Classic Sermons #6050: the Renewal of the Mind

Ephesians chapter 4, verse 17 and following. And let us listen to the word of the Lord, which speaks to you and speaks to me, and which can change my life if I open my heart to its regenerating effect. The word of the Lord says: “This I say, therefore, and require in the Lord: that you no longer walk as the other Gentiles walk, in the futility of their minds, having their understanding darkened, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they gave themselves over to sensuality, greedily committing every kind of impurity. But you have not learned Christ in this way. You have indeed heard Him and have been taught by Him, according to the truth that is in Jesus.”

And this is the passage that concerns us today, these three verses. It says: “As for your former way of life, put off the old man, which is corrupted according to deceitful desires, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, created in God in the righteousness and holiness of the truth. Therefore, putting away falsehood, let each one speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. Be angry, but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, nor give place to the devil.

Let him who stole steal no more, but rather let him work, doing with his hands what is good, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Let no corrupt word come out of your mouth, but only what is good for necessary edification, so that it may impart grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of Redemption. Let all bitterness, rage, anger, shouting, slander, and every kind of malice be removed from you. Instead, be kind to one another, merciful, forgiving one another, just as God also forgave you in Christ.

We are talking about holiness, and we said that this passage lent itself very well to the subject because it described several of the aspects surrounding this theme. And to refresh your minds and mine, we were talking about the fact that Paul begins by saying, “This I say and require,” meaning that holiness is not optional; it is not something you can decide whether or not to have. It is not something the apostle Paul, that former first-century Pharisee, dreamed up and inserted there to spoil the party of life for us.

Rather, it is something he tells you is required, and not because of men, but because the Lord demands it. The Lord wants His people to walk, not as the world walks, not as the other Gentiles walk, but as that new creation walks, which has been transformed and regenerated by the power of Jesus Christ.

The people out there walk according to the futility of their minds; the people out there walk according to their philosophy, according to their system of ethics, according to their moral inventions, according to their imagination, according to what seems convenient and good to them. And we were saying that the intellect can never generate the life that only God can give; it can never generate the holiness that is found only when we are deeply united with the life of God. And that is why the apostle says, “Those Gentiles who are in the world are alienated from the life of God.”

When you are not in Christ, you are alienated from the life of God. When you do not have Christ as the center of your life, when you do not have the power and the blood of Christ flowing through your veins, you are alienated from the life of God. And that always sounds scandalous to people who are not accustomed to this kind of biblical imagery and vocabulary. Because they say, “But I go to church; I consider myself a Christian; I fear God; I do not harm anyone.”

Brothers and sisters, the Bible tells me that only when you have a personal encounter with Jesus Christ do you truly come into contact with the life of God. Until then, no matter how good your intentions may be and no matter how upright your path may be according to men, according to the minds of men, you are still alienated from the life of God. You are in ignorance; you are there not because God has not spoken to you, nor because God has not wanted to reveal Himself to you—because He has already done so in thousands of ways—but because of the hardness of your heart. Because you have not wanted to listen.

And the Lord calls every man, every creature, to become deeply united with His life, to become deeply united with the blood of His Son through that simple act of surrendering to Him. And we were talking about that degenerative process through which a man or woman passes when the enemy of their soul begins to set all kinds of traps for them and gradually wears down their moral sense, takes away their taste for spiritual things, transforms their sensitivity, and day by day files away and removes, brick by brick, that moral structure God has placed within us. Until the day comes when we lose our sensitivity toward evil.

Sin no longer shocks us, and then we begin greedily committing every kind of impurity; and one day we wake up and say, “Lord, what have I gotten myself into? I cannot escape these chains, because the enemy has set a trap and has gradually worn away our spiritual power, and now we cannot find the way.” And then the apostle said, “But you Christians, you who are here—Roberto Miranda who is preaching—you have not learned Christ in this way.”

We have said many times that Jesus is the supreme moral model and that you do not have to take your spiritual and moral directives from the pastor, from the church leaders, or from that little sister devoted to the Lord whom you admire. You take your direction from Christ Jesus. You take as your model the One in whom, throughout thousands of years of searching, no one has ever been able to find a single fault. And if your model is Jesus Christ, if you have truly learned from Jesus, you will begin to conform your life, your behavior, and your way of speaking and thinking to the life and the truth that are in Christ Jesus.

Now the apostle Paul continues. Up to this point, we have had a negative picture. There has been a comparison with what the world is and how the world is caught in this trap that the enemy of its soul, the prince, has woven around it. And now the apostle Paul gives us sound counsel and says, “As for your former way of life”—how interesting; we could pause there for a moment—he says, “As for your former way of life.” And it is interesting that the apostle Paul always assumes that we have already transcended those limitations and that sinfulness of the world.

God takes it for granted that if you enter the divine economy, the world of the Spirit, you will immediately establish a new way of life. That verse says something like this: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.” Old things have passed away; behold, all things have been made new.

And yet, how tragic that there are so many people in the church of Jesus Christ to whom those words, “as for your former way of life,” do not apply. Rather, it could be said, “as for your present way of life.” We still understand that the word of the Lord, the Lord’s intention, the vision the Lord has had since the day He gave us new life through Jesus Christ, has not yet been fully fulfilled within us.

And that word, “as for your former way of life,” has still not been fulfilled in my life, because I am still caught in the enemy’s traps. I still let him have his way in my life; I still give him room to enter and leave my life; I still give him a real place in my existence. And the Bible says, “As for your former way of life.”

The Lord assumes that you and I, brother and sister, are engaged in a process of struggle and that the former things are, precisely, things of the past. Now we are in this divine economy, in which it is assumed that we are already participating directly in the life of God. The apostle Paul also says it this way in Colossians: “Put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you”—and then he speaks about some of those things and says—“in which you also once walked when you lived in them.”

My plea before the Lord every day is: “Lord, may that word of Yours, that assumption of Yours, that which You assume to be a fact in my life, become real. May it be that when You speak of all those things that characterize the world that does not know You, I can feel, ‘Yes, Father, You truly are speaking to a person who can speak of the past, who can speak of what he is now in Christ Jesus.’”

And that must be our longing, brothers and sisters; that must be my prayer; that must be my agony day after day. Lord, may that word of Yours, that intention of Yours, that vision of Yours for my life become a reality, so that one day I may say fully, “That former way of life has been crucified. It has been cast out; it has been left behind.”

And the apostle Paul says, “Put off the old man.” As for that way of life, brothers and sisters, strip off the old man. The creative life of God often begins with the negative. God is the supreme architect; God is the supreme engineer.

And you know that when men are going to build a tall, large, and strong structure, what do they do first? They dig a great hole; they remove the soil; they remove the stone; they remove what is on the surface. And then, after creating a large space and spending a good deal of time building a foundation, they can lay down what is genuine; they can lay down what will endure. And the powerful Christian life, the life God blesses, the ministry God uses, must always begin in a destructive way.

And listen to what I want to tell you. It must always begin in a negative way: with digging, with stripping away, with taking things off, with undressing. If I truly want God to use me, for God to be glorified in my life, and for God to use my ministry, I have to recognize that God will have to strip me and divest me of many things that are pleasing and attractive to me and that the world loves to see. And those are the things that often give people out there popularity, greatness, and charisma.

And what are those things? What is this “old man”? Obviously, it does not refer to the human aspect. Many of us, if we could, would like to strip off that old physical man. It does not refer to that aspect. The Bible speaks of that outward man, that carnal man, that superficial man. That being within you and within me that has grown stronger and developed over the years: from the time I was born and throughout the life I spent without Christ, subjected to the desires and values of the world and to the teachings and mentality of the world. An outer crust has formed over me, an animal living inside me that the Bible calls “the old man.”

That being is permeated by sin. That being has grown accustomed to doing whatever it likes; that being is selfish. That being cannot comprehend the things of God, because the things of God exist on another plane to which it has no access. That being has been formed through every moment of sensuality, anger, surrender to the world, and friendship with the world; and little by little it has grown stronger within me, wrapped powerful chains around me, and enslaved me to it. God cannot use that being; God has to cast it aside.

That is the old life that will have to remain here on this earth and that will never be able to enter the kingdom of heaven. That is the being that begins to—pardon the expression—rot from the moment you breathe your last, and that being remains behind. It has no entrance into the heavenly kingdom.

And when you and I enter the kingdom of God, we are supposed to understand that there are things in me, in my character, and in my mind that God has to take out; God has to remove them. I have to strip them off and leave them behind as I would leave behind an old garment, as a snake sheds its old skin and has new skin. I have to strip away everything in my life that does not glorify God. Those things that are sometimes attractive to me, exceedingly delightful to my human heart, but which God cannot work with.

And that temper that holds me captive and makes me do foolish things and say evil things that dishonor the Lord, even though it gives me pleasure when I give it free rein. I have to understand that God cannot be fully glorified in me while I live enslaved to it. I have to let it go. And that sensual mind that continually carries me from one place to another, to places I know are harmful to me and are draining away my spiritual vitality, I have to crucify through the presence of Christ in my life.

I have to recognize that if I truly want to enter fully into God’s mind for me, I must strip that away as well. And those fears, those attitudes, those idle words, and that vocabulary that does not glorify God—I have to leave them behind in the name of the Lord and ask the Lord, “Lord, deliver me from them every day.”

And brothers and sisters, that is the hardest thing: that process of being stripped. And that is why it is often not discussed in church, because it is threatening. It is threatening to the one speaking to you. Sometimes the brothers and sisters tell me, “Brother, thank you; that sermon was good for me,” and I tell them, “Amen, brother; it was very good for me too.” Sometimes I am the one preaching the sermons to myself.

And all of us have to go through a process of stripping away, of letting go of that old creature who is very much attuned to the signals the enemy sends him and whom I have to remove from my life, to strip myself of him. The natural man, the carnal man, the man who does not have the life of Christ within him, lives according to the dictates of the flesh and of the world.

The enemy has set up a conspiracy so that the old man’s transistor receives only the instructions that come from Satan. And the hierarchy that God had in mind when He created man has been turned upside down, and so that old man lives in obedience to the dictates of the flesh, to the dictates of this world. His kingdom is here in this world, his destiny is here in this world, his glory is in this world. His satisfaction lies in the things of the world, and he is alienated from the life of God.

And the Bible tells you: “You have to put off that old man. You have to strip yourself of your past.” I tell you that this is the most agonizing thing: for you to truly enter into a covenant with the Lord and ask Him, “Lord, deal with me.”

Because there are Christians who remain spiritual children, as the Apostle Paul said to the Corinthians: “I would like to speak to you about profound things, but I cannot; I have to speak to you with spiritual milk because you are not able—though you ought to be—to digest solid food, strong food.”

Brothers and sisters, the tragedy is that in the life of the church there are so many Christians for whom the years come and the years go, years begin and years end, and we remain the same because we are still in love with that “old man.” He does not leave easily, you know? He holds on tooth and nail, and when you try to get him out, he kicks and protests and complains, and there he remains, clinging on.

But the Bible says: “Strip him off. Come out of him, because he has no entry into the Kingdom of Heaven.” For that man is corrupted—and that is a very strong word—he is rotten, permeated by evil. His very nature is pierced through by evil.

He is corrupted according to deceitful desires. That expression is interesting: “deceitful desires”; that is, he is corrupted and damaged according to passions, to deep feelings that are deceitful—and that is an interesting word too—because when the enemy wants to bind a person, brothers and sisters, he first presents him with all kinds of beautiful scenarios: ‘If you do this, look, I’ll give you that.’ ‘If you get drunk, you’ll feel good; you’ll be a superman. You’ll be able to woo your girlfriend in a way that not even Shakespeare the poet could do so well.’ ‘You’ll stand at a bar, and if anyone looks at you the wrong way, you’ll eat them alive.’

But the next day, when their eyes are bruised and they have a headache and their friends are shocked, and the natural depression left by every drunken binge sets in, you truly feel as though you have been deceived. They have sold you a pig in a poke, as people say.

This week I was speaking at Norfolk Prison, and I saw these young men, some of them handsome. It is something that always strikes me: the fact that there are so many attractive, strong, tall men in prisons, and it is the pride of life, you know? Sometimes God gives men many talents and many good things, and then the pride they have grows so great that they become easy prey for the enemy.

But I was speaking to young people and adults, and I told them: I often compare Satan to a hunter who is extremely skilled at hunting human beings. For he is an extraordinarily accomplished psychologist who has had thousands of years to study the human race, and he can set all kinds of traps for it. And Satan keeps planting thoughts and desires and ambitions in our hearts until one day we wake up and they have brought tragedy into our lives.

I said to them: How many of us have fallen in love with these images of wealth and glory that Satan has placed in our lives? ‘I’m going to sell drugs.’ ‘I’m going to do this.’ ‘I’m going to look around over there. I’m going to get involved in this scheme to make money.’ ‘I’m going to rob so-and-so.’ ‘I’m going to do this and become rich, and I’m going to have money, and then I’m going to retire to Florida with a yacht and lots of women and a big house.’

And he fills your mind with grand images, and you chase after them like a hare to the slaughter, and he deceives you. And one day you wake up and discover that instead of the pink house somewhere in Florida, you have prison cells surrounding you. And you wake up and say, ‘What happened?’

Hello. God bless you; this is Pastor Roberto Miranda speaking. Thank you for listening to our messages, and it gives us great joy to know that this program is blessing your life. I want to leave you with Moses’ words of blessing to the people of Israel: “May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.” It is a privilege for me to be part of your life. I hope you will stay tuned to our program: An Appointment with Christ. I bless you in the name of Jesus.

And the years go by, and you go from one problem to another, from one setback to another, and one day you see yourself old and unsuccessful and defeated and at the mercy of the movements of the men in the place where they are holding you, and you ask yourself: “What have I done with my life?” You allowed yourself to be ruled by deceitful desires. And how many men there are who surrender themselves to vice and pleasure!

And they are young and still have a great deal of energy; they have a great reserve of vital energy that life has given them, and Satan tells them—as the rich fool said—“My soul, enjoy yourself. Try everything; delight yourself, because you have many things stored up for many years. That source of strength you have will never run out,” and Satan promises you great delights, great victories, and great pleasures, and you begin to pour your masculine vitality onto the ground, and you begin to damage your body, and you begin to fill your mind with impurity. And Satan keeps giving you more and more and more rope, and he tells you: “Don’t worry, the night is long. You can enjoy yourself.”

And one day you find yourself old and alone and worn out and without strength, and you say to yourself: “What happened to my life? Where did the strength I had go?” The enemy of your soul poured it onto the ground. You allowed yourself to be ruled by deceitful desires. You gave the Devil your vitality.

Brothers and sisters, God has placed within us a mechanism that operates more precisely than any intricate mechanism, than any computer, than any Swiss watch.

And when you violate the way that mechanism, which God has ordained, is meant to function, all that remains for you is degeneration, destruction, weakness, tragedy, regret, the dark night, and the fear of death at the end of your days.

And we cannot allow that ‘old man,’ corrupted according to the desires of the world, to control us. We have to denounce Satan’s scheme, calling him by his name: “You are a liar,” and all he produces is deception. But thanks be to the Lord that the word of God does not stop at negative commands, at sad verdicts. And the Apostle gives us a wholesome alternative of life and power, and says: “Be renewed in the spirit of your mind.”

Brother, the alternative to allowing that ‘old man’ to become older and more decrepit in your life every day is renewal: the life of God flowing within you and giving new life each day. It is the halting of that destructive process and the beginning of a process of rejuvenation, power, victory, glory, and growth through the life of Jesus Christ renewing you from within. Because ultimately, the Christian life has to be precisely that. It has to be a going from glory to glory, from growth to growth, from blessing to blessing.

I love those words from the Old Testament that say: “For the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until the day is perfect.” And we, brothers and sisters, have to be like that; we have to be like that light of dawn that begins in darkness, that begins immersed in the shadows and gradually struggles against the darkness and clears it away, until one begins to see a glimmer of light, and it keeps growing at nine in the morning, and by noon on a sunny day it has reached total fullness. And that is how the Christian is.

There is another passage that says: “Young men grow weary and tired. Young men stumble and fall, but those who wait upon the Lord shall mount up with wings like eagles.” Likewise, the psalmist says: “Even in old age they shall bear fruit; they shall be vigorous and green, to proclaim that the Lord, my strength, is upright and that there is no injustice in Him.”

As for the man who lives according to the deceitful desires of the world, the woman who surrenders herself to passions and sensuality and the things of this world—let me make an aside here, because I am speaking only about sensuality and such things—brothers and sisters, everything that belongs to this world is doomed to destruction. It is not only sensual things: even if I involve myself in something very lofty, if my life is reduced solely to matters of the intellect, and if my sole concern is writing books, gaining fame, and making a name for myself in the eyes of men; if I am a great philanthropist and give money and my life is reduced to that alone; or if I am a great artist and create works that everyone admires, works that adorn the culture in which I live, and that is all I have to offer, then I too am ruled by the passions and desires of man.

Do not think that it is only those things that are obviously destructive. Everything that remains within the dimension of this world, of history—all of that is the old man. And we have to begin giving all those things a new character.

Because some of them are good, but we must then submit them to what the word of God says.

The point is that we were saying that when man consecrates himself to the things of the world, what awaits him is decline; what awaits him is increasing weakness as time advances. But when man has sought his glory in God, has plugged into divine energy, and has established his connection with the life of God, that life is continually renewing itself within him. And although the body is decaying and he is less physically attractive, his spirit seems to begin shining with ever greater radiance.

And as that person grows older, it becomes easier to be with him; there is a greater blessing in speaking with that person; good counsel comes from his mouth; his very presence inspires confidence. People seek him out in their moment of anguish because they sense that there is a rock there that is not easily moved.

And that person goes from glory to glory, and although he is old and—men would say—physically spent, his spirit shines each day with greater beauty.

Brothers and sisters, I would like to be that way, and even if I am dragging myself through life with a cane, may my spirit shine so brightly that people have to close their eyes, for the glory of God. And we have to desire that, and the young people who are here have to desire it. They have to set their sights on the things above; they have to stop looking so much at the things of this flesh.

Sometimes we live so enslaved to fashions and to what people will say, to the body and exercise, and to this and that. After all, they are things that vanish in a moment and disappear with time. The Bible says: “Those who are of the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.” My prerogatives and my priorities are in the heavenly homeland. For I am not a citizen of this world.

My quest has to be the quest for more and more of God’s glory in my life every day. And that is where my interests are; that is where my time is; that is where my thoughts are; that is where my energies are. And God takes care of giving me more and more each day as I yield more and more to Him. That is why I thank the Lord that, in time, in my own life, I was able to understand that although I was greatly enjoying the things of the flesh, my life was actually being poured out onto the ground; it was being squandered. And thanks be to God that He had mercy and called me in time.

And young people have to seek to make their bodies that temple of the Holy Spirit where God can dwell and fill Himself with glory within us.

The Apostle Paul said in Second Corinthians—he says: “Therefore we do not faint,” that is, we do not lose heart. Rather, though this outward man of ours, our flesh, is wasting away, the inward man—that is, the spirit—is nevertheless renewed day by day. For this light, momentary affliction produces for us an increasingly excellent and eternal weight of glory.

Brothers and sisters, what the tribulations of life do in the hands of the Christian, in the sensitivity of a being who has been regenerated by the word of Christ, is produce glory in him. When the tragedies of life come, I receive them, grapple with them, neutralize them, and use them to become stronger in the Lord. But if I do not have the peace of Jesus Christ, if I do not have the mind of Christ in my life, the tragedies of life will seem like the complete opposite to me: they will be indications of futility, of the vain nature of existence, of the injustice of the universe, of the absence of God from the world. But the Christian is the complete opposite. The Christian is renewed through all of life’s experiences, whether positive or negative.

The Christian is renewed in the spirit of his mind—not in his mind, but in the spirit, in the innermost part, in the essence of his being. For men want to renew themselves, and indeed, men periodically do renew themselves. But all they manage to do is simply gather up the dust, as one sometimes does in houses, and close the windows; that is how the world is when men want to reform it and transform it.

But what they have done is close the windows so that the glory of God cannot enter, so that the word of God cannot enter their lives; then they begin sweeping, pick up the dust, throw it from one corner to another, and raise a great cloud of dust, saying, “See? We are sweeping, we are changing, we are cleaning.” But when the dust settles back down, there is the same amount of dirt and dust in the room as there was at the beginning. Then they are pleased because, you see, “We have renewed ourselves now; we have changed.”

How many arguments I had when I was at the university with my Marxist friends, who were full of fire to transform society and fight for the new man, and so on and so forth! And I would tell them, “Gentlemen, give these things time.” When they would say to me, for example, “Cuba, the great experiment.” And humanity has never undertaken a nobler experiment to transform itself, and people spoke of the new Marxist man. Today they have as many scandals, needs, and problems as any other country.

And there I see the politicians trying to find subtle ways to destroy and dismantle this great and monstrous machinery of communism, while remaining as quiet as possible and saving as much face as they can, because they have been humiliated by history. And as I see that wall, that Iron Curtain, fall in a single day—something not even the most profound political experts could have predicted—and see what is happening in Russia, I wonder.

And I say to myself, “Goodness! If only men could understand that outside of God there is nothing.” Outside of God there is no hope. And one grieves over how many millions of Russian peasants had to die at the hands of Stalin and his followers—more than 6 million; it is estimated that perhaps 13 or 14 million—so that those “transformations” of Russian society, in quotation marks, could be put in place. And today, millions of lives and twenty thousand tragedies later, they are saying, “We were wrong; let us begin again.”

And once communism has been completely discredited, another idealist will come along, emerging from some cave to present humanity with another model, another hope of renewal, and men will kill one another again; men will fall in love with those idols again, and they will once again pour out their blood and vitality. And years later they will become disillusioned again, and the process will repeat itself, and humanity’s hunter will be there offering men renewal when what he is offering them is a lingering death, a gradual death. Humanity needs to hear that renewal is found only in Christ.

Only in Jesus is there hope; only Jesus can give us spiritual renewal from within, because until man is transformed in his very foundation, at the root of his being, there is no hope for him. What there is is death; what there is is deceit; what there is is disappointment and discouragement when we discover that our great inventions and the great idols we build turn out to be hollow and merely to harbor serpents within them.

That is why the Apostle also speaks to Titus—chapter 3, verse 5—and says, “Christ saved us, not because of works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, through the washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit.”

The work Christ has done in my life and in yours, if you are in him, is not because of anything you can do. It is not because of any effort you can generate in your mind, but through regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit—through the washing of your life in the blood of the Lamb, in the water of God’s word.

And it is not through anything you can invent or anything you can do on your own. That is why, when Nicodemus came before Jesus, full of words and intellect, and said to him, “Teacher, we know that you must come from God, because no one does the things you do unless he comes from God,” Jesus stopped him in his tracks and said, “Unless one is born again, he cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” He reined him in; he cut the conversation short.

Nicodemus perhaps had this idea of coming and sitting down for coffee with this new rabbi who had appeared on the Jewish scene and talking with him about theology and religion and this and that. And he began with a compliment, but Christ said to him, “I have no time for such foolishness, Nicodemus. You need to be born again. You need to be renewed by my Spirit. You need to receive life through the true word of God and through the blood that I am going to shed on Calvary’s cross.”

“Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Nicodemus, that which is born of the flesh is flesh; that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”

“If you truly want to come into contact with the life of God, you must do so through the regeneration of the spirit, through my life entering yours.”

Men try twenty thousand antics, maneuvers, and other things to escape the fact that everything begins when we are renewed and transformed by the water of Christ, when we allow the Lord to do his complete work within us. Otherwise, there is no possibility of hope. “Do not lie to one another, having put off the old man with his deeds and put on the new man, who is being renewed unto full knowledge according to the image of the one who created him.”

Brothers and sisters, this is a process that begins when I receive Christ into my life. The Lord begins to work in me, and as I yield the different parts of my being to him, God purifies my mind. God takes that corrupt mind from the past, in that body pierced by passions, and little by little, gradually, renews a new life within us, until one day we wake up and we are new.

The Apostle Paul also says it in Romans: “Do not conform to this age, but be transformed.” Why? “Through the renewing of your mind.”

My mind needs to be renewed; your mind needs to be renewed every day. I need to surrender the parts of my life so that the Lord can put in new parts. The Lord does not want to “re-green”—do you know that word?—my body or my mind. He wants to give me a new mind, a new sensitivity. He is the mechanic par excellence who says, “I cannot renew what you have, nor can I give you a used part. I want to give you something different, something new, something created especially for you and for me.”

As the prophet says, speaking the word of the Lord: “I will take that heart of stone you have there, which has become calcified throughout life, throughout life, and I will give you a heart of flesh. I am going to remove everything that has become corrupted and put new parts within you; and throughout life, as you surrender yourselves to me, I will remove old parts and put in new ones. I will remove destructive thoughts and put in new thoughts. I will remove fear and put in power and self-control. I will remove anger and put in meekness; I will remove pride and put in humility. I will remove stubbornness and self-glorification and replace them with seeing and seeking the glory of God in your life.”

And that is how the Lord renews us. And that process, brother, can never be completed in your life until God takes you through the cross. I explained that to those men there in the prison. The weapon God uses to transform and renew us is the cross of Christ made real in our lives.

The cross of Christ is not merely something historical that happened two thousand years ago; it is a process through which God must take you and me so that we may enter into the fullness of life in Christ Jesus. And what is that cross? That cross is not something poetic; that cross is a reality: life’s pains, life’s sufferings, hardships, illnesses, struggles, and disappointments. All these things gradually erode our love and attachment to the things of the world and give us a new vision, a new attachment, a new loyalty to the things of God.

Many of us do not want God to do that work; we remain rigidly upright. We do not want God to give us that medicine which can transform us. And when God wants to give it, and when God wants to lay the cross upon our shoulders, we become upset and throw it off our backs, but God does not stop his process.

God wants to renew us, and he comes day after day and says to you, “My child, let me place the cross upon you, and carry that cross every day. Let the experiences of life make you meeker and sweeter, and do not become attached to _____ things, because I will not stop working with you, for my purpose is that you attain the fullness of Christ Jesus in your life.”

So, brothers and sisters, let us be renewed; let us seek ourselves more and more in that new understanding of existence in Christ Jesus. The result of all this, as we have already said, brothers and sisters—and with this I conclude—is: “Put on the new man.”

That new man consists precisely of those fruits of righteousness, those fruits of love, goodness, meekness, patience, kindness, graciousness, and faith that God wants to infuse into our lives. God wants to give us a new way of thinking, speaking, and being. God is not interested in the external things I may do.

Do you think that going to church on Sundays and occasionally making a promise, or doing this or that, or bringing people to church, or tithing, is going to satisfy God?

Brothers and sisters, what God needs is your heart; what God needs is your life; what God needs is for you to surrender the essence of your being to him, because once he has that, he will have everything else. And many of us want to bribe God: we give him money, we give him visitors to come to church, and we give him our presence in the pews on Sunday, and all these things. But God says, “I am not interested in any of these things. I am interested in your heart; I am interested in your life; I am interested in your allowing me to work in you. I desire obedience and not sacrifice,” says the Lord.

The Lord wants you to obey his word; the Lord wants you to submit to him and to put on the new man in Christ Jesus. The Apostle says it in Galatians: “Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but… what? A new creation. A new man.

Christ is not interested in our religiosity; Christ is not interested in the religious clothing we put on; Christ is not interested in all the disguises and fictions we construct to deceive him and make him believe that we have arrived spiritually. The Lord knows where you are; he knows where I am, and the Lord simply wants a new creation in me. The Lord wants a new character, a new life, a new way for me to conduct myself.

When the world sees me, may it say, “There goes one of those Christians who has been touched by the Spirit of Christ. There goes a true man, whom the communists and all the others seeking new creations can look at and say, ‘Hey! That specimen walking over there could be a good model for the new society.’” We are continually falling short of that ideal. The Lord wants us to put on that new man in Christ Jesus, created not according to human designs, but according to God in the righteousness and holiness of the truth.

Brother, when you and I have perfected the dwelling place of that man, our lives will change. We will have joy; we will have the peace we are seeking; we will have the rest for our souls that we sometimes lack despite all the things with which we adorn our lives.

Do you want true peace in your life? Do you want true beauty and joy and inner tranquility? Why do you not let the architect par excellence, the divine trainer, take your life? You say to the Lord, “Lord, I want to put off that old man, but I cannot do it on my own. I want to rid myself of this sensitivity and this way of thinking, which I know does not glorify you, and I want to surrender myself to you so that you may wash me with your water and renew me with your Spirit.”

Brothers and sisters, who would not want that? Only a fool would disdain the opportunity to truly become that creature of whom God can say, “I approve of it.” For God is the ultimate quality control, the expert par excellence. He truly knows your problems. But I do renew the challenge I issued at the beginning: the only hope is in Christ Jesus; the only hope of true change in your life is in Christ Jesus, in the blood that Christ shed for you on Calvary’s cross.

The Lord says, “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened. I will give you rest.”

If you want to be a new creature, you must begin by surrendering your life to Christ Jesus.

And how simple God has made that plan! He says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in him…” Believing is all you need. Believe that what I am saying from the word of God is true and applies to your life, and that God can initiate a purpose, a different realm within you.