THE RENEWAL OF THE MIND
[p. 579] THE RENEWAL OF THE MIND
On an earlier occasion we were considering the renewal of the Spirit: we were seeing that it is the most important part of that action of mercy by which we are saved. The renewal of the Holy Spirit would perhaps give one the greatest conception of renewal that is possible; one could not conceive anything greater. Indeed it is very comforting and blessed to see that the things the gospel brings to us as divine gifts are the greatest things of all. All the wonderful things which God has bestowed on us — the gift of the Spirit, salvation, eternal life, the children’s place, sonship, the inheritance — these are the greatest things in Scripture: and yet they are all the gift of the love of God, given because God would give them and nothing else would suit His mind. So the greatest things are, in a sense, common to all saints, by the gift of divine love. The renewal of the Holy Spirit is poured on us richly through Jesus Christ our Saviour, and it is by that we are saved.
I thought it would be helpful if we looked now at the subject of the renewal of the mind. It seems to me that the renewal of the mind is something subsequent to the gift of the Spirit: it is the result of moral exercises that are consequent on the gospel being known and the Spirit received. In the epistle to the Romans the mind is spoken of in three distinct ways. The first is in chapter 1: 28, “According as they did not think good to have God in their knowledge, God gave them up to a reprobate mind to practise unseemly things”. There we see the reprobate mind; it is the judicial consequence of men having determined that it was not well to have God in their knowledge. This was universal in the heathen world; men did not consider it well to have God in their knowledge, and so God judicially gave them up to a [p. 580] reprobate mind, a mind void of moral discernment, and the result was they did all kinds of unseemly things. The doing of these things was the result of the state of their minds. I want you to note this, because our doing right depends on the condition of our minds, it is the result of the renewing. Their conduct was the result of the reprobate mind. I trust none of us are in that state; I assume that no one here has a reprobate mind.
In chapter 7: 22 we find another sort of mind, “I delight in the law of God according to the inward man: but I see another law in my members, warring in opposition to the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which exists in my members”. We might speak of that as the ‘exercised mind’. It is a mind that is exercised towards God and towards what is good. The law that is in that mind, the fixed principle that works there, is the desire to do what is right and pleasing to God; so we can speak of it as the exercised mind. But we find there is another law in that person besides the law of the mind, and that is the law in his members, the law of sin; and practically the law of sin always gets the upper hand. He wants to do right, but there is a power too strong for him. It is an exercised mind but we could not speak of it scripturally as a renewed mind. It is a man who does not know the grace of the gospel, he is not in the good of deliverance and liberty. There may be some here with exercised minds; they would like to do what is right and to please God, but there is another power working, and to their grief and sorrow it generally gets the upper hand.
In chapter 12 we come to the ‘renewed mind’, we find there is a transforming power connected with it. “Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (verse 2). Instead of proving your own weakness and failure you prove what is good and acceptable and perfect, and that is the will of God. It is in doing it that you prove it, you never prove anything until you do it.
[p. 581] Many people read their bibles, and see blessed things in Scripture, but they never prove anything because they do not step out on the path of doing them: it is then we prove them. I am speaking of elementary things because I have come to the conclusion that most of our defects lie at the foundation, we are weak there. Certain great principles have never been laid in our souls, and the result is we are spiritually weak and defective all through. We have to get in contact with these great spiritual realities which belong to us, our true portion, the things in which all our blessing consists. They are not things which do not belong to us; we are not trespassers when we take them up: we are taking up our divinely given property, our birthright.
The epistle to the Romans unfolds things that would bring about the renewing of the mind; it is the result of moral exercises brought about under the influence of grace. The character of divine grace is unfolded to us in this epistle: we do not get it so blessedly anywhere else. God would bring our minds under the influence of this blessed grace in which He has dealt and is dealing with us; and the result of that influence operating in our minds would be — a complete renewal of our thoughts, discernments and judgments about everything we might have to do with. It is a mind that is not weak like the man’s mind in chapter 7 which did not transform him. The renewed mind is an effective mind which is able to bring about that the man is transformed.
We might speak of an immense number of things in this epistle, but I want to call attention to five words which seem to me to concentrate the moral influences which God would bring to bear on us to renew our minds. They are: grace, support, power, purpose and compassion. A great many other words could be found to have an important place in the teaching of this epistle, but I should like to keep to these five words. They embody divine influence by which God would renew our minds; He would give us an entirely new ability to think, discern and estimate things.
[p. 582] The first word is grace. God says, “we are ... under grace”; it is a definite statement. “We are not under law but under grace” (chapter 6: 15). It is an immense influence. The grace of God is something we did not deserve at all, we did nothing for it. Everything that grace bestows — and the epistle speaks of abundance of grace — is, all the favour of God, bestowed by God without any claim, or merit, or reason on our side. We are justified freely by His grace, cleared from every charge, He has dismissed from His mind every accusation. He holds us clear, not a spot or stain, every accusing voice is silenced. What a blessed influence to be brought to bear on our minds, an entirely new impression of God, that He is dealing with us in grace because of what He is. We have peace with God because every question is settled; Christ is risen and He is our righteousness. None of us who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ could be improved as to righteousness, because a risen Christ is our righteousness. Grace did it. Grace has given us that risen glorious Man in all His suitability to God, and to that resurrection world in which He has entered: He is our righteousness. How has it come to pass? Grace did it, and we have received abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness. God would influence us by it.
Then the second word is support. I connect this with chapter 7, where we are told that we have “been made dead to the law by the body of the Christ, to be to another, who has been raised up from among the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God” (verse 4). The idea there is that instead of being linked up with law, which made continual demands and gave no support, we are put in relation to Christ, who is a perpetual source of support; and by His support He can make us fruitful to God. Instead of demand we have always a source of supply. Have we all got that sense? Many believers have a continual sense of demand, as if God required what they could not render, a sense of deficiency, that they cannot keep up to the mark. God would encourage us in the sense of [p. 583] having a divine Person, One who has been raised from the dead, who can give us every conceivable support that we require; One we can count on who will never fail us. Instead of law making demands we have a Person who supplies everything, who is a continual source of enrichment and supply. And we can have His companionship too. God would bring us under the influence of all this: it is by these things He renews the mind. God gives us a new outlook, a new estimate, the discernment of mind in accordance with what He has presented to us in His grace. What a renewal of thoughts and discernments of the mind!
The third word I spoke of was power. The Spirit indwells, and that we get in chapter 8. It is wonderful that the Spirit should be indwelling the saints, and that He should be there in the way of power. He is there to shed the love of God abroad in our hearts (chapter 5), and He is there to lead us into sonship, “As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God” (chapter 8: 14). But He has come in as power, so if “ye put to death the deeds of the body, ye shall live” (chapter 8: 13). There is power to do it by the Spirit; the Spirit is life with a view to righteousness. I should like my own heart to be more engaged with the blessed realities of what grace has conferred.
Then in chapter 8 we get another word, purpose. We are brought under the influence of all God has for us in purpose. He is going to have us conformed to the image of His Son; we are going to be like Christ. A young soul just converted is entitled to go out of the room where he was brought to Christ, with the joy of this filling his heart. What an impression it would make on a young soul — I am going to be like Christ! Nothing can hinder it because it is the purpose of God that He may be the “firstborn among many brethren” (verse 29). God wants us to have that before our hearts. All these things put us quite outside this present age: we could not imagine a greater contrast than between these things and all we could find in this age. To be conformed to this age is to [p. 584] lose every divine feature, but God seeks that we should be transformed by the renewing of our minds; and if our minds are under the influence that we are going to be like Christ it would have a wonderfully transforming power. Everything works from within. It is not imposing rules and regulations on one another, and setting up standards of what we ought to be, but God works by bringing the influence of the whole system of grace to bear on our minds so that they might be renewed.
The last word I spoke of was compassion. The epistle does not end at chapter 8: we are brought there to touch purpose, glory and conformity to Christ, God’s Son; and then the apostle turns aside, as we know, and speaks from chapters 9 to 11 on the line of sovereignty, God’s absolute sovereignty; and he brings out the fact that all blessing for man must be the result of divine compassion. I do not think anything could so affect the mind as that. All the grace of God presented in Christ would be nothing to me as to true value if God had not had compassion on me. Every one of us is the subject of divine compassion or we should never have come into blessing at all. This gives one such a sense of absolute indebtedness to God, of being shut up to Him in His sovereign compassion: nothing else subdues the mind and heart. I have often said that the only one spoken of in Hebrews 11 as a worshipper is Jacob, and he was the man of all others who had to learn true divine sovereignty; it made him a worshipper. The end of Romans 11 is very like worship: the apostle after speaking of divine sovereign compassion breaks out in worship to God.
These are the things that have an intense application to every believer: God brings them to bear on us in order to renew our minds, and we begin to discern and judge of things in the light of these realities. It is brought about through exercise, and the result is we are brought into entire separation in mind from this present age.
The secret of all the trouble with man is he did not want to retain God in his knowledge. Now through grace and mercy [p. 585] we do want Him to have a place, and He has a place, and as we allow these blessed things to affect our minds they become renewed. We have a new way of looking at everything in relation to God and to the way God has blessed us in His sovereignty; we are subdued and humbled, and our hearts lifted up in praise to God. One in that condition is ready to be transformed. A person is affected inwardly first and then transformed — “Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed” — transformed or transfigured: it means an outward change fitting us for earth. A people who once carried the features of lawless men are now to carry the features of creatures subject to God, qualified to prove what a blessed thing the will of God is. The devil has been telling us for six thousand years what a terrible thing the will of God is, but the Christian proves how good, and acceptable, and perfect it is.
Presenting our bodies a living sacrifice is done once for all, but no doubt it has a continuous consequence and result. It is on the line of divine entreaty, “I beseech you ... by the compassions of God”. It is not His grace, a deeper note is touched here, it is by the compassions of God. That is the sovereignty which has singled you out and left your neighbour, left people out far more fit for blessing than you. “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the compassions of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your intelligent service”. It is done once and never recalled; but I think the exhortations are always of force: for instance I may need practically to be exhorted today to present my body because I may have got away from the principle of it, but it is supposed to have been done once for all. Transformation goes on continually: the mind is not renewed once for all.
Perhaps we have known something of the things we have been speaking of, but every time we dwell on them they take a new character and greatness. Paul said, “To write the same things to you, to me is not irksome, and for you safe” (Philippians 3: 1). There is nothing lost in going over and over the same [p. 586] things: it is not vain repetition. Take an illustration. If you see a man driving a screw it goes round and round, and a person who does not understand might say, You are doing the same thing over and over again. Yes, says the man, but it goes deeper every time. So it is in divine things: they go deeper, they get more hold on our spirits. We go home after a meeting to thank the Lord for what He has brought before us, and to pray that it may go deeper. None of us are renewed in an absolute sense; if absolutely renewed we should be absolutely transfigured, and nothing would be seen in us but the will of God. Our countenances do not shine as the sun; none of us are like that yet. Nothing is absolute on our side; on the divine side everything is absolute. On our side we have to learn everything partially — here a little and there a little — “We know in part, and we prophesy in part: ... we see now through a dim window obscurely” (1 Corinthians 13: 9, 12). There is no arriving at finality while we are here, so practically renewing goes on, and transforming too. If I get an impression of God it gives me a new outlook, and that has to work out practically in transformation. People excuse a thing by saying everybody does it. I should say, if everybody does it that is enough to condemn it! That is like the course of this age, an age that does not consider God at all, does not admit that God has a right to have any personal influence at all. But the saint loves that his mind should be under the influence of the blessed realities in which grace has blessed him, and the light into which he is brought gives him a new outlook on everything. Then transformation has begun; he takes a different course in his business, and in his family: there is a transfiguring power. Transformed is the same word as is used of the Lord, “He was transfigured before them” (Matthew 17: 2; Mark 9: 2). We all know what it was with Him, a complete change in His outward appearance. The Christian is to come out in something of the true glory of the place in which he has been set by divine grace: it is the result of the renewing. Grace is the spring of all this.
[p. 587] There are many other things — the love of God, the love of Christ — many different powerful influences brought to bear. The disciples saw the kingdom of God in power. The epistle to the Romans is the epistle of the kingdom of God, and I think the kingdom of God is to be seen in the saints. It was once seen in the Lord Jesus, a blessed Man in absolute dependence, who was here only for the will of God, supported from heaven, directed from heaven, knowing His place in the love of God and living in it — the kingdom of God was seen there. We have been brought under the influence of all these things we have been speaking of; they are all known in the kingdom of God. Divine power, divine support are known there; the purpose of God, His compassions are known there; and the result is the saints are to come out as subjects of the kingdom, marked by righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit — that is transformation. The will of God is good, and acceptable, and perfect; it is just the contrast to everything in this present age; it brings the soul under the influence of what belongs to the age to come. Salvation can be spoken of absolutely on the divine side — according to His mercy He has saved us — but on our side it has to be entered into through moral exercise, and coming under the influence of the things which are presented to us in this epistle. The result is the renewing of the mind and the transforming; we are not conformed to this age. Our bodies can be regarded as acceptable, they become such as God finds acceptable. We prove “what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God”.