Renewing Your Mind in Christ

Renewing Your Mind Begins With the Life You Already Have

When we are born of the Spirit, sin is no longer going to be healthy for us. Our minds have been opened to see sin differently because something inside us really has changed.

Paul says that we were once slaves to sin but are now slaves to righteousness (Romans 6:17–18). He is describing two different kinds of people: those without Christ and those with Him. We could just as easily say slaves to death and slaves to life.

Those without Christ have no spiritual life. Sin is their master. Outward goodness does not change what is happening within. Jesus made this point vividly when He described the scribes and Pharisees as whitewashed tombs (Matthew 23:27–28). They looked beautiful on the outside while remaining full of death on the inside.

Christ would never describe one of His sheep that way. Anyone who has been born of the Spirit and has Christ living within has been brought from slavery to sin into slavery to righteousness.

So what happens when a person who was created to be righteous begins living unrighteously? It does not fit. Sin may tempt us, but it cannot satisfy the new creation the way we imagine it will. The life within us is pulling another direction. That is why Christians can experience such intense frustration when they persist in something that contradicts who they are.

The problem is not that we need God to make us alive again. We need our minds renewed to the life He has already given us.

Consequences Are Not the Same as God's Anger

Sin can hurt us badly. The longer we continue in destructive behavior, the more painful the consequences may become (Galatians 6:7–8). But painful consequences do not automatically mean God is directly punishing us out of anger.

If a loving parent tells a child to look both ways before crossing the road and the child ignores the warning, the parent is not punishing the child if a car hits them. A terrible consequence followed a terrible decision, but the parent did not send the car.

We need to remember that Christ has reconciled us to God. We can trust our Father even when circumstances are painful. We can also trust that He is able to work all things according to His purpose (Romans 8:28). What we cannot do is demand that He give us the life we think we deserve on our own terms.

Under the Law, Israel was promised earthly blessings for obedience and faced covenant consequences for disobedience (Deuteronomy 28). That is not the promise we have been given in Christ. Jesus told His disciples plainly that they would have trouble in this world. Our peace is found in Him (John 16:33).

So when life becomes difficult, renewing our minds means refusing to measure God's love by our circumstances. We return to what He has already shown us in Christ.

Stop Trying to Clean Yourself Up Without Him

Paul tells us that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. We are not our own. We were bought with a price. Then in Romans 12:1 he tells us to present our bodies as a living sacrifice.

What does that look like? It is really pretty simple. We give up our rights to God. We humbly ask our Father to do His work through us. We trust Him to do His work in our lives.

Notice that I said trust Him. When we take on the job of cleaning ourselves up without Him, it will never be fulfilling. Legalism and self-righteousness do not make people more loving. Quite often they make people mean.

If I believe I have to do all these things to remain acceptable to God, it becomes very easy to decide that you should have to do all of them too.

Why would Christ be living in us if He intended to stand by while we struggled alone and then judge our every move? That is not the work of the Helper. He comforts us, guides us, and leads us into truth (John 14:26; 16:13). We torture ourselves when we sin, but He has not abandoned us in the moment when we need Him the most.

Repentance and the Renewal of the Mind

When most Christians hear the word repent, I think they hear God saying, "Stop sinning." Then they take responsibility for carrying the entire burden themselves.

They may become highly motivated for a while, but that motivation eventually disappears if they are not depending on the Lord. So what happens when we struggle with sin? Do we simply forget about it and continue? No. But focusing on stopping sin is not the answer either.

Romans 12:1 begins with the mercies of God. It is His love and mercy that motivate the new creation. When temptation comes and I consider the love Christ displayed at the cross, something happens in me. My heart melts.

He took what belonged to me. My old self was crucified with Him so that I could be free in Him (Romans 6:6–7). He promised that He would live within me and guide me. So what am I doing trying to solve everything apart from Him? I should be seeking His guidance.

That is the train of thought I believe helps us overcome sin. Repentance is a change of mind. Paul tells us not to be conformed but to be transformed through the renewal of our minds (Romans 12:2). Our Father's love changes our thinking, and changed thinking begins to change the way we live.

Grace Teaches Us to Depend on God

Paul's prayer in Ephesians 3:14–19 gives us a beautiful picture of what feeds the Christian life. He prays that believers would be strengthened through God's Spirit in the inner person, rooted and grounded in love, and able to comprehend the enormous dimensions of the love of Christ.

When we understand the gospel and the love God has for His children, we have what we need. Trust Him. Acknowledge Him. Cry out to Him when you need help. Who could possibly be better to ask? He created all things. He is sovereign over all events. We are not going to find a better source.

Titus 2:11–12 teaches that God's grace trains us. Galatians 5:1 says that Christ set us free and tells us not to submit again to a yoke of slavery. The Galatians were mixing Law and grace. They were adding self-effort back into what God had already accomplished for them.

We do not need to stop sinning on our own. Jesus displayed dependence on the Father throughout His earthly life (John 5:19). If He showed us dependence rather than independence, why would Christian maturity mean learning to operate without our Father? It doesn't.

What Are You Feeding Your Mind?

If our minds are going to be renewed, we need to think about what we are feeding them. Jesus said that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God (Matthew 4:4).

Good Christian health requires spiritual food. We have spiritual life now. So when we feel spiritually dead, what should we do? Eat. Sometimes we may not feel hungry. Eat anyway.

When we begin seeing the words of our Lord as food for the Spirit, Scripture stops being another task on a religious checklist. We realize that we need it. If we do not eat, our spiritual health suffers. We lose energy and vibrancy because we are trying to live without nourishment.

Renewing your mind requires truth, and the center of that truth is Christ. John tells us that the Word became flesh and lived among us, full of grace and truth (John 1:1, 14). If we want to know the Father, we look to Jesus. If we want to understand Scripture, we read it through the finished work of Christ rather than separating it from Him.

Be Careful Who Is Feeding You

I have been direct about Bible commentaries, and I am going to remain direct. I highly recommend staying away from Bibles that constantly interpret the text for you through commentary. You do not have to believe me, and you are free to do whatever you want, but when somebody else is explaining every passage before you have become familiar enough with Scripture to evaluate what you are being taught, it becomes very easy to inherit their theology without realizing it.

The Bible is full of spiritual meat. Paul tells the Corinthians that the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God because they are spiritually discerned. Then he says something incredible: "We have the mind of Christ". Yet when Paul continues into chapter 3, he tells them that he could not address them as spiritual people but as infants in Christ. He fed them milk rather than solid food (1 Corinthians 2:14–3:4).

Why? They were following men. One said, "I follow Paul." Another said, "I follow Apollos." Paul called that immaturity.

That should make us think seriously about the way Christian teaching works today. Do our teachers want us to grow into dependence on God, or do they need to remain the person we depend on for every answer?

Israel made the same basic mistake in 1 Samuel 8:4–22. They wanted a king like the nations around them instead of trusting God. We can repeat that mistake spiritually when a pastor, teacher, denomination, commentary, or institution becomes our final authority.

I am not saying God will not use people to help us understand Scripture. Of course He will. I am saying we should be selective about who feeds us and never surrender our responsibility to know the words of our Lord. Learn from people. Listen. Compare. Think. But know Christ for yourself.

Christian Maturity Looks Like Greater Dependence

The world's picture of maturity usually moves toward independence. Infants are completely dependent on their parents. Children gradually learn to do things themselves. Adults are expected to take care of their own lives.

Spiritual maturity moves in an almost backwards direction. We will always be children of God. When we have a loving Father, we do well to depend on Him. Jesus said plainly, "apart from me you can do nothing" (John 15:5). The more we grow in grace, the more clearly we realize that we cannot make it on our own.

We may come to Christ as very independent adults. We already have routines, plans, ambitions, opinions, and plenty of worldly baggage. Then Christ makes His home within us. Over time, we begin realizing how much we need our Father.

We may become more childlike in our dependence while becoming more mature in Christ. His power works just fine in our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9–10).

Dependence Becomes Real in Ordinary Life

Melissa and I once found ourselves in a stupid argument right before bed. We usually talk a lot and encourage each other, but sometimes the flesh gets in the way. On this particular night, neither of us seemed able to get things under control.

I knew prayer was the answer. I also did not want to pray. I was mad. I felt misunderstood. I thought Melissa was treating me unfairly, and I wanted to be right. I knew what spiritual food I needed, but I did not want to eat it.

Eventually I forced myself to pray. I told my Father how upset I was and asked Him to fill Melissa with His love so that we could make things right. I no sooner finished praying than she came into the room wanting to work things out.

I resisted at first. Then my heart melted too. Later I told Melissa what had happened, and she told me that while she had been finishing what she was doing, she suddenly felt consumed with love and compelled to come apologize.

I love things like that. God was teaching me dependency while crushing my pride. That does not mean He is a genie in a bottle. I cannot demand the same result on command every time I pray. That would not be dependence at all. It means our Father gives us reason after reason to trust His will.

We Work Out What God Works In

Scripture teaches us to exercise our wills, but it does not present us as possessing a free autonomy independent of God. If our will made us equal to or independent of Him, we would not really need prayer or faith. We would simply need to figure everything out ourselves.

Paul gives us the relationship between God's will and ours in Philippians 2:12–13: work out your own salvation, because it is God who works in you both to will and to work for His good pleasure.

Paul's point is that we work out what God works in. That is our Christian exercise. God works in us both to will and to work, and we participate in what He is doing. We learn to recognize His will rather than the pull of the flesh.

So good Christian health requires diet and exercise. We feed on truth. God works within us. We work it out.

We Also Need the Body of Christ

There is one more part of good spiritual health that we should not ignore. We need one another (1 Corinthians 12:25–27).

It can be difficult to find people who understand what we are learning as we grow in grace. Sometimes the strongest opposition to the full grace message comes from people who identify as Christians. That can make us want to withdraw.

But we need encouragement. We need brothers and sisters in Christ we can confide in. We need people who can remind us of truth when we are struggling and people we can encourage when they are struggling.

That does not mean everyone around us has to be at exactly the same place. Gathering with immature Christians still counts as fellowship. But if all we ever hear is baby talk, it becomes difficult to grow.

We should pray for mature brothers and sisters. Thankfully, we are never truly alone. We have the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Renewing Your Mind Helps You Live Alive

Paul could endure imprisonment and still remain spiritually healthy because his life was not being supplied by his circumstances. That is the kind of health we want to establish before the hard days arrive.

We are alive in Christ, and we ought to feel alive. So what do we do when we feel dead on our feet? Renew your mind. Depend on your Father. Feed on the words of our Lord and His loving mercy. Learn to recognize the difference between grace and self-effort. Work out what God is working within you. Seek encouragement in the body of Christ and encourage others with the same love you have received.

But never try to do any of this on your own. Rest in Him.