We cannot overestimate the impact our perspective and perception have on our behavior. We talk about misunderstandings and the negative fallout they create, and we work to restore what was broken. But if we step back and think about it a bit more abstractly, such misunderstandings are failures by one or more people to understand each other. Miscommunication and misunderstandings can damage human relationships, and the same is true for our relationship with God. The big difference? With God, we know any misunderstanding is ours, based on our failure to understand Him or to properly act on that understanding.

So how do we avoid the error of wrong thinking? As sinful people, we start with a huge deficit. Our former slavery to sin affected every part of us, just as all of creation has been affected as well

We could go so far as to say that we were brainwashed by sin. So as we believers await the complete redemption of our bodies on the last day, we undergo a transformational process of sanctification through discipleship. Understood in this way, discipleship is not simply about changing our behavior or learning a few lessons—it requires a complete cognitive makeover.

one of Paul’s goals in the previous 11 chapters has been to correct misconceptions—not just to create right-thinking but to completely transform how we think. Once we recognize that we have all sinned and are under penalty, Jew and Gentile alike; that we now have peace with God; and that God is sovereignly working out His much-anticipated redemption of the world, the only reasonable response is for us to offer ourselves up in service to Him as a living sacrifice.

We can offer ourselves, but only God can renew our minds and catalyze that wholesale transformation in us. He must both deconstruct our wrong ways of thinking and construct new, correct patterns of thought. The indwelling Holy Spirit enables us to put to death the deeds of the flesh and to be instruments of righteousness for God

Transformed, Not Conformed: Paul uses the metaphor of transformation to describe the discipleship process. Now that we have been set free from slavery to sin, we no longer need to conform to the patterns of this world. The same Word that brought the transforming message of the gospel will continue that transformation through the renewing of our minds.

Transformed, Not Conformed: Paul uses the metaphor of transformation to describe the discipleship process. Now that we have been set free from slavery to sin, we no longer need to conform to the patterns of this world. The same Word that brought the transforming message of the gospel will continue that transformation through the renewing of our minds.

The Spirit’s direction of our hearts and minds works in tandem with God’s transformational revelation to us, changing the wrong ideas that led to the wrong behavior in the first place. In Romans 12:2, Paul explains that the natural consequence of allowing God and His Spirit to do this transformative work in our lives is a growing ability to discern and approve God’s will.

Paul then moves from the what of the Christian life (v. 1) to the how (v. 2). He develops the negative means for offering ourselves to God and then the positive means. Negatively, do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world. It used to be said that conform is an outward, shallow act and transform is an inward, powerful act

It means to pattern oneself after another and is stated well by the Phillips translation, “stop letting the world squeeze you into its mold.” The forces of this “age”

(the time in which sin reigns; cf. 5:21; 7:17, 20, 23) are forcing the believer to conform to its ideals. There are so many areas where this is true—consumerism, power politics, the success syndrome, sexual immorality, the pleasure principle and so on. First Peter 4:4 traces the process—“they think it strange that you do not plunge with them into the same flood of dissipation, and they heap abuse on you.” The result is that we all too often cave into the pressure and follow our worldly friends into sin.

The positive solution is to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. There is an inherent passive sense in which the transforming power is the Holy Spirit, who penetrates to the core of our being and reshapes us into a “new creation“

(the time in which sin reigns; cf. 5:21; 7:17, 20, 23) are forcing the believer to conform to its ideals. There are so many areas where this is true—consumerism, power politics, the success syndrome, sexual immorality, the pleasure principle and so on. First Peter 4:4 traces the process—“they think it strange that you do not plunge with them into the same flood of dissipation, and they heap abuse on you.” The result is that we all too often cave into the pressure and follow our worldly friends into sin.

The Spirit “changes” us and enables us to offer ourselves completely to God. This takes place in the mind, which is renewed or changed (literally “made new again and again”) by the Holy Spirit. Moo (1996:756–57) calls this a “ ‘re-programming’ of the mind,” a lifelong process in which the mind is taken from the world and more and more made to “have in mind the things of God”

It is startling how much there is in Scripture on the mind

Thus it is clear that the mind is where spiritual growth occurs, and in the mind decisions are made that determine one’s spiritual direction and destiny.

Paul’s focus is inner, spiritual transformation, and the locus is in the thinking process. In other words, the ongoing conduct of the believer is based on input from the world (v. 2) or from God (v. 2). This will determine whether one lives the victorious Christian life (8:1–8, 37) or a life of spiritual defeat (7:14–25). In fact, that is one of the major purposes of Christian fellowship, providing a counter to the mind-control of the world.