The Battle of the Mind- 1

Subtitle: Our Need for Renewal

Romans 12:1-2.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on Sunday, June 1, 2025.

The most important battlefield of all time is in the minds of people.  By the time we become aware of it, we can be highly compromised by our enemy, the devil. 

A number of weeks ago, we talked about our three enemies: the devil, the world, and our flesh.  We might think of the flesh as the place where the battle is internal, but we should recognize that the attacks of the other two (the devil and the world) are generally upon how we think.

The real cultural battle is not so much at Cal Anderson Park, the site of a recent attack of antifa agents upon Christians worshipping God.  The real battle front is in the minds of people, whether at Cal Anderson Park or not, and whether on the antifa side or as a Christian.

The devil loves to use the tools of seduction, manipulation, fear, mental harassment, and many others.  The incessant attack upon the minds of humanity wears the best of men down until they become: collaborators with him, useful idiots to him, or simply despairing and hopeless before him.

If we only looked at this problem, we could easily give up.  Yet, God tells us in His Word that He does love us.  He did not make us to be enslaved by the devil and his world system.  Through Jesus (and in Jesus), He offers us a better way

Of course, there are some Christians that believe you will never have a bad day if you are right with Jesus.  They may moderate this by emphasizing that you will never have a bad mental and spiritual day.  However, this is not the testimony of the Scriptures and the godly through history.  Elijah is shown struggling with the desire to quit.  Jesus experiences the full brunt of the mental battle on the night of his betrayal.

We are going to have times when we do not feel like God is with us.  However, what does our Lord Jesus say?  “I will never leave you nor forsake you!”  He doesn’t guarantee that we will feel it, but rather, he guarantees the fact and reality of it.

Let’s look at our passage.

This world will conform us to itself (v. 1-2)

I want to focus on verse 2 first.  Paul is challenging the Christians in Rome to live in a way that is not like the world that surrounded them.  It is a negative imperative: Don’t be conformed to this world!

The Roman system was very powerful and had conquered the Mediterranean Region and beyond.  It was the worst of the beastly empires that Daniel foresaw and the Apostle John was shown in the book of The Revelation.

This beastly power dominated that area for a hundred years and would go on to dominate for many more centuries.  Such power is seductive to those who have the possibility to harness it.  This was precious few in the Roman system.  The vast majority of people who lived under the Roman system found it cruel and heartless.  Yes, Israel had to deal with the heavy Roman boot in their face, but so did the Gentiles and most Romans themselves.

The flip-side of not being conformed is the reality that the world is trying to conform you.  If we let it happen, we will be conformed into a proper cog in its system.  It is designed to conform you to be a good Roman, or a good American, Chinese person, a good Russian, etc.

However, there is a level of this pressure to conform that is deeper than self-serving governments, religions and social leaders.

The word behind “world” in verse 2 is literally the word “age.”  It is not so much about the globe and the natural things on it (political borders, powers, and such), as it is about the system of how things are set up and relate to each other.

From the standpoint of God’s redemptive work, this is an age of grace, an age of salvation, even the age of the Church (God’s calling out of a people).  However, Paul is looking at the world from the standpoint of the devil’s work.  He has deep-captured the world and built up systems of governance, religion, and operations that are all about continuing a rebellion against God and His Anointed, Jesus Christ.  This age, this world system, is really a continuation of what the devil began in the garden with Adam and Eve.  Particularly today, he works at odds to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

So, when we talk about the world and its systems, we are talking about more than what we see.  We are especially talking about the spiritual impetus that lies behind those natural things and weaves them into a coherent system that conforms people to the desires of the devil.  It is a spiritual battlefield.

On one hand, all nations have their own systems that work at odds to one another, or together for the sake of mutual benefit.  Yet, on the other hand, they are all spiritually united and joined at the hip.  They are all generally living and thinking in rebellion to God. 

This can even be while they are looking religious, or Christian.  The devil doesn’t care what your rebellion looks like, so long as you are antichrist.  You can be Caesar worshipping yourself, Herod doing the same, or a Greek worshipping Zeus, Caiaphas saying that he is worshipping Yahweh, or Judas following Jesus.  The devil doesn’t care.  He loves diversity as long as it is a diversity of rebellion against God and His Christ.  But, more on this later.

Second Corinthians 4:4 says, “The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”  Even before Christ came, the devil was working to keep the world blind to the promise of God to send Messiah, a deliverer of humanity and its redeemer.

Now, the devil is not a true god.  But, he has deep-captured the world through temptation and sin.  The political, religious, and political systems that developed were ways of blinding humanity to the good plan of God that was revealed to Adam and Eve and to later generations.

Thus, a child who is born into the world doesn’t understand this.  There mind is not fully formed and is trying to make sense of everything.  Yet, the culture conforms them to a particular way of seeing things.  This blinding effect catches us all while we are young and unaware of it.  Being raised in a Christian home that teaches the Word can help mitigate this pressure to conform.

In the midst of all of this, God has not left us at the mercy of this system.  He has worked through Jesus to give truth to the world.  Christians are supposed to be an antidote to this blinding work of the devil.  We are to shine the light of the truth of Jesus to the world around us.

This helps us to understand why we need our minds renewed.  The world around us blinds our mind’s ability to perceive the truth.  Alongside of this, there is another reason in Romans 1:28.  “And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting.”

This blind culture did not happen over night.  In the beginning, the first family had a clear understanding of the truth of God and the lies of the devil.  Yet, this verse points to the tendency of people not to retain the knowledge of God.  Little by little, one compromise after another, one generation after another, humans began to be deceived and drawn away from truth to more and more lies.  It is not by accident that the ancient false religions focus on things that satisfy the flesh, like sexual immorality.  As a judgment, God eventually lets us have our way, the fruit of our choices.  This is called a debased mind.

The word for debased comes from the area of coinage.  When a government is short on gold and silver, and have troops to pay, it was tempting and common to debase the silver coins by mixing in cheap, base metals.  The troops would think they were getting paid a full silver coin, but it had been debased, corrupted.  It was not really what it purported to be.  Eventually people would figure it out and the value of the currency would drop in relation to what it pretended to be.

When we think about a debased mind, we need to recognize that the value of a mind is its ability to recognize the truth.  God gave us a mind for a reason.  Yet, the conforming influence of this world can weaken the ability of our minds to see through its lies.  This is the natural condition of humanity without God.

In fact if you think about it, not to retain God is the same as not retaining the very basis, foundation, of all reality.  God is the absolute fundamental reality that all other things are dependent upon.  To reject the most basic aspect of reality makes it impossible to reason properly.  If we push aside reality and persist in living by fantastic perceptions, we will find ourselves causing great pain and trouble.  It would be like going to the bathroom in the middle of the night when you have kids.  You can refuse to recognize the reality that your kids probably left some things on the floor, and the reality that there are things in the way on which you do not want to stub your toe.  If you just push those things from your mind and traipse through the house, imagining that the way is clear, reality will rear its ugly head and you will feel pain.

We need God’s help, and He gives it through Jesus, the Word of God, through Christians sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  The light of the world came and did a spiritual work that can change everything for us.  In Romans 12, Paul is writing to people who used to be trapped in the blindness of this world.  However, they have believed in Jesus and heard the truth.  They are no longer blind. 

To believe in Jesus is to follow the teachings of Jesus.  This is the unpardonable sin of this world.  The devil doesn’t care what particular form your life takes as long as it isn’t following God’s Anointed, Jesus.

Ephesians 2:2 says, “You once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience.”  The devil loves diversity so long as it is contrary to the truth of God.  The one diverse thing the world will never tolerate is that of truly following Jesus.  If you wonder why people attack Christians so viciously, take some time to ponder this.

This past week, there was a group of Christians who met at Cal Anderson Park in Seattle to worship God and stand for protecting kids from the sexually immoral agendas threatening them today.  They were attacked by a bunch of antifa people.  When someone attacks you, it is easy to see them as the enemy.  However, the enemy is the devil and his world system.  Those doing the attacking are simply those who have been taken captive by the devil.  The battle in their mind has been lost, and they are doing the bidding of their master.  Yet, in verse one of Romans 12, Paul is calling the Corinthians to be a living sacrifice.  A living sacrifice is a person who dies to what their flesh and the world desire and choose to live for Christ come what may.  This brings us to the second point.

God transforms you into the image of Christ

Conforming to the world is what we are not supposed to do.  Whereas, what we are to do is to be transformed.  Though he doesn’t say “to the image of Christ” here, the sacrifice of Jesus is the backdrop to what he is talking about.  Instead of being conformed to the world and the devil, we are to be transformed to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ.

There is a difference between conforming to something and being transformed.  Conforming has to do with superficial changes.  Paul doesn’t say we are to conform to Jesus.  Judas conformed to being a disciple of Jesus, but something real was missing in his heart and mind.  He did not have faith in Jesus in the end.  He never allowed himself to be transformed by the Spirit of God that was working through Jesus.  The other disciples were not perfectly conformed to the image of Jesus, but they cooperated with the transforming work of the Holy Spirit.

We can change superficially, but the real change that we need is one that is in the heart and mind.  It is no wonder that there is a craze today to try and “change” one’s gender through surgery.  This is typically based upon feeling that they are trapped in the body of the wrong gender.  This, of course, is not reality.  Feelings are real enough, but they are not reality.  They are simply how we feel about reality in the moment.  They change based upon stimuli, life experience and the pressure of a society that is willing to conform you into anything but Jesus.

Conforming is like a chameleon taking on the markings of the environment around them, but transformation involves deep challenges of trust in Christ.  Transformation involves dying to the desires of the flesh and being helped to obey Jesus by the Holy Spirit.  Transformation involves repentance of going our own way instead of God and forgiving those who have harmed us.  Transformation is a deep spiritual change that changes how we live our life.  Conforming (Judas) will not persevere to the end, but transformation (Saul of Tarsus to the Apostle Paul) deeply affects a person to the core of their being, which leads to visible changes in their life.

Paul sees a critical part of this transformational process as a renewal of our mind.  When we hear or read the Word of God, and when the Holy Spirit touches our heart and mind, we can change from corrupt thinking to renewed thinking.  Just as repentance involves a change of mind about God and Jesus in particular, that change of mind draws us back from being debased and blind.

This spiritual change is in response to the Holy Spirit, versus a superficial change of style that is driven by self desire.  When we read the word of God, pray, and listen to the leading of the Holy Spirit, our mind will begin to see the many ways that this world is antichrist, anti-God, and not good.  It portrays a superficial good that is defined by the mind of man, rather than the mind of God.

It is good for us to have our minds renewed, but this does not immunize us to the battle for our mind.

The devil still bombards the minds of Christians through the culture in order to draw them back under his power.  He uses temptation, seduction, fear, anger, and any other leverage that he can use.  Of course, our victory is not that our flesh never responds to his tactics.  Our victory is in taking control of our flesh and saying “no” to it, and “yes” to Jesus.  Even when we fail, the Holy Spirit convicts us of our sin and draws us back to repentance.  Thus, the renewed mind is not yet perfected, but it has been transformed by the Perfect One who is perfecting us.

Being a “living sacrifice” will prove the will of God to be good, pleasing and perfect.  Yes, you may fail from time to time, but your persistence in following Jesus and continual transformation will itself testify to the perfect love of God in Jesus Christ.  It is Jesus who is doing his perfect work in us imperfect creatures.  Yet, one day, we shall stand perfected before our Lord and before the rest of creation!

Battle of the Mind 1 audio