Romans 12:2
“Don’t be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what is the good, well-pleasing, and perfect will of God.”
Where this sits
The turn from doctrine to practice in Romans. Eleven chapters of argument have just ended, and this is where Paul says therefore.
Reflection
Two verbs are set against each other, and both are passive. Don't be conformed. Be transformed. Neither is something you do to yourself; both are things that happen to you, and the only question is which.
Conformed suggests pressure from outside — being pressed into a shape by a mould. It is what happens by default, without decision, to anyone who is simply present in a culture. Nobody chooses to be conformed. That is the mechanism's chief advantage.
Transformed is a different word entirely, and English borrowed it: metamorphosis. It describes change that works outward from within, and it is the word used of Jesus on the mountain when his appearance changed.
And the site of the work is named precisely: the renewing of your mind. Not your behaviour, not your feelings. Paul locates the change upstream of both, in what you find plausible, what you assume, what you do not think to question.
Then the purpose, and it is not what you would expect. So that you may prove what is the will of God. Not so that you may obey it. Prove — test, discern, come to recognise. The renewed mind is described as an instrument for perceiving. What Paul offers is not a list of God's preferences but the capacity to tell, which is the thing a list can never supply.
- Theme:
- Newness
- Book:
- Romans