The two verses that begin Chapter 12 of Romans have been much on my mind for over two years now.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Just like Paul’s entire letter, so many of the individual verses in Romans are packed full of meaning and beg for careful reading and re-reading.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
The ones I have in mind are familiar verses; you probably know them well yourself:<\/p>\n\n\n
“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship.<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n
Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.<\/i>“<\/p>\n\n\n
The phrase I have been chewing on lately is “the renewing of your mind<\/i>” part.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
A certain organization (for which I recently worked … briefly) often recited Romans 12:2 as their foundational verse. They seemed to equate “renewing the mind” with simply getting a good, Christ-centered education.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
You know I am big on education myself, but wouldn’t “renew your mind” be a rather odd way of saying “learn more”, even if we have in mind specifically learning more about God and Scripture?<\/p>\n\n\n
Renew? Why not something more like “expand your mind”, “broaden your mind”, or “develop your mind”?<\/p>\n\n\n
The Greek word translated as “renewing” means “a renewal, renovation, complete change for the better”.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Paul seems to have in mind something much bigger – and more transformative – than packing our heads with more facts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The two verses that begin Chapter 12 of Romans have been much on my mind for over two years now.\u00a0 Just like Paul’s entire letter, so many of the individual verses in Romans are packed full of meaning and beg for careful reading and re-reading.\u00a0 The ones I have in mind are familiar verses; you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4889"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4890,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4889\/revisions\/4890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}