Romans 12:2 “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”

I am transformed by the renewing of my mind.

Here is where this transformation, this salvation of our souls, begins. We are already born again. We are already made alive. We already have a new heart that shares the characteristics of our made-alive spirits. And on our hearts is already written the nature and life of Jesus Christ. Central to our salvation experience is this truth, that Christ lives in our hearts. Having been born again, and in this time period of development inside the womb, this transformation, awaiting the coming forth in the full light of day, in the resurrection of our bodies. This process of transformation begins in the renewing of our minds.

God always works from the inside out.

Our transformation has three areas of working. First is the renewing of our minds. Second is our relationship of love with one another. And third is the cleansing of the outer flesh nature. The cleansing of the outside of us. Purification. The work of God MUST follow this pattern. We do not purify ourselves so that we can think God's thoughts. The blood of Jesus does that, the blood of Jesus, coming from the inside, from our spirit out, does that particular cleansing work. We can walk boldly into the throne room of God, into the holy of holies, because of the blood of Jesus.

The purification we are going through as believers is something different. It is on the outside of us. It is a cleansing of our external behavior. It is a purification of the outside part of our being, of the outer deeds of the body. It is not a cleansing on the inside of us. On the inside of us is the transformation of our minds.

So many of God's people get this backwards, and they think they must clean up their outside before they can have a relationship with God. Our enemy always works from the outside in. He doesn't bother with the inside. If he can get control of the outside, he is happy. God always works from the inside out.

Before we can be in a right relationship with our brothers and sisters in Christ so that we together can build one another in love, before we can deal with the outer movements of our external person, we have to change the way we think.

Two other New Covenant verses on the renewing of our minds are Colossians 3:10 “We already have put on the new man that is renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who created him.”

The new life that we have put on, that we are learning to live in, is renewed in knowledge. And it is the knowledge of the image of Jesus. We shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is.

Then, Philemon, verse 6: “That the sharing of your faith may become effective [that is the second part of our transformation, the sharing of our faith – as we give to our brothers and sisters in Christ the good things that God has given us and as we receive from them the good things that God has given them, that they share with us, we are together built up into this many-membered son, this company of sons that God desires and purposes to have, that sharing of our faith becomes effective] by the acknowledgment of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus.”

The word 'acknowledgment' has two parts. The first part is to know, the second part is to declare what we know. We become what we see, we become what we behold. As we behold the image of the Lord as in a mirror, we are transformed into that same image from glory to glory. [2 Corinthians 3:18]

What we behold, we become. What we set our eyes upon is what we become.

Now, consider what we as people in this world set our eyes on. This has two parts, what we set our eyes upon physically, outwardly, and what we set the eyes of our heart, our believing, our faith upon. You see, I can watch a good movie and my physical eyes are set upon the television screen, the entertainment, the actors, but it is well possible that in my spirit, my eyes are upon God and I am with Him, He is with me, we are enjoying the story together, and God can speak to me through that movie, through the story that is in that movie.

On the other hand, I can watch a movie, my eyes are set upon it, it is coming into me, and there is no relationship between what is in that movie and the Spirit of Christ inside of me. I am watching it alone. And the impact of that movie upon my life is ungodly.

It is all in the seeing of the eye. Now, God speaks to me through many good movies and books. Personally, I love story. On the other hand, sometimes I start watching a movie or reading a book and see right off the bat that God, or truth, is being dishonored. So I stop. It's as simple as that.

That illustrates the two ways in which we set our eyes. One is upon the natural things of this world, and the other is the eye of faith, seeing as God sees.

The acknowledgment of every good thing that is in you in Christ Jesus. I am always amazed at how little concern God's people have for knowing the New Covenant. Of course, memorizing the words of the New Covenant will not really do you much good. It is a knowing, it is an internal intimacy with the Spirit of God. It is walking together with God, that He would teach you of His ways. You can memorize every verse in the New Testament and believe none of them.

You must believe.

From the time that I was nineteen, when I turned my heart back to God, anytime I heard a word spoken concerning what the Bible taught, for some reason, hearing it did not satisfy me. I have a Bible, I must know what it actually teaches. I must find that God is speaking that through His word. Since the start of my walk with God, I have spent hours and hours, writing out passages, verses, books of the New Testament, the Bible, all the way through, over and over. I hear a word, somebody says, “The Bible says.” How many times do we hear it? “The Bible says.” Well, I wanted to know. And I am astonished at how willing God's people are to take that phrase at face value, Some preacher says, “The Bible says,” and they just accept it, “Well, that sounds good, fine with me, it sounds Christian, sounds right, what Christians have been saying for centuries, sounds good.”

It's not good.

The New Covenant is our relationship with God, it describes our relationship with God. It is our life as it is applied by the Holy Spirit, as we are taught by God what He is speaking, as His Holy Spirit comes upon our hearts, our understanding, so that we can believe, simply, what He says. It takes a mighty power of God upon us to believe what He says.

Jesus said, “He who believes on me, out of His belly will flow rivers of living water.” The natural man cannot believe that word or understand or receive it. He cannot do anything with that word except say “Fiddle” and go on with out spending a moment's thought. Even a Christian looking at that word cannot believe it. You are incapable of believing it, unless the power of the Holy Spirit comes upon you. The believing of what God says is a miracle from God. It's very simple, once you receive that miracle, once you receive that power from God, to believe what He says and to move in the power and the light of that word. But it is a miracle. It begins with the power of God coming upon you to simply believe what God says. It takes a simple heart to believe what God says.

But we must know what He says.

In the Christian world today there are all kinds of teachings claiming to be what the Bible says. I hear it all the time. “We all know that the Bible says ...” And sometimes that is what it says, and sometimes it is, quite frankly, nothing of the kind. I have been amazed many times, searching the New Testament, that is NOT what God says. He says nothing of the sort; in fact, He says the exact opposite. Then I wonder, where does this idea come from that so fills Christian thinking? That has convinced so many dear believers down through the centuries that this is what God says when they didn't read it in the New Covenant? Then, you trace it back and you find, over and over again, it either comes from the Old Testament, Judaism, wrongly applied to the believer, or it comes from paganism masquerading as Christianity, or it comes from the reasoning and traditions of men.

You need to understand that the Protestant Reformation was a slight shifting in the dark. Yes, it was the beginning of a return to light and truth, but when we imagine that the Christians, for the most part, of the centuries of the Reformation, went from the darkness of Catholicism into the full light of an understanding of Christ and the gospel, we would be reading history wrong.

That is why I avoid the King James Version of the Bible. There are many reasons one of which is that less than a hundred years from the beginning of the bit of light that began to shine in the Reformation, there was still so much paganism and darkness upon the minds of Christians. King James, though pretending to be a Protestant was secretly at heart a Catholic, he required of the translators to make the KJV as close to Catholicism as they could get away with. Those whose conscience did not allow them to continue, left the translation project.

And beyond that, of course, the King James Bible is written in a language we do not speak. Many of its words and wordings are idioms that we do not know. We do not use those words in everyday speech, therefore, what happens is that we pick up a “theological” interpretation of these words. We interpret them. They are not words that we use in our everyday speech and so God cannot speak to us personally through them. It is all a part of what is called priest craft. Those words, because we do not use them in our everyday speech, have to be interpreted to us by “experts.” Those “experts” end up standing between us and God, interpreting for us what God is really saying.

That belief and feeling permeates its way all through Christian thought. “You can't go to the Bible yourself. You can't see what God is saying yourself, because you will get yourself deceived. You have to follow the 'official, orthodox' interpretation. You can't search it out yourself. You don't go to God yourself.”

This is strong. This is as strong in Protestantism as it is in Catholicism. It is strong in evangelical Christianity. What does this mean? Do we get down on our knees bedside our bed and cry, “God, you show me”? Or do we go to our pastor or church and say, “Pastor, you show me”?

That does not mean there is not teaching in the church, that we do not teach God's people the truth. But we, each of us, individually, must know what this New Covenant teaches, and we must know all of it. It is our life. It is our life.

I want to look at a verse, a passage, that Jesus spoke, that is kind of strange.

Luke 11:33-36 “No one, when he has lit a lamp, puts it in a secret place or under a basket, but on a lampstand, that those who come in may see the light. The lamp of the body is the eye. Therefore, when your eye is good, your whole body also is full of light, but when your eye is bad, your body also is full of dankness. Therefore take heed that the light which is in you is not darkness. If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, the whole body will be full of light, as when the bright shining of a lamp gives you light.”

We understand what Jesus is saying in this way. Just as with a natural body, the natural light of the sun or light bulbs, comes into our consciousness through our eyes. Close your eyes and there is no light. Open your eyes and the light flows in. You translate that to the spiritual realms, turning it into a metaphor, as Jesus does here, we understand that not only what we see, but how we see is what fills us. Many Christians, taking the Old Covenant verse, “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.” [Jeremiah 17] When they are looking at their hearts, looking into the mirror, they stand with the Old Covenant, and not the New, they see selfishness and deceit. And so, what is it that they are struggling with all the time? Selfishness and deceit.

But Paul said, “Christ lives in our hearts through faith.” And he also said that we do not walk by sight, that is natural sight, but by faith. And so, when I look at my heart, I see Christ. And I see Christ with the eye of faith. And He and His life fill my thinking, fill my consciousness.

Here's one of those times when what the Bible really teaches is quite different from what we hear told us, “The Bible says.” We have been taught that our conscience is that part of us that looks at this act or that act and decides this is wrong and that is right. And there is a discernment that God gives us of what is good and what is evil, it is a fruit of the Spirit. But when you look at the word 'conscience' in the New Testament, that is not the picture you get. The Greek word translated 'conscience' is better translated 'consciousness.' Whenever that word is used in the New Testament, it does not give us the option of choosing between good and evil. You are allowed only one or the other. If you see evil, you are evil. Or good, you see good, you are good. We become what we see. We are what we behold. Where our eyes are set determines the light that fills our body. If we set our eyes upon evil, even in our own selves, then the light that fills us is darkness. If we set our eyes upon Christ, if we acknowledge the good things of Christ inside of us, then His light fills every part of our beings.

I speak strongly, because this is absolutely critical. The life of Jesus inside of us must fill our consciousness, must fill our eyes, must fill our sight, must fill our faith, because we become like Him as we see Him as He is. And He IS inside of us.

I want to look at a story in the Old Testament. The strongest jeopardy passage in the New Covenant is Hebrews chapter three and four, and Hebrews chapter three and four is based on a story found in the book of Numbers, chapter 13 and 14. In Numbers chapter 13, the children of Israel are on the borders of the promised land. They have just come out of Egypt and are waiting to go into the promised land. So they send twelve men to go into the land to see what it is like. These men bring back the fruit of that land.

All twelve spies see all the fruit of the land and all twelve spies also see that the land is filled with enemies and fortified cities and giants. They see both. Then the twelve spies come back.

Numbers 13:25 “And they returned from spying out the land after forty days . . . they brought back word to them and to all the congregation, and showed them the fruit of the land.”

Now, all twelve spies are showing the people of God the fruit of the life that is to come, the life that is ahead. All twelve are showing them the fruit.

“Then they told them and said: 'We went to the land where you sent us. It truly flows with mile and honey, and this is its fruit. Nevertheless the people who dwell in the land are strong; the cities are fortified and very large; moreover we saw the descendants of Anak there [giants].'”

Now again, this is all twelve spies speaking. And they are speaking truth. This is critical truth. A lot of believers stop their ears, they don't want to hear that we live in a world of evil, that we walk through land mines all around us. Jesus said, “In this world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world.” [John 16] “In the world, everything that can go wrong will go wrong bad, but get excited, be thrilled, be happy, because I have already defeated the world.”

The attitude of the Christian is not to hide himself from the reality of evil and the destruction that is coming upon this earth, but rather to rejoice in full confidence in the middle of it.

And so all twelve spies come back from a walk through the life to come and they bring back the full fruit of it, all twelve, and they show the people the fruit of that land, it's a wonderful place, a wonderful life, and then they all twelve explain the presence of enemies in the land.

Then in verse 30, Caleb continues on and he quiets the people before Moses and says, “Let us go up at once and takes possession, for we are well able to overcome it.”

And here is where the twelve split into a group of ten and a group of two.

Verse 31: “But the men who had gone up with him said, 'We are not able to go up against the people for they are stronger than we.' And they gave the children of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out , saying, 'The land through which we have gone as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people who we saw in it are men of great stature . . . and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight – and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight – and so we were in their sight.'”

And so the reaction of the congregation in Chapter 14, verse 1, they lifted up their voices and cried, people wept, all night long. They complained to Moses, “Oh, if only we had died in Egypt, or died in the wilderness, if we had already died, than it would be over with, instead of dying on swords, our women and children, all of us will die on swords."

So they said to one another in verse 4 “Let us select a leader and return to Egypt.”

Verse 6: "But Joshua the son of Nun and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, who were among those who had spied out the land, tore their clothes; and they spoke to all the congregation of the children of Israel saying, 'The land we pass through to spy out is an exceedingly good land. If the Lord delights in us, then He will bring us into this land and give it to us, a land which flows with mile and honey. Only do not rebel against the Lord nor fear the people of the land, for they are our bread, their protection is departed from them, for the Lord is with us. Do not fear them.”

“And all the congregation said to stone them with stones.”

Verse 11: “Then the Lord said to Moses: “How long will these people reject me? And how long will they not believe Me, with all the signs I have performed among them?'”

Now, if you had been there as a neutral reporter, you probably would have had the idea that the people of Israel were rejecting Moses, Caleb, and Joshua. But God said, “How long will they reject me? How long will they not believe Me?”

This is one of the most important stories in the Old Testament. There is so much to understand from it. The writer of Hebrews by the Spirit of God based the jeopardy that we stand in as believers, the jeopardy of the New Covenant, solidly on this passage. We must give it heed.

All twelve men gave a true and accurate report. Milk and honey, giants and fortified cities, all twelve gave the same report. A complete and accurate report. But two of them, having seen everything the other ten had seen and reported everything the other ten had reported, Caleb and Joshua saw God. The other ten saw themselves. And they saw themselves, they looked at themselves, they filled their eyes with their own human weakness. “We are not able to go up against the people for they are stronger than we. We were like grasshoppers in our own sight.”

You look at yourself and you see evil and deceit and selfishness, you are standing with the ten false spies.

The conclusion of the men who kept their eyes set on God, “Let us go up at once and take possession, for WE are well able to overcome it.”

Notice specifically that they did not say “God is well able to overcome it.” They said, “WE are.” They saw God, their own beings were filled with light. I do not see the flesh, I do not look at my human weakness, I do not see my propensity to fall short of God's glory, I do not see those things because my eyes are set on God and because my eyes are set on God, I am well able to overcome all things.

My eye is set on God, my whole being is filled with His light.

This is what Jesus is talking about. You watch what happens, you sit down at a table with a group of Christians, throughout the whole realm of the church, you start talking about becoming like Jesus, you start talking about overcoming sin and overcoming death. You start talking about the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ fulfilled in our lives right here on this earth in this age. You start talking about walking just as Jesus walked, overcoming just as Jesus overcame, being perfect just as the Father is perfect, loving in just the same way that God loves. You bring the topic up, you won't go very far into it, and you will see a shadow come upon the face of every one around that table, and you will see their eyes drop down. And you will see the argument, strong, overwhelming. “We can't do it. We are weak humans. God would never allow us to do it, to be like Jesus, to walk without sin, because that would be proudful. To always please God? It would be proudful. To always do His will? It would be proudful. To always walk with God?

Really!

Why? What is the argument?

You think, "Well this is peripheral. I believe in Jesus, I'm going to heaven when I die."

No it is not peripheral, it rules in the hearts of most Christians, and as they read the New Testament they get rid of most of what God says, because they look at themselves and they see themselves as grasshoppers, they see themselves as fallen humans, that “God just is having pity on me and that's all there is to it.” And that's how they see themselves, that's where their eyes are fixed.

Listen, if we cannot believe what God says in the New Covenant about His victory in our lives, if we cannot believe it, then we must understand that our eyes, no matter how much we imagine it to be so, our eyes are not on Jesus, they are on ourselves. No matter how much you say, “Well I'm just trusting in Jesus and when I die, I'll go to heaven.” Your only deceiving yourself. If you cannot believe God right here, right now, for full victory in all that He says, your eyes are in the wrong place.

“We are like grasshoppers in our own sight, and that's how our enemies see us. Sin is too great. Death is too great, they will kill us. We cannot go up against sin; we cannot go up against death. Let us hide in this pagan definition of Christianity, the goal of the believer is to go to heaven when you die.”

Caleb and Joshua saw God. They did not divide between themselves and God. They did not say, "God is over there and we're over here, and maybe, maybe, someday, if we please Him.”

But right from the beginning they assumed that they were pleasing to God. They assumed that God had chosen them and called them. God was with them.

And so right from the start their eyes were set on God. They did not need to explain, “Well, God will do it, we're nothing, but God will do it.” No! Their eyes were set on God, their whole bodies were filled with light. And they said, “We are well able to conquer that land and to overcome every enemy within it. We are well able, God is with us. His favor is upon us. This is His doing, this is His purpose. He goes before us, He goes with us, He is inside of us, He surrounds us. It is not us, it is God in us, and therefore we are well able.”

“We have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us.” [2 Corinthians 4]

We see Jesus, our eyes are fixed on Him. When we look in our hearts, we see Christ. And our faith that is the shield in our warfare, the word of God our sword, faith our shield, and that faith becomes effective, transformed lives to prove the will of God in this earth, in this life, in our bodies. It becomes effective as we acknowledge, as we know intimately and confess and speak the truth about the good things of Christ inside of us.

The transformation that we are going through is a warfare. From beginning to end, our eyes are fixed on God, our whole bodies are filled with His light.

All of it. All of it.

We read what Jesus said, “Your eyes see darkness, everything inside of you is darkness.” If our eyes see human weakness and failure, everything inside of us is human weakness and failure, but if our eyes see the light, our whole bodies, everything inside of us is filled with that light.

We see Jesus.

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