Imperative #1 - Transformation
Imperatives in 2021 • Sermon • Submitted
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Introduction
Introduction
Let us rejoice that we find ourselves on this journey to build and become the church of Jesus Christ in 2021, with all of its opportunities for ministry to others and service to our Lord. So that we might do a better job for our Lord, ourselves and others, we are going to look at a couple of the great imperatives Paul gave to the churches during his ministry.
We begin this morning with Paul’s great challenge to the church at Rome. It provides us with an appropriate imperative to help us begin this new year of building and becoming.
The imperatives in our text today, there are two in this text that make up our great imperative of transformation, require us to give careful attention to the forces at work in our lives in 2021 and beyond. There is a negative and a positive imperative given here, that taken together makes the greater imperative of transformation.
The negative imperative in our text calls attention to a great danger we all face - the peril of becoming contaminated by the worldly environment in which we live. The positive imperative calls upon us to experience an inward spiritual change - a transformation - that produces a radical change in our conduct in the midst of this compromising environment in which we live.
Let’s read our passage together this morning and hear the cry, the plea, the imperative given by our Lord through the pen of the apostle Paul.
Romans 12:1-2
Therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your true worship. Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.
The bold challenge to full commitment
The bold challenge to full commitment
Paul issues a challenge to all disciples of the Lord Jesus to present their bodies as a living sacrifice in service to God and others. The Message Bible translates it this way:
Romans 12:1
So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him.
The Phillips translation says this:
“With eyes wide open to the mercies of God, I beg you, my brothers, as an act of intelligent worship, to give Him your bodies, as a living sacrifice, consecrated to Him and acceptable to Him.”
This is a pivotal verse. That which precedes this verse is 11 chapters of doctrinal foundation. That which follows is 5 chapters of practical application. The first portion of the book deals with our beliefs, and the balance of the book deals with the expression of those beliefs in behavior. This is where the rubber meets the road. This where the building goes from concept to construction.
Paul challenges his “brothers” - that is the believers (the KJV and NKJV says “brethren” which usually is taken to be male and females - brothers and sisters). He is talking to us, the church today. He is saying “Hey, Robbie Gibson this is for you! I’m begging you.”
When do we usually beg someone to do something? When they are not doing it! He says it is “reasonable,” it is “intelligent.”
We whine and cry if our Christianity costs us anything today. We don’t know sacrifice. We drive nice cars, live in nice homes, eat more than we should - and yet there is a needy, dying world around us.
Paul calls for “absolute commitment!”
The bold challenge to avoid contamination
The bold challenge to avoid contamination
A part of that commitment is to avoid some things. He says
Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.
His command is just the opposite of what most “christians” are trying to do. This is given in the imperative. DO NOT BE CONFORMED. Again, the Message translation says
Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
In other words, Christian, STOP! Just STOP! Stop trying to be like and well liked by this world. We don’t present ourselves as someone who hates people, but we can not love the world and love Christ!
But everyone else is doing it! Who cares! But tolerance demands we accept it! No, it doesn’t. Tolerance in 1828 Websters: The power or capacity of enduring; or the act of enduring. Tolerate is “to suffer to be.” There is no idea of accepting something as equal or good in that. In the early 1900’s tolerate was defined as “the ability to suffer or endure that which you strongly disagree with.”
We ARE NOT TO CONFORM to this world. In no matter, in no means, in no methods. Our dress, our speech, our attitudes, our ambitions - everything about us is to glorify God!
So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God.
As the redeemed children of God, having been made new creatures in Christ Jesus, we live in a world system that is under the dominion of the evil one. Look at these two verse with me:
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come!
We know that we are of God, and the whole world is under the sway of the evil one.
The sinful world in which we live is not passive and unconcerned. Evil is aggressive, and we must put forth effort to prevail against the squeezing, conforming power of the world system in which we live.
God calls us to be different. We are to be dead to sin and alive to God. Instead of giving in to temptations, we are to respond as dead persons. We must not permit either our evil nature within or the evil world around us to dominate us.
Paul tells us in Ephesians 5:3-14 that we are to conduct ourselves as beloved children of God, walking in the light rather than in the darkness.
Paul told the Colossians to put to death that which was earthly and evil in their nature and in turn to put on the new nature and live as God’s chosen ones.
Jesus says if we are going to be followers, if we are going to be His, we must
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.
The imperative of transformation
The imperative of transformation
Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.
Paul uses a Greek word here that people today are still familiar with - metamorphosis. It means to literally change completely in nature.
Illustration of farmer with field of cabbages - worms eating - yellow butterflies later - metamorphosis!
Paul was urging his readers to experience a remarkable transformation that is possible by a renewal of the mind that comes when one is born again and filled with the Holy Spirit. It is the work of the Holy Spirit using Scriptures and a responsive heart to bring about inward mental and spiritual transformation that is then manifested outwardly in a change in one’s conduct.
It does not and can not work the other way around. You can not simply change your actions and experience transformation - that is reformation - that is what we attempt to do with our penal system, our laws, jails and prisons. We change to change one’s behavior. God is in the heart changing business. If the behavior changes to avoid punishment, but the heart doesn’t change, eventually the individual will fall and the punishment will come. Spiritually, that is what Paul is talking about when he says
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God;
We need a change, but it can’t just be a change of actions.
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
If you would change your conduct, you must first change your creed. If you would change your behavior, you must first change your beliefs. If you would become truly Christian in your conduct, you must become Christlike in your thinking.
For only by a revolutionary change, a transformational change in your thoughts can you experience a revolutionary change, a transformational change in your conduct.
We have tried way too long in this country to try to change behavior by laws and rules and orders without trying to change hearts.
The call to repentance is in reality a call to a complete change in one’s thought patterns and decision-making processes with reference to God, to sin, to self, to things, and to others.
How much change took place in your thinking about God, yourself, others, and things during the past year?
Paul challenge the Philippian Christians
Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus,
Only as we let the Holy Spirit change our thinking and cause us to think like Christ can we experience the transformation that needs to take place in our lives.
With eyes wide open to the mercies of God, present yourself to him!
With eyes wide open to the mercies of God, present yourself to him!
The glorious end result of refusing to be conformed to the world and of experiencing inward mental and spiritual transformation is to prove in our own experience that the Will of God is good and acceptable and perfect!
You can never really know that God’s will is best for you and for others until you make this complete commitment of yourself to God’s will and allow Him to transform you.
With eyes wide open to the mercies of God, present yourself to Him today.
Taste and see that the Lord is good.
How happy is the person who takes refuge in him!