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.)

Episode Transcript

Owen Kindig (00:00):
Welcome to We Are Near.
This is episode 3, and we'relooking at Romans 12, verses 1
and 2.
Those two verses are pivotal inunderstanding what it is a
Christian is called to do.
In the last episode, we talkedabout the, uh, call to be
transformed, the call to haveour mind renewed, and to learn

(00:22):
to discern God's will.
and apply it in our lives.
I want to go back now to thevery first phrase in chapter 12,
verse 2.
In the, uh, ESV translation, itsays, I appeal to you,
therefore, brothers, in verse 1,I appeal to you, therefore,
brothers and sisters, by themercies of God, to present your

(00:46):
bodies as a living sacrifice,and acceptable to God, which is
your spiritual worship.
It is amazing, isn't it, thatthe perfect God of the universe
finds imperfect human beings tobe acceptable to him.

(01:07):
How does that happen?
In a nutshell, the way ithappens is through the grace of
God applied on our behalf.
And the mechanism by which itworks is what these two verses
are talking about.
It's a method of renewal, thatcomes from the fact that we are
a new spiritual entity thatbegins on the day that we commit

(01:32):
our hearts to Christ.
Now let's look at verse two.
It says, Do not be conformed tothis world.
Let's zero in on that.
If we go here in the, BlueLetter Bible.
To the, hit the tools button,what we find is, that it says do

(01:53):
not be conformed, and the wordthere is schematizo, schematizo,
and you can see in the middle ofthat that there's a word schema,
s c h e m a, that is the maincore thought in that word.

(02:14):
And cis, the prefix, implies, aprocess by which we would
synchronize our own actions withthe actions of people around us.
And the verse is telling us, no,don't do that.
Do not synchronize your actionsto the people around you.

(02:34):
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 Greekword.
Tells us the Englishtransliteration of it.
Systematizo.
This tells us that it occurstwice in the New Testament.

(02:56):
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 beconformed to the passions of
your former ignorance".
It's saying that before welearned what we needed to learn

(03:17):
to make the decision to becomeChristians, we were ignorant,
comparatively ignorant.
And, When we were ignorant, wewere often subject to passions,
to fears, anger, selfish desireof many kinds.
And so, it's saying, don't beconformed to those things, but,

(03:40):
move on from those things.
In this new spiritual realm thatyou are in, you have a new mind.
that has been given to you byGod.
It's a spiritual mind dwellingin an earthen body.
We need it to feed on thespiritual truth that's contained
in the Bible and we need that inorder to give sustenance and the

(04:02):
kind of nourishment that aspiritual 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

(04:25):
experiences of working with andobserving good people, on the
pages of history, in the Bible,and in the fellowship with which
we are associated.
Okay, so, again, both of theseoccurrences of this word, uh,
syskemetizo, um, this word, uh,being conformed to or aligning

(04:48):
ourselves with the people aroundus, that, that word, uh, is kind
of a negative word.
It's telling us what, what notto 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

(05:08):
from two words.
The first part is the S Y S isthis number here, 4862.
And the second part, the schema,uh, is 4976.
And the literal meaning of thatword is fashion.
Okay, so let's click on thatword right there, 4976.

(05:29):
And when we get there, wediscover that it's schema.
That's an S, that's a CH, that'san E, long E, that's an M, and
that's an A.
Schema.
Okay?
So, we come down to, Strong'sinfo on that, and it says, it's

(05:50):
a mode of circumstance or a, afigure.
Let's look at what Thayer says.
He's, uh, another scholar.
He says, in the AuthorizedVersion, it's translated
fashion.
It occurs in 1 Uh, it says, uh,of course, uh, comprising

(06:12):
everything in a person whichstrikes the senses, the figure.
The, the bearing, the discourse,the actions, the manner of life.
So that's what it's talkingabout when it uses that word in
Greek.
It's a word that, uh, accordingto some of the other
commentaries I've read, was, waswritten about by Aristotle and

(06:34):
other philosophers.
But, I want to look at what itsays in Philippians 2.
8.
It's describing Jesus and itsays being found, let's go back,
yeah here we are, in Philippians2, 8, and being found in human

(06:58):
form, in King James it saysfound in fashion as a man, he
humbled himself by being comingobedient 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 lookat the, uh, translation of that

(07:22):
word in more detail.
Inappearance is how the word forword renders it.
Schema, found in, in form orappearance or fashion as a man.
And we want to, just look upwhat it says about that word.
In the, lexicon, and there itsays, if you take it back to the

(07:46):
ancient English, it has, it hasthe idea of what the essence of
the person is, what does thatperson possess, the essential
substance of that person, and soJesus finds himself, he had been
a spirit being, and he findshimself as a human.
He has, what he has now is he isa human and, um, he then chooses

(08:11):
to operate in the humancondition and that is what he is
there to do.
Now interestingly, we kind ofhave to go through the opposite
experience.
We start out as human,specifically fallen human.
Humans with built in weaknesses.

(08:31):
Humans with built in tendencies.
We have a genetic load that hassome other patterns of behavior
of our of our parents andgrandparents built right in.
Jesus didn't come in that way.
He came in as a person who didnot get his DNA, his life

(08:53):
principle from the human race.
He got it from his spiritualsource.
God made him into flesh and hebecame a man.
through being born as the son ofMary.
And that's really interesting tome because what Jesus needed to
learn It says, uh, he needed tolearn obedience by the things

(09:15):
that he suffered, and it says hewas made perfect through
sufferings.
So for him, he had to conform tothe limits of human nature and
human timing of things and humanability to perceive things and,
and so forth.
Human ways of communication, youknow, which simply with, you

(09:35):
know, what you say and what youdo 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 hadto do in order to be learning
the lessons that God gave him tolearn.
As a human being, but with us,we are already human, and so

(09:57):
we're commanded in Romans 12 tonot to conform, not to, um,
limit ourselves to the patternsof those around us.
Rather, we're asked to observethe spiritual dimension that we
find in the scriptures.
We're asked to observe the kindof almost otherworldly

(10:21):
capacities and attitudes andmindset that Jesus displayed and
that the advanced examples thatwe have in the Bible displayed.
The Apostle Paul, the ApostleJohn, Peter, um, Those guys all
had qualities that werespiritual, that had abilities

(10:42):
that transcended the human.
And so the positive spin on whatwe're given to do in Romans 12 2
is to choose for ourselves notto conform to the patterns and
the behaviors of the peoplearound us, but to instead
conform to the otherworldly, Uh,elevated, uh, spiritual examples

(11:10):
that we see in Jesus and theapostles and, um, the best of
the Christians with whom we are,uh, privileged to rub shoulders.
That says a lot about how theChristian life should be
prosecuted, how the Christianlife should be lived.
And I'm going to wind up thisepisode with those thoughts and,

(11:33):
um, encourage you to, recognizethat, well, let's, while we're
in Philippians, let's, let'sjust look at another verse
because this shows how Jesusacted and what the result was
for him.
Uh, in terms of how we behave asChristians, uh, as a result of,
Our journey in the footsteps ofJesus as human beings.

(11:57):
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 looknot only to his own interests,

(12:19):
but to the interests of others.
Okay?
So, he's telling us to, to beother centered, to be
empathetic, to be servants ofothers.
And then in verse 5 he says,Have this mind among yourselves,
which is yours in Christ Jesus.

(12:41):
Who, though he was in the formof God, did not count equality
with God a thing to be grasped.
The, the literal meaning of thisword grasp means to, to actually
seize it by robbery.
That's what the word actuallymeans if you look it up.
But the point I wanted to makeis, what did Jesus do?

(13:04):
What was the mind that he hadthat, that Paul asks us as
Christians to follow?
He wants us to have this humblemind 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 themind that Jesus displayed in

(13:27):
verse seven when he says, but heemptied himself.
By taking the form of a servant.
He took the form of a servant.
Uh, and then he was born in thelikeness of men.
That's the word morphe, in thelikeness of men.
And then being found in humanform.
There the word is schema, as wediscussed.

(13:50):
He humbled himself.
He humbled himself.
By becoming obedient to thepoint of death.
Even death on a cross.
He was willing to, to suffer theabsolute worst form of
punishment that human beings, atleast up until that time, had
cooked up as a means of hurtingand punishing people that it

(14:13):
despised.
He submitted himself to that andhe's asking us to have that kind
of a mindset.
Now why would he want us to dothat?
What's the point?
What's the point of having this,this,, Servant, almost bond
slave mindset.
Well, that's what we're goingto, discover in our next

(14:35):
episode.
So, thanks for listening, and,um, I hope you enjoy this new
way of producing these things.
I'm, working with a, videoswitcher now, trying to do all
of this with one edit.
In other words, do it live withno editing, so that I can crank

(14:59):
out.
Shorter modules, and you can,follow along, see what we're
studying and reading, and, useit as a means for your own
personal edification.
So I hope that this works, andI'd love your feedback.
If you like it, please like it.
We're going to continue.
Offering it as an audio podcaston Buzzsprout, but we are now

(15:21):
also listing it and, making itavailable in a visual form on
YouTube, on our YouTube channel.
So, thanks for listening and, weare near the time for the
completion of the Christianchurch and the good things that
are then awaiting for the restof the world after the church is
complete to follow very soonthereafter.

(15:44):
It's an exciting time, adangerous time, a scary time,
but it's a good time, not justfor Christians, but for all
people.
I hope that you can join us in adiscussion and a pursuit of the
truth on these matters from theBible.
Thanks for listening.