Twisted Minds or Transformed Minds?

Romans 1:21-25, "For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen."

Twisted thinking, distorted views, warped minds...there is a pattern that Scripture shows us that occurs when one does not have a renewed mind in Christ.

First, it starts with self-worship. Or worship of self. However you want to say it, it is still the same. It is where we have put ourselves on the throne and Christ has no room to be the Lord of our lives.

This leads to foolish minds or futility in their thinking. I believe Paul says in Ephesians 4:17-18 that they had "ignorance of thinking." Hmm....is that a nice way of saying they were ignorant?

This leads to sinful desires which then leads to sinful behaviors. Or you could say distorted desires and distorted behaviors.

This is the way the world thinks because they do not have new minds in Christ. But what about those of us who profess to be Christ-followers? to have Christ living in our hearts? How do we have transformed minds??

Transformation - the process of changing in character or condition; the act of making into something new.

Romans 6 shows us that once Christ is in us, He transforms our minds and this happens by the Word of God. In other words, Christ changes our hearts and our heads. We must have a Christ-saturated world view - we must see the world through the Word of God. Every aspect of our life needs to be filter through our relationship with Christ.

2 Corinthians 10:3-5 tells us to "take every thought captive to obey Christ" and that means EVERY thought - in relationship to our business, our school, our neighbors, etc. It is about ALL of our life.

2 Corinthians 3:18 reminds us that we are transformed by continually focusing on Christ and that means that we must be in a daily relationship with Christ. We reflect Him as we are in relationship with Him. We study His Word, we saturate ourselves with His Word, we hunger for it, we pray, we fill our homes with His truth.

Remember the original question....Why do we have a mind?

One answer is God has given us a mind so we can know His Word. Knowing His Word is what He uses to transform us into the image of Christ.