Today we
get back into our sermon series, “The Bible’s Greatest Hits”, looking at the
most popular Bible passages as determined by searches at biblegateway.com.
Our reading from Romans today is number seven on the list. “Do not
conform 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.”
It sounds really good, right?
And of course it is good. That’s why the Apostle Paul told us to do
it. But as with a lot of the things we read in the Bible, it’s a lot
easier to say it than to do it. We know that we should look for God’s
will and try to do God’s will. For Christians, that’s the main thing we
should do. And the fact is that, most of the time, it’s really not all
that hard to figure out God’s will. It can be, but most of the time it’s not.
Now understand, there’s a difference
between knowing God’s plans and God’s purposes for our lives and looking
for and doing God’s will. God will always have plans and purposes we know
nothing about. That’s part of what makes God, God. God’s plans and
purposes are far deeper and far-reaching than we could ever hope to understand.
But looking for and doing God’s will
is usually not that hard. Again, it can be. We can have major
decisions to make and have a hard time figuring out what God would want us to
do in this or that situation. But as we go about the day-to-day business
of living, it’s usually not that hard. Jesus gave us a lot of information
on the subject. Doing God’s will in our day-to-day lives means loving God
with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. Doing God’s will in our
day-to-day lives means loving our neighbors as we love ourselves. Doing
God’s will in our day-to-day lives means doing to others what we’d like others
to do to us. Those things are not usually that hard to figure out.
So, if they’re not that hard to
figure out, why don’t we do them? Now, that’s not really fair. We
do them sometimes. There are times when we love God. There are times
when we love others. There are times when treat others the way we’d like
to be treated. There are times when we all do that stuff.
But there are times we don’t, too.
There are certainly plenty of times when I don’t. So again, the
question is, why not? If we know God wants us to do these things, why
don’t we do them? Why is that so many times, as our verses say, we choose
to conform to the pattern of this world rather than following God’s good,
pleasing, and perfect will? Why is it so much easier to say this stuff
than to do it?
Well, part of the reason is that the
world puts a lot of pressure on us to conform to its pattern. And it’s
not hard to understand why. The world, after all, is the place we live.
It’s hard not to conform to the standards and practices of the place you
live. And those standards and practices make themselves known in all
kinds of ways. They make themselves known through the media. They
make themselves known through rules of society, both the written laws and the
unwritten rules. They make themselves known through the expectations of
people we work for and work with. They make themselves known through the
expectations of our friends and our families. Every day, every hour,
almost every minute, the standards and practices of the world make themselves
known to us in all kinds of ways.
The reason it’s so hard not to
conform to them is that we know, in the short-term, our lives will be easier if
we do. It’s always easier to follow the crowd. It’s always easier
to live the way everybody else lives. It’s always easier to do things the
way everybody else does them.
Not following the crowd, not living
the way everybody else lives, not doing things the way everybody else does,
will make our lives harder. It can cost us money. It can cost us
our jobs. Sometimes, it can even result in us going to jail. And
even if it does not do any of those things, it can costs us relationships with
our friends or even our families. People look at us funny when we don’t
conform to the pattern of this world. They think there’s something
strange about us. And because of that, they may not want to be around us
very much.
And none of that is very much fun.
In fact, a lot of it is really hard to deal with. I suspect some of
us can think of times when some of these things have happened to us. Some
of us have had times when we were honest and followed God’s way rather than the
way of the world and it cost us money. We’ve had times when friends
dropped us because we would not go along with the way of the world and instead
said we were going to follow God’s way. And that’s not easy. It’s a
natural thing to want to have friends. It’s a natural thing to want the
people around us to like us and think well of us.
And what makes it harder still is that we’re human. And that
means that some of these standards and practices of the world are pretty
appealing to us sometimes. We’d like to follow them. We know we
should not but, well, it’d sure make things easier. It’d sure make life
more fun. And besides, what real difference would it make? Nobody’d
be hurt by it. God would understand.
It is always tempting to take the easy way out. And it is
understandable. After all, life’s hard enough as it is. None wants
to do something that makes it even harder. We’re all looking for ways to
make our lives easier. And if going along with the crowd, going alone
with the standards and practices of the world, will do that, well, it’s pretty
tempting to do it. Nobody’d blame us. In fact, a lot of people
would be pleased.
A lot of people would be pleased,
but God would not be. God would understand, I assume—God understands
everything—but that’s not the same as saying that God approves or that God’s
okay with it. The goal of a Christian is not to conform to the standards
and practices of the world. The goal of a Christian is not even to
conform to the standards and practices of the church. The goal of a
Christian is to conform to the standards and practices of God.
After all, that’s part of the reason Jesus came here. Jesus
did not come with a message that said, “just keep doing what you’ve been
doing.” Jesus did not come with a message that said, “Hey, you need to be
more like the people around you.” Jesus said, “You need to be more like
God.” Jesus came to remind us that we were created in the image of God,
not in the image of other people. In Ephesians Five, Paul writes that we
are supposed to be “imitators of God”. Not imitators of other people.
Not conformed to the standards and practices of the world.
Imitators of God. Transformed into people who follow the standards
and practices of God.
It’s not easy. That’s why Paul said that we need to offer
ourselves as living sacrifices. Because the only way we can really do
this is if we give up part of ourselves. We need to give up that part of
ourselves that wants to go along to get along. We need to give up that
part of ourselves that tries to win the approval of human beings, no matter how
well-respected or highly-placed those human beings may be. We need to
give up that part of ourselves that wants to follow the crowd and get ahead,
regardless of whether “get ahead” means getting more money or a better job or
more friends or whatever else it might mean to us. We need to give up
that part of ourselves that wants to do what everybody else does because it’ll
make our lives easier. That’s the sacrifice we make if we decide to not
conform to the standards and practices of this world, and instead to be
transformed into God’s people, following the standards and practices of God.
“Do not conform 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.” It sounds
really good. And it is good. But it’s not easy. Paul never
said it would be easy. It was not easy for Paul—he suffered terribly
because of his faith. It was not easy for lots of other Christians,
either. And of course, it was not easy for Jesus himself.
And it’s still not easy. Loving God will all our heart,
soul, mind and strength. Loving our neighbors as we love ourselves.
Doing to others as we’d like others to do to us. None of that
conforms to the standards and practices of the world. Not if we take it
seriously, anyway. Because it’s not enough to do these things once in a
while, when the mood strikes us, to make ourselves feel better. If we’re
going to be transformed into God’s people, we need to do them all the time.
Not that we can ever be perfect, but that needs to be our goal. To
do them all the time. Because if enough of us do this all the time, it’s
not just us who’ll be transformed. The whole world will be transformed.
It’ll be the world it’s supposed to be. And we’ll be the people
we’re supposed to be. God’s people, living in God’s world.
The official mission statement of the United Methodist church is
to go and make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.
If we’re going to transform the world, we need to first transform
ourselves. And there’s no better day to start than today. It won’t
be easy. But it will be worth it.
No comments:
Post a Comment