Built Different: Think Different
Pastor Rollan Fisher
Focus: When reconciled to God in Jesus Christ, you have a new ability to think differently to transform both your life and your part of the world by the power of the Holy Spirit.
A New Mind
A New Heart
A New Lord
“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation”
-Oscar Wilde
A New Mind
We need to actively seek God to be transformed by the renewing our minds.
Romans 12:1-21
“I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
If we are not actively being transformed by the renewing of our minds into Christ’s image, we are passively being conformed to the pattern of this world.
“To return to Romans 12:1: Paul has hereby created the context for the key command which sets all his ethics apart from any suggestion of “spontaneity,” as though once you were in Christ, indwelt by the Spirit, all you had to do was let the new life “come naturally.” No: the mind must be transformed, so that you can think out for yourself, weigh up and consider, what God’s will actually is. Unless the mind is fully involved, not only are you not growing up as a fully (and fully integrated) human being; you are not engaging in virtue at all.
When Paul talks about the “mind,” he is not ranking Christians in terms of what we would call their intellectual or “academic” ability. Some Christians have that sort of mind. Plenty of others don’t. But Paul wants all Christians to have their mind renewed, so that they can think in a different way. We all face many challenges, not only in the sphere of morality as such, but in a thousand different contexts. It won’t do simply to go into autopilot and hope to get through somehow. That will work, as with our initial examples of virtue, only when we have already trained ourselves in the necessary habits. But to do that requires careful and disciplined thought in this new mode, probably over some time. We have to be able to think about what to do – what to do with our whole lives, and what to do in the sudden crisis that faces us in this very minute. Being trained to think “Christianly” is the necessary antidote to what will otherwise happen: being, as Paul says, “squeezed into the shape dictated by the present age.”
-N.T. Wright, After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters, 150-151.
A New Heart
As our minds are renewed in the Lord, our hearts will follow, and vice versa.
Romans 12:3-8
“For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.”
God is making it clear that the place where mind and heart transformation are worked out is not in the midst of isolation, but engaged with his body, the church.
It is in the life on life ministry to one another where Christ is formed in us and revealed through us.
Your role and contributions in the body are indispensable in every season of life.
Both our community groups and upcoming ministry team fair allow you opportunities for a shared life as you are transformed by the grace of God along with others.
As your mind and heart are transformed, you take bite-sized steps to serve and transform the world around you with the love and good news of Jesus.
“If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one.”
-Mother Theresa
A New Lord
As our hearts are renewed, Christ’s Lordship transforms every area of our lives for the good.
Romans 12:9-21 ESV
Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord." To the contrary, "if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
God calls us into a countercultural Kingdom through Christ.
*Here is the point that can not be missed - as opposed to the world, service in the Kingdom of God is not divorced from love but is made perfect in practical relational love for one another.
Galatians 5:6 ESV
“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.”
Galatians 5:6 NIV
“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.”
Our eyes are opened when we are born-again - when we acknowledge that God has saved us by grace, through faith alone, in Jesus’ sinless life lived for us, death died sacrificially for our sins at the cross and resurrection with power from the dead, proving historically that Jesus is the unique Son of God (Ephesians 2:8-10).
Yet to enter into that new life takes repentance from our sin and faith.
It is not a one time repentance and faith, but an ongoing lifestyle where we die daily to self in Jesus to also live daily in his resurrection life.
Just as there is no salvation without the cross of Christ, there is no sanctification without a commitment to walking out that salvation as we bear our crosses with one another in love.
Just as love can not be walked out in isolation, true faith can not be walked out without Jesus as Lord.
“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
-C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Second City Church