You are in someones mold 1
You Are In Someone’s Mold
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Romans 12:1 Countercultural Faith Series # 1
The key message Paul conveys in the book of Romans is that of detailing the wonderful way in which God has rescued us through the salvation He has provided through the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then, having detailed that, he says, since God has rescued you in this way, you ought to live for Him in these ways. He details that wonderful salvation in the first eleven chapters and then takes the remainder of the book to say, here is how we need to be living for God. In fact, chapter 12:1 is really the pivotal verse in the whole book. He changes gears there. He has been saying what God did for us, and now he is going to be saying what God expects of us.
Chapter 12, verse 1. “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God,…” In other words, because God did all this for you—eleven chapters worth of blessing—therefore, I urge you brethren by the mercies of God, “that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. 2 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.”
God has blessed us incredibly. Eleven chapters don’t cover it. God has been generous beyond measure. He has extended us forgiveness on the basis of the work of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. He has given us the Word of God, the indwelling Holy Spirit. He has placed us in the Body of Christ where we have friends and fellow believers who can encourage us and help us. Whatever else we try in the world, He is there to pick us up when it doesn’t work. He is faithful. He is not a grudge holder. He welcomes us back when we go out and try something else and it doesn’t work. We do well to center ourselves on Him. Whatever tempts us, whatever is attractive to us, whatever has promised to give us life apart from Him, we need the courage as we focus on Him to turn away from.
A number of years ago you could buy a little toy that was made by the Playdough corporation, and it consisted of a huge number of molds. You could take this mold and you could get a piece of blue playdough and stuff it in the mold and open up the mold and you would have a little blue dog. Or you could take a mold that was in the shape of a horse, and you could stuff your playdough in the mold and open it up and you would have a little blue horse, or a doll, or a piece of furniture, or whatever mold you chose. And children would take these things and make huge messes with them, building little molded blue and green and red dolls and dogs and horses.
I want to ask you a question about that illustration. It’s going to seem like a very simple, ridiculous question. But it has a profound impact on our lives. The question is this: when you were playing with this playdough toy, what determined which toy you end up with? Too simple? Simply the mold you choose! If you choose the dog mold, you are going to end up with a dog. If you choose the doll mold, you will definitely end up with a doll. That question has impact for us because we are people who are in someone’s mold.
Romans 12:1 and 2 makes it clear that you and I are in someone’s mold. Someone or something is molding us into something that we are going to become.
The second reason that question is important is because we are a people who are allowed to choose our mold. We can choose which mold we want to be in over the course of today or over of the course of the next ten years, or the course of a whole life. It’s our choice. Someone or something is molding us, but we get to choose the mold.
With those thought as a background, I want to ask you to think with me about this passage, and think about some questions for our own lives.
Number one, which mold have I chosen? Who is molding me today? Number two, asking myself the question, How do I change molds? And number three, asking the question, if I get into a good mold, how do I stay there?
With those questions in mind, let’s begin to think about Romans 12:2. The first issue is the reality that the world system is actively working to mold every believer, every Christian into something ugly. The world system is actively working to mold us into something very ugly. Romans 12:2 says, “Be not conformed to this world.”
There was an English scholar, J.B. Phillips who wrote a New Testament paraphrase in which he said, “Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mold.”
We have three huge enemies in this life once we trust Christ. Number one, our first enemy is Satan. The Bible describes him as a real being, describes him with personality—not a personality you would enjoy—but a personality. The Bible describes him as being very crafty, as being a personal adversary as 1 Peter 5:8 says. “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.” We have an enemy in Satan.
Secondly, the Bible says we have an enemy in our own flesh, that is, not our physical body, but in our own personal bent toward sin. The New Testament has many passages that deal with that. We won’t take time to look at them, but Galatians 5:16-21 is the most well-known passage that describes this inner desire living in us, a bent toward sin. It’s a huge enemy to us. In fact, one passage in Peter talks about this inner bent toward sin as being a sailor that’s on a ship and ready to commit mutiny. I am toting around in me a sailor ready to commit mutiny against me.
But the third great enemy, the one we want to think about today, is the enemy that is called the world system. It is very simply a spiritual kingdom, a spiritual alliance, which is aligned against God and against every person. This world system is described in James chapter 4:3-4, where it says, “Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts. 4 Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.”
If I become a friend of the world system, I am hostile toward God. Romans 12:2 is saying to us that this third great enemy, the world system, is doing its level best to squeeze us into its own mold. We have an enemy out there that is trying to mold us into something ugly, trying to break us off like a piece of playdough and cram us into a very ugly mold.
The question I want to think about to begin with is the question, how does it do that? How does it work? What is it that is impacting us that causes us to be changed into ugly people?
I would suggest to you today that one of the main ways that the world system tries to mold us into ugly people is through the use of the culture that we live in. The world system, I believe, to a great extent, is using the American culture to mold us into people who are not like the people God wants us to be.
Culture is very simply a collective way of doing things. We live in a nation that has a group of people that has a collective way of doing things. We have subcultures. They do things differently in the south than in the north or the west or the inner city or out in a rural area. But our culture as a collective way of doing things has, first of all, some good things. There are some things about the way that we as Americans go about life that is good. One of the things that we have seen repeatedly is an incredible generosity of the American people after disasters. It collectively gathers together to help others. That’s a very positive thing about our culture. There are other positive things about the way we do things. Our generosity in volunteering and providing care for people who struggle. There are positive things about the way we do life in America.
There are also some very negative things about the way that we collectively go about life. Here are some ideas that came to mind. Number one, we live in a culture that glorifies beauty and youth. We live in a culture that is very much bent toward the thinking that valuable people are attractive people and they are young people. One of the very ugly parts of our culture is the bent toward individualism—this idea that says that we need to promote self-health, self-promotion. Do what you need for yourself. Be an individual. Don’t be connected with the body around you. That’s one of the ugly parts of the way we do culture.
We also value money and material possessions far too highly. We have another trend in America called privatization. Collectively, as a culture we have a trend called privatization which says we are being more and more and more private about our lives. Our technology allows that. We have all kinds of technological systems that allow us to be alone, to be private people. Collectively, we are moving toward being more and more private people. We are profoundly shaped by our culture.
I don’t think we usually think about it. I think sometimes it’s very subtle. Sometimes we don’t even realize it’s happening. But we live in a group of people who are collectively doing things in a certain way and that collective way of doing things has a deep impact on us.
A couple of examples. Number one, our advertising industry. Our advertising industry is molding us into people who believe that we need more things than we actually need. It is molding us into people who think we deserve certain things. McDonald’s comes on the ad or the billboard and says, “You DESERVE a break today.” It is owed to you.
How about our entertainment industry. It is molding us into people how have lower standards than we should. It is molding us into people who have become far more callous to ugliness and to violence than we should be. It is molding us into people who have begun to say certain unbiblical things are normal and OK and good.
Or, for example, our government molding us into people who think we deserve certain things, and perhaps deserve them at no cost.
Our peers molding us into people who are accepting certain things and condoning certain things. The news media molding us into people who are not as compassionate as we should be, molding us into people who are more cynical than we should be. Our employers, molding us into people who value our employment and our career and our advancement more than we should. Or our heroes, our national role models molding us into people who care very little about integrity and a great deal about image.
Living in a culture which is having a tremendous impact on us, being crushed into a mold. We are being changed profoundly and shaped by our culture.
I am convinced based on Romans 12:2 that God wants us to fight that process. He said, don’t let yourself be trapped and squeezed into the world’s mold. Don’t just go along with everything your culture says and say, well, it must be OK as an American. Don’t just flow with the tide of the American culture, don’t go with the current. I think God is saying to us, I want you to swim against that current. Romans 12:2, God commands us to climb out of that mold and into His mold.
Let me read it again. “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.”
A remarkable part about the end of that phrase is, He is saying to us, I want you to live the kind of a life when I am done molding you, that demonstrates the perfect will of God. I want you to be a person who is personifying the will and the character and the motives and values of God.
I heard once about a fellow who was not what you would call hen-pecked, but mother hen-pecked. A friend was on the phone with him trying to arrange a time for them to get together with each other, and the friend testified that in the background he could hear this guy’s mother-in-law barking commands at him about when he could meet, when he could not meet, how he needed to check with his wife, when he was supposed to watch the children, and so on and so on. She was the personification of the ultimate mother-in-law.
God is saying to us in Romans 12:2, I want you to be the personification of the will and values and character of God. God wants for our lives that we be people in our day who when others look at us, they would say, Maybe that’s what God wants. Who when others look at our lives they would say, Boy, that’s different. That’s not like the culture.
If you have thought about that, I believe that’s a pretty tall order. To be living in my culture, in my workplace, in my neighborhood, in my recreation setting as a person who is personifying the will and the values and the character of God.
How do you do that? The answer to that question in chapter 12:2, He answers the question, how do I become a person who is personifying the will and values and character of God—the process of being molded or transformed by God simply involves the renewing of our minds.
Verse 2. “…but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind…” The word transformed is the word from which we get our word metamorphosis. It means to become something different, to change from one form into another form. The process of taking the form that you used to have and changing and becoming a different form.
For a caterpillar that involves a biological process where it goes from being a caterpillar to being a butterfly. For a Christian, that involves a mind and heart process. Obviously it is a spiritual process, but the focus here is on the mind. He says, I want you to change from being the person that you are into being the person that God wants you to become. I want you by renewing your mind to undergo the process of metamorphosis.
I would define renewing your mind very simply as using the Word of God to train myself to think like God thinks. Using the truths of God to train myself to think like God thinks. And when I do that, I become a different person. I become transformed. I took the caterpillar that I was and become the butterfly that God wants me to be, by thinking about and putting into my mind His truths.
There are two very simple steps in that process. First of all, I must answer the question, Who does God want me to become? I must say to myself, if I look ten years down the road, who is the person that God wants me to be in ten years?
I don’t know if you have ever thought about that, thought about the question of what is it that God wants me to become? Is it OK to keep coasting with who I am? Does God have a vision for me that is greater than who I am?
Let me give you some suggestions as to what God may be saying about that. Some examples of how you might answer that question, who does God want me to become?
Number one, God wants me to become an intimate lover of Himself. A sacrificial lover of my family. A leader wherever I am. He wants me to become a sojourner who understands this life is a temporary assignment. He wants me to become an evangelist who shares my faith on a regular basis. He wants me to become a person of integrity. A great worshiper, a person of humility, a great steward of the resources He gives me, a person who lives simply and gives generously. A person who is a servant to others. A forgiver. A person of joy.
Who is it that God wants you to become? If you project yourself ten years down the road, what should I look like? If I live faithfully in God’s mold and project myself ten years down the road, what will I look like?
The second part of the question, the second thing to consider is to answer the question, what is my personal plan for renewing my mind? How will I go about this transformation process? How will I climb in God’s mold?
The reality is, this doesn’t automatically happen. If you look at your finances and say to yourself, in ten years I want to be at a certain spot financially, and then do nothing, you won’t get there. It must be done intentionally. And when we look at our character and say, what does God want me to be in ten years, and then do nothing, we won’t get there.
God’s message to us is that we need to be people who are working intentionally and very, very diligently to say that I will renew my mind, I will climb in God’s mold, I will grow to be the person He wants me to be.
I’ll give you some ideas about how that might happen. You might say, I will read the Word of God every day. I will renew my mind by memorizing a specific portion of Scripture in a certain time frame. I will renew my mind by reading an excellent Christian book every month. By turning off the TV and giving more time to prayer. By writing a spiritual journal at least once a week. By studying a portion of the Word of God every week. By finding two mature Christian friends who are willing to be sounding boards for my ideas. I will stop reading novels, stop watching movies, stop listening to music that encourages me to think like the world thinks.
Simply ask myself the question, what do I do to climb into God’s mold? Because if I don’t intentionally climb in there, I will not become the person that He has envisioned five years or ten years or one year down the road.
I would encourage you to go home and answer that question for yourself. To say to yourself, who is the person that God wants me to be? What parts of my character does He want to be transformed? What ugly things about my relationships now does He want to be cleaned up? What new assets to my personality does He want to be added within in the next ten years? What does God want me to look like? And then how do I go about getting there?
I want to say one more thing before we close. Romans 12:1-2 makes it very clear that this is a personal responsibility. When I stand before God, He will not be asking me how somebody else did. He will not be saying, boy, that church really failed you on your transformation, didn’t they? We will not be able to stand before God and say, Lord, I would have made a lot more progress, but you know, my wife, or my husband, or my children. There was somebody in my life that really derailed it.
We will be standing before God alone and He will be listening for us to answer, How did you personally do in transforming your mind, in putting yourself in the mold of God? It is not the responsibility of the people around us. It is my responsibility to be putting myself, to be personally climbing into the mold of God and personally climbing out of the mold of the world.
Let me review quickly. Here is basically what I’ve said. Number one, the world system is actively working to mold us into something ugly. And the primary thing the world system is using is the American culture. It is trying to get us to go with the flow of what’s happening in America, to say whatever America does is OK and I’m going to go with that.
Secondly, God is commanding us to climb out of that mold and into His mold. I have a choice about who molds me.
Number three, the process of being transformed or molded by God very simply means I must be renewing my mind. I must be actively working to train myself to think the way that God thinks, do what I need to do to think like God thinks.
And number four, the primary responsibility for renewing my mind is mine. I will not be able to stand before God and say, my pastor or my church or my neighbor or my family derailed this. God will be looking to me to see if I was personally involved in that process.
It is no sin to be immature, but it is tragic not to be in the renewal process. It is tragic not to be a person who is actively working to say, I am getting out of the culture’s mold, and I am climbing into God’s mold. I am renewing my mind and becoming the person He wants me to be.
I knew of a man years ago who reloaded ammunition. Sometimes he actually molded his own bullets, where he would take this incredibly ugly cast-iron pot and put it on a cook stove. It was filled with lead weights off of tires. He would get old weights off of tires and put them in there and melt them down and scrape the impurities off the top, until he would have a bucket on the stove of melted lead. Then he would dip out some of that melted lead and he had a mold in his hand and he would pour the lead into that mold until it was full. Then he would let it set for a minute, then open it up. He used a wooden stick. He obviously couldn’t touch it because it was so hot. He struck the mold and this molded lead bullet would fall out of the mold onto a wet cloth. He made many of them. Sometimes the molded bullet would come out that hadn’t filled the mold and it was incredibly deformed. It was a huge mess. It wasn’t going to work. He would take a pair of pliers and grab that hot lead and put it back in the pot and let it re-melt. He would mold it again.
I suspect there are some times in our lives when we need to say, I just need to climb back in the pot. I may have been living for God at one point, I may have been renewing my mind, I may have been thinking like God thinks, I may have been really working to be a person who was in God’s mold. But now for some reason, I have started to let myself start to coast with the culture. And I may need to say to myself, I am going to climb back into the pot. I want God to be the One who shaping my thinking. And I will no longer go with the flow of my culture.
—PRAYER—