Be Not Conformed

When God called you to be a Christian, he already knew that you are not a conformist. And he knew that being human, you'd probably like to be. It's in our nature to pick our attitudes, dress, values, and words from the people we are around the most. 

Wouldn't it be great if we could just align ourselves with the people we WANT to copy? Not rock the boat; not disagree on matters of priority or values or morals? Being a Christian involves a personal commitment to be better than the world we live in.  

We cannot outsource our daily decisions about what we think, say and do to our spouse, parents, pastor or favorite celebrity. Yet living as we do in a world where people are constantly sending signals of their choices and values via social media, there has never been time in history when it was more difficult to be a Christian. That's why the book of Revelation calls this era "the hour of temptation". We NEED to be better each day.

Easier said than done. So in this short episode we focus on the command of Romans 12:2, and reflect on how Jesus set us an example in that regard. If you are eager to be successful in the Christian quest, this podcast may offer simple, straightforward baby steps toward doing those things that help you grow.

This episode focuses on just one phrase in Romans 12, at the beginning of verse 2. "Be not conformed..." Are you ready to think about it in the same way Jesus did? 

This new podcast is meant for serious Christians -- people who are focused on following Jesus faithfully, until death. The trials are real, but the joys are beyond expression. Eye has not seen, nor ear heard ... the things God has been preparing for those who love him supremely.

The more we pay attention to the terms of discipleship and predictions of the actual deeds of Jesus' truest followers, there have not been many humble, meek Jesus followers who made it into the pages of history. Most genuine, obedient Christians have been laboring in anonymity, ignored or even hounded by the powerful forces of the outwardly respectable, "orthodox" Christian geopolitical system.

For the most part, the true followers of Jesus were not famous, they did not have official recognition, they did not seek or gain political power, and often they were oppressed, persecuted, neutralized in this life. Probably, few made their living as "ministers of the gospel". They were like the ancient prophets of old
-- men and women who suffered for their faithfulness-- "of whom the world was not worthy."

But the future era will be different. Jesus will exalt his obedient followers. They will be revealed by him as having been victorious in his eyes. He will promote them to places of power and influence in his future "government of the world, when the times are ripe for it." (Ephesians 1:9,10 -- Weymouth translation.)

Transcript

Owen Kindig: 0:00

Welcome to We Are Near. This is episode 3, and we're looking at Romans 12, verses 1 and 2. Those two verses are pivotal in understanding what it is a Christian is called to do. In the last episode, we talked about the, uh, call to be transformed, the call to have our mind renewed, and to learn to discern God's will. and apply it in our lives. I want to go back now to the very first phrase in chapter 12, verse 2. In the, uh, ESV translation, it says, I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, in verse 1, I appeal to you, therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. It is amazing, isn't it, that the perfect God of the universe finds imperfect human beings to be acceptable to him. How does that happen? In a nutshell, the way it happens is through the grace of God applied on our behalf. And the mechanism by which it works is what these two verses are talking about. It's a method of renewal, that comes from the fact that we are a new spiritual entity that begins on the day that we commit our hearts to Christ. Now let's look at verse two. It says, Do not be conformed to this world. Let's zero in on that. If we go here in the, Blue Letter Bible. To the, hit the tools button, what we find is, that it says do not be conformed, and the word there is schematizo, schematizo, and you can see in the middle of that that there's a word schema, s c h e m a, that is the main core thought in that word. And cis, the prefix, implies, a process by which we would synchronize our own actions with the actions of people around us. And the verse is telling us, no, don't do that. Do not synchronize your actions to the people around you. Now let's look at how,, the, experts define this word. We click on the Strong's number, there. There it comes. And, it tells us the, the Greek word. Tells us the English transliteration of it. Systematizo. This tells us that it occurs twice in the New Testament. It occurs here in Romans 12, 2, where it says, Do not be conformed. to this world. It also occurs in 1 Peter 1. 14."As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance". It's saying that before we learned what we needed to learn to make the decision to become Christians, we were ignorant, comparatively ignorant. And, When we were ignorant, we were often subject to passions, to fears, anger, selfish desire of many kinds. And so, it's saying, don't be conformed to those things, but, move on from those things. In this new spiritual realm that you are in, you have a new mind. that has been given to you by God. It's a spiritual mind dwelling in an earthen body. We need it to feed on the spiritual truth that's contained in the Bible and we need that in order to give sustenance and the kind of nourishment that a spiritual being needs. Spiritual beings are immaterial. They don't necessarily need, vitamins and minerals and, you know, carbohydrates and protein. What they need, spiritual minds, they need, guidance, they need the law of God, they need the, grace of God, they need the experiences of working with and observing good people, on the pages of history, in the Bible, and in the fellowship with which we are associated. Okay, so, again, both of these occurrences of this word, uh, syskemetizo, um, this word, uh, being conformed to or aligning ourselves with the people around us, that, that word, uh, is kind of a negative word. It's telling us what, what not to do. But if we go back to the, what, what it says about this word according to Professor Strong, what we find is that it comes from two words. The first part is the S Y S is this number here, 4862. And the second part, the schema, uh, is 4976. And the literal meaning of that word is fashion. Okay, so let's click on that word right there, 4976. And when we get there, we discover that it's schema. That's an S, that's a CH, that's an E, long E, that's an M, and that's an A. Schema. Okay? So, we come down to, Strong's info on that, and it says, it's a mode of circumstance or a, a figure. Let's look at what Thayer says. He's, uh, another scholar. He says, in the Authorized Version, it's translated fashion. It occurs in 1 Uh, it says, uh, of course, uh, comprising everything in a person which strikes the senses, the figure. The, the bearing, the discourse, the actions, the manner of life. So that's what it's talking about when it uses that word in Greek. It's a word that, uh, according to some of the other commentaries I've read, was, was written about by Aristotle and other philosophers. But, I want to look at what it says in Philippians 2. 8. It's describing Jesus and it says being found, let's go back, yeah here we are, in Philippians 2, 8, and being found in human form, in King James it says found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself by being coming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. So, now it's, here we have, uh, what happens when Jesus finds himself in human form. Let's, let's go to that and look at the, uh, translation of that word in more detail. Inappearance is how the word for word renders it. Schema, found in, in form or appearance or fashion as a man. And we want to, just look up what it says about that word. In the, lexicon, and there it says, if you take it back to the ancient English, it has, it has the idea of what the essence of the person is, what does that person possess, the essential substance of that person, and so Jesus finds himself, he had been a spirit being, and he finds himself as a human. He has, what he has now is he is a human and, um, he then chooses to operate in the human condition and that is what he is there to do. Now interestingly, we kind of have to go through the opposite experience. We start out as human, specifically fallen human. Humans with built in weaknesses. Humans with built in tendencies. We have a genetic load that has some other patterns of behavior of our of our parents and grandparents built right in. Jesus didn't come in that way. He came in as a person who did not get his DNA, his life principle from the human race. He got it from his spiritual source. God made him into flesh and he became a man. through being born as the son of Mary. And that's really interesting to me because what Jesus needed to learn It says, uh, he needed to learn obedience by the things that he suffered, and it says he was made perfect through sufferings. So for him, he had to conform to the limits of human nature and human timing of things and human ability to perceive things and, and so forth. Human ways of communication, you know, which simply with, you know, what you say and what you do and what the expression is on your face and what you're, what, how you act and, and so forth. All of that was what Jesus had to do in order to be learning the lessons that God gave him to learn. As a human being, but with us, we are already human, and so we're commanded in Romans 12 to not to conform, not to, um, limit ourselves to the patterns of those around us. Rather, we're asked to observe the spiritual dimension that we find in the scriptures. We're asked to observe the kind of almost otherworldly capacities and attitudes and mindset that Jesus displayed and that the advanced examples that we have in the Bible displayed. The Apostle Paul, the Apostle John, Peter, um, Those guys all had qualities that were spiritual, that had abilities that transcended the human. And so the positive spin on what we're given to do in Romans 12 2 is to choose for ourselves not to conform to the patterns and the behaviors of the people around us, but to instead conform to the otherworldly, Uh, elevated, uh, spiritual examples that we see in Jesus and the apostles and, um, the best of the Christians with whom we are, uh, privileged to rub shoulders. That says a lot about how the Christian life should be prosecuted, how the Christian life should be lived. And I'm going to wind up this episode with those thoughts and, um, encourage you to, recognize that, well, let's, while we're in Philippians, let's, let's just look at another verse because this shows how Jesus acted and what the result was for him. Uh, in terms of how we behave as Christians, uh, as a result of, Our journey in the footsteps of Jesus as human beings. So, let's go back a little, uh, farther back into Philippians 2. And let's look at verse Well, we'll start in verse 4. He says, Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but to the interests of others. Okay? So, he's telling us to, to be other centered, to be empathetic, to be servants of others. And then in verse 5 he says, Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus. Who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. The, the literal meaning of this word grasp means to, to actually seize it by robbery. That's what the word actually means if you look it up. But the point I wanted to make is, what did Jesus do? What was the mind that he had that, that Paul asks us as Christians to follow? He wants us to have this humble mind that Jesus had. a mind that doesn't try to, reach up and grab something that isn't ours yet. But instead, he says, have the mind that Jesus displayed in verse seven when he says, but he emptied himself. By taking the form of a servant. He took the form of a servant. Uh, and then he was born in the likeness of men. That's the word morphe, in the likeness of men. And then being found in human form. There the word is schema, as we discussed. He humbled himself. He humbled himself. By becoming obedient to the point of death. Even death on a cross. He was willing to, to suffer the absolute worst form of punishment that human beings, at least up until that time, had cooked up as a means of hurting and punishing people that it despised. He submitted himself to that and he's asking us to have that kind of a mindset. Now why would he want us to do that? What's the point? What's the point of having this, this,, Servant, almost bond slave mindset. Well, that's what we're going to, discover in our next episode. So, thanks for listening, and, um, I hope you enjoy this new way of producing these things. I'm, working with a, video switcher now, trying to do all of this with one edit. In other words, do it live with no editing, so that I can crank out. Shorter modules, and you can, follow along, see what we're studying and reading, and, use it as a means for your own personal edification. So I hope that this works, and I'd love your feedback. If you like it, please like it. We're going to continue. Offering it as an audio podcast on Buzzsprout, but we are now also listing it and, making it available in a visual form on YouTube, on our YouTube channel. So, thanks for listening and, we are near the time for the completion of the Christian church and the good things that are then awaiting for the rest of the world after the church is complete to follow very soon thereafter. It's an exciting time, a dangerous time, a scary time, but it's a good time, not just for Christians, but for all people. I hope that you can join us in a discussion and a pursuit of the truth on these matters from the Bible. Thanks for listening.