Week 4: Renewing the Mind

Lesson 4 takes up the one command in Romans 12:2 that we cannot obey by trying harder. Paul never tells us to transform ourselves. He tells us to be transformed, and he names the place where God does the work: the renewing of the mind. The lesson reads Romans 12:1–2 against the eleven chapters of mercy standing behind it, then turns to Philippians 4:8, where dwell is an accounting word, the same verb Lesson 2 met in consider yourselves dead to sin. Dwelling on what is true is deliberate reckoning, one item at a time, done most often at the hour we would rather be rehearsing something else. The transforming still belongs to the one who opened the disciples' minds on the evening of the resurrection.