrifice of Christ. Surely, in the light of such love, of such compassions, it is but our reasonable, logical service, to yield our bodies living sacrifices, separated, well pleasing unto God, being not conformed to this age, but being transformed by the renewing of the mind to our assessing what is the good, and well pleasing, and perfect will of God.
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