"I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect." (Romans 12:1-2).
Most Christians are familiar with this passage. That very familiarity can lead us to skip over it, assuming that we already know what it means. But few of us do.
Focus for a moment on those words, by the mercies of God. If we were to honestly verbalize the traits we associate with God, would mercies really be at the top of the list? Or would we re-render this passage, by the disappointment of God
? Or — insert your own word here — the indifference, inaccessibility, critical gaze, or iron fist of God? The world has been conforming us, and it shows in the very way we respond to God's word. We need divine revelation to grasp what the Lord is saying in these verses.
Paul is clearly writing to believers here. In these early days of the church, becoming a Christian meant departing from the norm — especially in the imperial capital of Rome, the very heart of paganism. The worst persecutions of the church were yet to come, but probably some of these same believers later died as human torches at one of Nero's dinner parties, or as entertainment for bloodthirsty crowds in the arena. These were not callow Christians or warmed-over pagans.
Is Paul telling these battle-scarred believers that even they are in danger of being conformed to the world? If it weren't a real possibility Paul wouldnt have wasted a verse on it. And if it was a danger for them, all the more so for us. Thankfully, in the same breath he reminds us that God is in the transforming business. For His sake and ours, we must find out what these things really mean.
Paul's antidote for the conforming influence of the world is the transformation of our minds. The mind, after all, is where our biggest spiritual battles are fought. Remember the intellectual tug-of-war Eve had with the serpent in the garden. He convinced her of a certain version of reality, and from that moment she was his unwitting pawn.
If our minds are a battlefield, we ought to pay attention to what's going on in there. The most influential voices are ones we don't notice, which provide the soundtrack and narration for our lives. They're always present in the back of our minds, so familiar that we take them for granted. Without our awareness, they shape our behavior. God wants us to take back that disputed territory and become non-conformists.