“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Romans 12:2
The great tragedy of life is our refusal to believe God. This is manifest in our desire to define right/wrong on our own terms. It’s seen when we approach a subject on the power/authority of anything but God’s word. The crisis of our time is the inability to think in categories. This is due to the damage of the “exchanging of the truth about God for a lie” (Romans 1:25). Because the lie is so preposterous (that we’re gods), we must continually “suppress the truth” (Romans 1:18). Nowhere in the Bible is it said that fallen man is seeking truth. On the contrary, it says that he’s actively suppressing it in order to live the lie.
Do you understand this? More than that, do you believe it? Or are you “keeping your options open?” Are you fearful of being called a crazed fundamentalist? Are you afraid of giving up your intellectual freedom to the Bible? Do you think there are parts of life the Bible doesn’t speak to? Do you think there are authorities and categories beyond Him? Have you thought this through? You should and must. If there’s categorical truth outside of Scripture – independent of God – then Jesus isn’t Lord. He’s either “the Way, the Truth, and the Life” totally and comprehensively or He shares it with something/someone else. That would mean He’s not Lord. That’s polytheism. And polytheism is logically impossible because there can’t be competing ultimates.
The great battle of our lives is the one against sin. And the soil of sin is the mind that keeps its options open. It’s the mind that pretends to be neutral. It’s the mind that’s conformed to the world rather than God. So, we ask ourselves daily, “by what standard do we judge and think?” How do I know the truth about this subject or any subject? By what authority do I evaluate life?
We either believe the Bible or the world. There is no in-between area in theology anymore than there’s one in marriage. Neutrality of the mind is like keeping one’s options open about other women when you’re married. “Jesus replied, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind’ (Matthew 22:37).” This is the great commandment and one can’t love their neighbor as themself unless and until they do this. Loving the Lord with all one’s heart is impossible unless we love Him with all our mind too. Why? Because we’re an integrated being. There’s no separation of emotion and intellect. That fracture – that disintegration – is because of the sin-principle of neutrality. Just as a marriage is fractured by adultery, so is the person fractured by intellectual conformity to the principle of the world.
If Jesus Christ and His word/law aren’t Lord of our minds, thereby defining the categories of life, then we’re conformed to this world. The world’s principle is autonomy. This is why we must not conform to it.
To love the Lord, one must know Him. To love the Lord causes one to desire, more than anything else, to obey Him. This love is because we know He’s the source of all goodness. How many Christians live half-lives due to this misunderstanding! To seek goodness outside of Him is, in actuality, to pursue mere pleasure. And pleasure fades. The pursuit of happiness or peace outside of the Lord, for the Christian, is like a man with a wife in one place and a mistress in another. He lives a double-life. Goodness and peace are the Lord. And abiding by His will, revealed only in His word, is the only way to the good life. This is why the Christian life must be characterized by the study of Scripture. We study Him to find life and love. We study Him to find joy. We study Him because He’s perfect. The goal of the study of Scripture is to know Him who has loved and saved us.
We study Scripture and its principles because we know the futility of the old way. We think of the old times, the days of intellectual futility and confusion, and we sigh a heavenly sigh. We yearn to follow Him because we know the barrenness of the old way. Like a man rescued from death in the desert, now enjoying a new life of abundance, we look back at the principles of the world – that waterless trap – and shudder at the thought of ever going back (Jeremiah 17:5-6). A chill crosses our soul when we see that broad avenue again…the one that leads back to sin’s lie of independence. Bright lights and smooth talking hucksters beckon us to cross the street and travel sin’s lane again. But we now know what’s around the next corner. The city of man is the city of sin and it’s a movie-set, not a real city. It’s all counterfeit.
Thus, both our joy and our self-defense is the study of God’s will in Scripture. We study to adore Him. We study to follow Him. We study with the idea of application and not mere knowledge. We study to become more like Him – to be conformed to the image of God in Christ Jesus, thereby being restored to that original image, which was crippled by sin.
The study of Scripture is the study of theology. John Frame called theology “the application of Scripture, by persons, to every area of life.” Theology is the study of biblical principles with the intent of applying them to every area of life. This means that your salvation isn’t a partial thing. It involves a radical overthrow of the old way. Gone is the myth of neutrality and the premise that one’s mind is fit to define the categories of life. That’s sheer madness. Gone is the humanistic pretense of letting the godless institutions of the world define themselves for us. We aren’t saved to Sunday but to every single day of the week. Every little thing about us is saved and progressively reformed. The life of salvation is the life of training in personal holiness, which is achieved through the application of Scripture to every area of life. The mind that thinks there’s an area of existence over which Christ isn’t Lord is a mind conformed to this world’s principle of sin. Such is a life of depression. So much Christian joy and power is lost because of it.
What’s your theory of economics? What’s your theory of government? What is the civil magistrate/state? Where does it get its authority and what are the limits of it? How about marriage? What is it? Vocation? What is work/labor…what’s the goal and purpose of it? Oh, and what about money? What is it? What’s the purpose and goal of money? That is to ask, what’s your monetary theory?
Did you know that the Bible defines all of these subjects? Did you know that everyone of them is covered in a non-contradictory manner in Scripture and that these theological principles are meant to be understood and applied in life to the glory of God? What this means is that we aren’t left to figure things out in a void, but to submit to the perfect law of the Lord ((Psalm 19) which brings peace and prosperity.
Jesus isn’t “a way” but the way.
He has no competitors. This isn’t to say that unsaved people don’t know true facts in life. They certainly do and this is a blessing and mercy of God. What they don’t have is truth. They have isolated facts but that’s all. The facts they have are surrounded by clouds of contradiction and utter mystery. Isn’t this why depression is so rampant in such a wealthy land as America? Fear and anxiety are exactly what Adam and Eve experienced after they sinned. Atheists, and even saved men still trapped in the intellectual principles of sin, are always trying to hide behind a bush somewhere. Internally we move through life with a low grade terror always humming in the background because we were made to know Him. The principle of sin is the destruction of truth through the promise of self-exaltation. The remedy is the mind that’s set on the Lord and, consequently, delivered to truth.
The great truths of life are God’s sovereignty, righteousness and love. When our soul feasts upon these – inquiring humbly, gazing upon them in awe – we are living at last.
“One thing have I asked of the Lord, that I will seek after:
That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,
To gaze upon the beauty of the Lord
And to inquire in His temple.” Psalm 27:4
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