Lechem Panim #4 ”The Renewed Mind” (Romans 12:2) Pastor Cameron Ury

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. 
(Romans 12:2 ESV)

When we come into a relationship with Jesus Christ, one of the things that we discover is that He wants access to every area of our lives, which includes our minds. He wants to transform the way we think and perceive the world around us. And that transformation and renewal of our minds begins with attaching ourselves to what is the source and definition of all truth.

Now, how Christians understand truth is very different from how the world understands truth. For the world, knowing truth merely involves understanding various facts and principles and data. Yet in Biblical Jewish culture, the idea of knowing (“yada”) is radically different. To “know” something in the Hebrew mind means to bind yourself in an intimate relationship with something. When Adam “knew” his wife, it was more than just cognitive knowledge. No, it was a uniting of the body, mind, and spirit with one another that was so complete, the two ceased to be understood as individuals and were instead called “one flesh”. Knowledge (in the Hebrew mind) is therefore always relational. In the book of Proverbs, wisdom is personified as a woman who cries out for the simple to hear her voice and to turn to her and embrace her; to come into a relationship with her. And this is more than figurative. For the Israelites, truth was more than just an abstract reality. No, truth is a reality intimately tied to and defined by the personhood of God.

What Proverbs reveals to us is that the source of all knowledge and wisdom is God Himself and the attachment of our lives to Him. This is why the book of Proverbs opens by saying: The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; (Proverbs 1:7a ESV).

In the New Testament this concept becomes sharpened when God comes in the flesh in the person of Jesus Christ. In response to a question from Thomas, it says: Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (John 14:6b ESV)

So for us as Christians, truth is more than just a right system of thought. No, truth is a person. And therefore, our pursuit of knowledge must begin with a relationship with Jesus. Richard Foster writes so poignantly in his book Celebration of Discipline how salvation comes to us: “Jesus made it unmistakably clear that the knowledge of the truth will set us free. ‘You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free’ (John 8:32). Good feelings will not free us. Ecstatic experiences will not free us. Getting ‘high on Jesus’ will not free us. Without a knowledge of the truth, we will not be free.”

The question of how healthy our relationship with knowledge, and truth, and wisdom truly is is directly dependent on our relationship with Jesus. It is in and through submitting our lives to Him that we come into a relationship with Truth itself and have the doors of our hearts and minds opened to receive the light of His understanding. Let us seek to know Him more fully every day.