Page 43 Notice that the mind has something to do with discovering God’s moral will. Remember that under the New Covenant, the Law of God is written in our minds (Heb. 8:10). However, our minds need to be renewed. If we offer ourselves as a living sacrifice to the Lord, and we renew our minds, Paul says that we will know and approve the perfect will of God. As natural creatures, we have a certain way of thinking. We have a way of reasoning that we inherited from this world. The Lord’s thoughts are not man’s thoughts. In fact, they are directly opposed to the thinking of this present world. Yet as we renew our mind, we begin to think the way He thinks and our spiritual instincts become sharper. Our understanding and our judgment become shaped by the Lord’s mind. And His will becomes obvious to us. We become intuitively aware which actions are pleasing to Him and which are not. This is maturity. Again, I’m speaking of the moral will of God. Paul made mention of this process when he spoke to the Corinthians. He told them that because they were living like natural people in the world (unsaved people), they were spiritual babes and couldn’t understand the things of the Spirit. But the spiritually mature are those who are able to exercise spiritual discernment and judgment (1 Cor. 2:6-3:3). To put a finer point on it, instead of giving us orders and commands, the Lord desires for us to have a mind. ,Let this mind be
Mortification from a self-strength, carried on by ways of self-invention, unto the end of a self-righteousness is the soul and substance of all false religion… The Spirit alone is sufficient for this work. All ways and means without Him are useless. He is the great efficient. He is the One who gives life and strength to our efforts.
John Owen