It’s not a nice thing to say, but it’s the truth.  Your mind is corrupt.  “Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.”  ( Rom. 1:28) 

The problem is that your mind dominates your life.  Your mind controls what you love, how you live, and the choices you make.  “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.”  Putting the two Scriptures together, what are you?—You have a corrupt mind and therefore you are corrupt.  You make choices that are corrupt because a corrupt mind thinks, “I don’t care about God.”

And if you are corrupt what are you?  Romans 3:9-18:” What shall we conclude then? Are we any better? Not at all! We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin. ¹⁰As it is written: "There is no one righteous, not even one;  . . . What shall we conclude then? . . . Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin.”  Logical.  Your mind is corrupt, you are corrupt, therefore, the conclusion is you are condemned. 

But God has provided a way to change the tense of the verb in everything I’ve just said.  God has provided a way to change the present tense, “You are condemned” to a past tense, “You were condemned.” 

Romans 5:1: “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”  Romans 8:1: “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

After you come to faith in Christ, Paul “encourages” (he doesn’t “command”) you to do something you’ve never done or even been able to do.  It never entered your mind.  What He encourages you to do is something that’s “reasonable,” in view of the free gift of your justification. 

Dr. Ryrie, the author of the notes of the Ryrie study Bible once did something for a student.  I don’t know what it was, but it was something stupendous.  Ryrie not only writes and teaches, but he travels all over the world speaking in churches and seminaries and Bible colleges.  Later, in love and gratitude, the student came to him and said, “As long as I live in this area, I’ll drive you to the airport anytime you need to go; you call me and I’ll take you for the rest of your life.”  That was nice!  It was a nice thing prompted by love.

Prompted by your love for God, Paul encourages you to present your body a living sacrifice to God.  Prompted by “the [undeserved, unearned] mercies” God has given you in free grace, Paul encourages you to present your body a living sacrifice.  In the Bible your “body” = your whole person.  In other words, what Paul is encouraging you to do is to give your whole life to God.  That’s a sacrifice because now you choose to lose the authority over your life to think and live and choose as you please because YOU are the sacrifice. Paul is encouraging you to present yourself for a life of service to God. 

And that is “worship.” 

What Paul is calling for here on your part is a specific, definite act on your part.  He’s calling for it because it was not an act that was part of your salvation.  How do we know that?  Because if it were a part of salvation, he wouldn’t be encouraging the believers to whom he was writing to do it, they would have already done it because they’re already believers.  Because in Acts, the Apostles call on the unsaved to believe not to “present their bodies.”  (Acts 10; Acts16:32)  The issue in salvation isn’t “present;” it’s “believe.”  Because Romans 12 gives the believer the implications of the gospel, that’s why “therefore” beings the chapter and that’s why he writes about, “your reasonable service,” that is in view of all I’ve explained, it’s reasonable to present your body.”  

Then, as a result of that act, a life-long process begins, the process of not “[being] conform[ed] any longer to the pattern of this world . . .”  Look at that.  “Not being conformed any longer to the pattern of this world.”  Christians, saved, yet conformed to this world, that is, their minds living, loving, and choosing as the world does. 

I know what your problem is—you read “conform” and think that it’s referring to conformities you’d never engage in, like getting all drunk and all immoral and running off and joining a circus.  But there are other ways to conform to the world.

One way for the Christian to conform is to crave a blessing, that is craving success, money, and security.  After all, that’s what the televangelists tell us that it’s all right to crave because those things are blessings and doesn’t God want to bless you, so it’s OK to crave those things.  But in the New Testament, a blessing isn’t necessarily money (Peter said he had none.  Paul wrote that he did without.)  In the N. T. a blessing may not be security. 

Another way for the Christian to conform to the world is to think that if they give what’s called “seed money,” They think like the world.  It’s a business deal, so God will pay them back with interest.  Their giving becomes like the world’s giving, an investment given to get a return.  But grace-giving isn’t a business deal.

So far, we’ve seen that Paul is encouraging a decisive act.  Then we’ve seen that after that act, a process of nonconformity begins.  But, we have yet to see how the process happens.

The process happens in connection with the helmet of salvation—“delivering” [the meaning of “salvation”] of the mind from the brain’s being conformed to the world.  You will be a Christian non-conformist by “renewing your mind.”  This is where the majority of believers never get it, and because they never get it, they continue to live being squeezed into the world’s thinking, living, loving, choosing, and doing. 

Here’s the way most Christians do it and it’s why there’s so much failure.  Instead of renewing the mind day by day by yielding themselves to the power of the Holy Spirit and by studying the Bible day by day, they try to renew their minds by personal experiences.  They rely on a Sunday shot of uplifting music, a Sunday shot of a supernatural feeling for an hour or so.  They’re like a dead battery that has to be jump-started once a week, but the jump start lasts only as long as the emotion.  Short-lived.    

By Sunday afternoon or Monday morning, their battery is dead and they’re wondering why this Christianity stuff doesn’t “work.”  They’ve forgotten or never learned that God redeemed their minds and they need to get “the mind of Christ” [the Word] into their minds every day, day after day.  To say it in the Eph. 6 way, you have to put on the helmet of salvation every day as your protection from conformity.

Your mind is only going to be protected by being renewed everyday with the Word. There is no short cut, there’s no pastor who can do it for you.  This is far from making a list of “don’ts” so as not to be conformed to the world. 

Conforming to the world means just flat out not caring about God, about Christ and His Word.  You can be moral and conform to the world, because the world has a morality. 

There was a fellow whose mother died broken-hearted because he spent most of his time as a drunk.  When he came to the funeral and, later it was just he and his father, his father said, “Son, you haven’t spent a night in this house for 3 yrs.  You haven’t had anything to do with me or your mother.  Would you spend tonight in the house with me?”

The son said, “No, I won’t.  I don’t care anything about you.”

The father said, “Well, son, if that’s the way you feel, you’re going to have to walk out of this house over my dead body.  I’m going to lie down across the doorway and if you leave, you’re going to have to step over me.”

Then the father got down and lay across the doorway.

The son looked at his father, stepped over his body and left the house.  He didn’t care.

When you refuse to dedicate and then refuse the process of renewing your mind, when you refuse to put on the helmet, you’re walking past God and saying, “I don’t care.” 

Romans 12:1-2 isn’t a decision the believer makes lightly.  I know preachers call for congregations to stand, for people to come forward over Romans 12:1-2.  But there may be a problem with that because when he asked me to stand when I was in church, you now what I did and why I did it?  I stood up with everyone else, I went forward with every one else and you know why?  Not because I’d made that decision, but only because everyone else did and I didn’t want the embarrassment of looking bad in front of the church. 

So, I’m not going to ask you to stand up or come forward, but I am going to challenge you to think seriously about Romans 12:1-12, read the material I’ve got for you, read the sentences again and again, and if you choose to lose, you’ll do so after serious consideration and prayer. 

At home, you can choose to lose.  You lose control; you give it to God.  You will lose your own control, but what has that control gotten you in your marriage, in your relationships?  You choose to lose, but when you choose to lose, you gain a first-class life.

Ray Chapman was the only professional baseball player to be killed by a pitched ball. It was in the top of the fifth inning when Yankees pitcher Carl Mays threw a spitball that hit Chapman so hard fans heard the pop when it hit his head.  The pitcher, thinking it hit his bat picked up the ball as it rolled toward him and threw it to first.  The ball left a 3½-inch depressed fracture in his skull.

This led to two rule changes the following season. The spitball was banned, although established pitchers who threw spitters were given a "grandfather clause" and permitted to continue pitching spitballs for the remainder of their career.  They thought that Chapman must have been unable to see the ball clearly as it approached, so the other rule change instructed umpires to replace the game ball whenever it became soiled and less than brilliantly white -- an expense that team owners had previous resisted. (Batting helmets were not required until 1971.)

They didn’t choose the right solution, just as many believers choose the jump start once a week as the solution. 

If you don’t put on the “helmet of deliverance,” Satan’s arrows, aimed for the head, will knock you off the battlefield, you’ll be living, loving and choosing what the world lives, loves, and chooses.

Truth to Take Home:

Choose to Lose.