Transcript
Transformation can be counterfeited. Renewal cannot.
October 28, Part 1 of 11 — True transformation comes with renewal.
Two failures are possible, and both of them look like religion from the outside.
The first is that a man may not be conformed to this world and still not be transformed at all. The barbarians were never conformed to the world's fashions, and they never came to the knowledge of God. Refusing the shape of the world is not the same as being changed by God.
The second failure is subtler: a man may be transformed outwardly and never renewed inwardly. False workers transform themselves into ministers of light, and even Satan transforms himself into an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14). If the Devil can borrow the appearance of light, then appearance is no evidence at all.
The consequence is severe. Any man of God who is transformed but not renewed is classified among the ministers of darkness (2 Corinthians 11:15), and their end is according to their works. A title does not exempt a life from being weighed.
Now the command: "be renewed in the spirit of your mind," and "put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness" (Ephesians 4:23-24). Not merely reformed. Renewed. Renewal reaches the governing faculty itself, so that a man's reasoning, his appetite and his aim are made new.
Two kinds of glory appear in this text. Ministers transformed but not renewed glory in the outward transformation of the man; they point to changed habits, visible discipline and the reputation of a reformed life, and they call that grace. True ministers of God glory more in the renewal of the inner man.
The proof text holds both halves: "though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day" (2 Corinthians 4:16). The outer may decay while the inner increases, so ageing is not the measure.
The mark of the real minister is a renewed mind, and not merely a changed life. Ask not only what has altered, but what has been made new.
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