Chapter # 12 Paragraph # 1 Study # 7
September 29, 2019
Humble, Texas
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Thesis: The "objective" of "mind-renewal" is that God might establish the Romans in a real recognition of the identity and character of His "will" so that they are progressively "transfigured" by this recognition.
Introduction: When Paul exhorted the Romans to "be transfigured" by "mind-renewal", he set the possibility before them of at least some degree of a positive change in character. But, this "possibility" is deeply embedded in some serious "qualifications".
We have already seen that Paul has rooted a set of exhortations in what he called "the mercies of the God". What that boils down to is the question of whether a person actually buys into a "God is Merciful" "T"heology (Matthew 9:13 and 12:7). This "actual purchase" is set in the larger context of Satan's declaration in Eden that the idea is not worth our investment because it is fundamentally untrue. Thus, we have before us a genuinely "alternative" set of options. On one hand, we have a "God is good" option that does not deny that He is a God of wrath and destruction; and on the other hand, we have a "God is not good" option that uses His "wrath" against Him and does deny that He is a God of mercy because "He cannot be good if He is willing to destroy".
This evening we are going to look into Paul's way of expressing how this all "works".
- I. His First Principle.
- A. God has already acted in history in incontrovertibly "merciful" ways (Romans 1-11 with a focus upon declarations such as 5:8 and 8:36-39).
- B. But, having done this "incontrovertibly", He now insists upon "faith" (a cessation of resistance to incontrovertible facts; Hebrews 3:7-8; 3:15; 4:7) before anything further can develop in a positive direction.
- 1. We are told in Hebrews 11:6 that it is impossible for anyone to "please" God while insisting upon using any "excuse" to refuse His "known" Truth.
- 2. Before Hebrews 11:6 is Hebrews 3:12 where we are warned against retaining "an evil heart of unbelief".
- C. Without this embrace of the Truth, the "transfiguration" process is stymied.
- II. His Second Principle.
- A. God's insistence upon "faith" in His "mercies" involves some distinctive responses, without which "faith" cannot be legitimately professed.
- 1. First, there is the "response" of "answering the summons" to come into His presence ("Come to Me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest: Matthew 11:28).
- 2. Second, there is the "response" of "presenting one's whole self to God" for His purposes.
- 3. Third, the "presentation" has two on-going necessities.
- a. The first "necessity" is the cessation ("Stop...") of the on-going process of being "configured" by the orientation of "this age": "Life" as a consequence of physical pleasure, safety through materialism, and status through performance, is to become a "rejected thesis".
- b. The second "necessity" is the on-going "transfiguration" by the reorientation of the mind: "Life" is the consequence of being "present in God's presence" without qualification.
- B. This insistence holds the key procedural element in abeyance until the resistance of unbelief is quelled.
- III. The Third Principle.
- A. God has an "eis to": an objective in view for those who "believe" (cease to resist known truth).
- B. This objective is significantly confused by the translations.
- 1. My under-graduate work included a focus upon "Greek".
- 2. Somewhere along the way in that work, I was told that the grammatical construction that is used by Paul in this text boiled down to something akin to the translations found in both the NASB and the Authorized Version (and others).
- a. This grammatical construction is the use of an infinitive followed by a noun in the accusative to express what Paul identifies the goal or objective of his exhortations to not be configured, but, rather, to be transfigured.
- b. I was "taught" that this was just an odd way of expressing the idea that would have been easily expressed by a noun in the nominative followed by a verb in the subjunctive (which is what the translations seem to indicate).
- 3. So, maybe, you can imagine my surprise when I pulled my copy of Robertson's A Grammar of the Greek New Testament off the shelf and looked the construction up and found that (according to him) this infinitive + accusative did not indicate this at all. Instead, he wrote, "...the psychology of ... accusative with ... infinitive" is that the infinitive identifies the verbal action and the accusative describes the "extent unto" which the verbal action shall reach.
- a. Now, it is possible that Robertson is wrong, but his explanation actually explains the oddity of the construction and the explanation of those who disagree does not.
- b. But, the implications for the text are huge.
- 1) The translations of the NASB and Authorized Version (and no telling how many others) make the "proving" something that the readers will accomplish as they yield to his exhortations.
- 2) But Robertson's understanding of the construction makes the "result" of the readers' yielding to his exhortations a matter of God accomplishing the goal expressed.
- 3) Theologically, nothing could be more contradictory than attributing the result of "faith" to those exercising it instead of, rightly, attributing the result of "faith" to the God of the promise upon which "faith" is exercised.
- C. This objective as to both its essence and its accomplishment.
- 1. As to its essence ... What do Paul's words translated "you may prove" actually mean?
- a. The word translated "prove" is used by Paul four times in Romans with two of the four actually having the characteristic of being "illustrations" of his meaning.
- 1) In 1:28 Paul says "they did not 'like' to retain God in [their] knowledge".
- 2) In 14:22 he says "Happy [is] he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he 'alloweth'."
- 3) What he means is that people "react" to knowledge by either rejecting, or accepting, its content and implications and, in both, texts/contexts there is a consequence built-in.
- b. Thus, Paul's "to prove" indicates that a person is going to embrace what Paul indicates in his sentence: the will of the God with certain characteristics (goodness, pleasure-production, and goal-achievement).
- 2. As to the question of the "Who?" that is going to bring this "embracing" of "the will of the God", Paul's grammatical construction indicates that it will be God, Himself.
- a. What Paul is setting before the Romans is a "faith test".
- 1) Are you going to do the "reasonable service" and present your body to God?
- 2) Are you going to follow through and reject configuration in favor of transfiguration?
- b. But, as with all "faith tests", the issue is whether God has actually made a commitment to the person who is being challenged to "believe".
- c. Thus, along with the "test" comes a clarion commitment on God's part: He will enable the one who "believes" Him to come to the point that "the will of the God" is seen as "good", "well-pleasing", and "goal-accomplishing" so that the "believer" will "like" it.
