RENEWL of our mainds in the SPIRIT
美佳之窗His Window 89（ Jan–Mar 2020 ）
Text by Rev. Phan Wu Chung Translated by Stephen Cheng
A famous Hong Kong actor, Stephen Chow acted in several movies, “Hail The Judge”, “Justice, My Foot!”, “The God Cookery”, “Sixty Million Dollar Man”, “King of Beggars” and “Fist of Fury”. The story line of these movies describes a person who, initially in a high position, falls to a desperate situation and is temporarily unable to rise up again but ultimately experiences a reversal of fortune.
I think many people tend to long for such reversed change of life experience. If a movie actor can experience this type of miraculous life reversal, as the children of God, shouldn’t our lives be totally renewed and transformed?
Put off our “old self” and renewing our minds
Paul in Ephesians 4:20-24 says, “That, however, is not the way of life you learned when you heard about Christ and were taught in Him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in the true righteousness and holiness.” What Paul means is, if a believer is truly in Christ Jesus, his lifestyle should reflect a renewed mind, a replacement of his old self with a new self in God’s likeness, and not stagnant at the stage where his life was without the Lord Jesus.
Paul uses many contrasting words to describe these two completely different lifestyles: “old me” versus “new me”, “corrupted life” versus “new life”, “confusion” versus “truth”, “selfish desire” versus “holiness”. All these comparisons are telling us that they are incompatible. Christians should not simultaneously live in these completely different lifestyles; rather, their lives should be thoroughly changed and transformed.
Without doubt, what Paul mentions in these scriptures is very enriching and it deserves to be evaluated in detail. But, I do not intend to further explain here. Actually, it should be sufficient if we can follow what we comprehend from these words.
Man’s ignorance due to his arrogance
The biggest problem of mankind is his ignorance due to his arrogance. Due to ignorance, the unbelievers do not acknowledge the existence of God. Even when they know of God’s existence, they refuse to believe in Him. Some Christians refuse to understand the true meaning of Christianity, and they do not care about God’s heart desires. In other words, they do not prioritize God, and regard their belief as something secondary in life. This is what I call an ignorant attitude.
Do you agree to “renewing of the minds in the Spirit”
In Ephesians 4:17-19, Paul emphasizes that people who do not know God live in the futility of their thinking. The only way for them to fix the problem of ignorance is to be transformed by the renewing of their minds. The original text of the “mind” is the “Spirit” which is in control of our minds and thoughts through our relationship with God. The Chinese Bible’s translation of the “mind” is indeed very fitting because this is exactly what we need - to transform with the renewing of our minds.
It is important to note that “renewing” stated here is in passive voice meaning that the “renewal of our minds” depends on God’s help, not by our efforts.
As mentioned earlier, the question is whether we want to be intentionally renewed and changed? If we do not think that we need to be renewed and changed, then it is pointless to talk about it.
Whenever a new year begins, we tend to set our new goals especially for things which we did not do well in the past year, and we hope to continue persistently to complete them. However, when we set the new goals, do we first set the growth of our spiritual life as the priority? Do we realize that there are sins in our lives, which we have not dealt with? Should we not now begin to seriously deal with them, and not further delay our action?
elf-evaluation of our lives
Brothers and sisters, let us self-evaluate our lives:
1. Do we think that just believing in Jesus is enough, having the attitude of not
necessarily paying attention to other religions and their teachings?
Do we really have God in our hearts? Or is it just a slogan?
3. If we have God in our hearts, is our ifestyle being conducted after God’s own heart, to live a holy life?
Of course, the growth and renewal of our spiritual lives cannot be based on numbers, and they are difficult to evaluate. Perhaps this is why many churches do not emphasize self-evaluation. Because church growth by numbers seems much more obvious than growth based on renewal of our spiritual lives. Is it because of the difficulty to conduct a survey, then the renewing and transforming of our lives is not important? Surely not.
Look at the condition of spiritual lives
In fact, our belief is not just concerning our words and actions in church. It’s also related to our lifestyles as revealed in the market places, schools, our homes and neighbors. Our lives whether or not renewed are not only being watched by God but also by the people around us, including the church brothers and sisters, family members, colleagues and neighbors because they are the most appropriate people to observe and know if our lives are conducted according to our beliefs. Therefore, let us be honest and seriously look at the condition of our spiritual lives. If we realize we are in a spiritually ignorant circumstance, then we need to make a decision: to renew our minds in the Spirit.
I believe, if we are willing, with Father God’s grace and help, we will experience the “reversal” of our faded spiritual life and undergo a process of continuous renewal of our minds and transformation of our lives.