Tenniel writes in to ask this, "Romans 12, 2 says, '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.'" Pastor John, what does it mean when it says "by testing"?

That is a really, really good question. I love it because it means she's really paying attention. She's looking at the book and she cares about the words. And oh, I love people who care about the words of Scripture. And that phrase, she's obviously reading from the ESV, I think, because it's translated differently in different ways.

Let me just give it again so that the listeners can get it before their mind. "Don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that by testing you may discern the will of God." Now that phrase, "by testing you may discern," is the translation of one Greek word, dokim mazo.

The standard lexical definition goes like this, "to make a critical examination of something to determine genuineness, such as metals by fire." And interestingly, it's used in 1 Corinthians 3:13 where it says, "fire will test"—that's the word, dokim mazo—"will test what sort of work each one has done." So our works at the last day are going to be tested by fire.

So the idea is that the genuineness of something, in this case the will of God in Romans 12:2, the genuineness of something is found out by an appropriate test. For metals, it is often fire. For genuine ripeness in fruit, it would be like tasting. And for genuine health in a horse, you might look at his teeth.

And here, interestingly, powerfully, in verse 2 of Romans 12, the thing to be recognized is the will of God, namely what's good and acceptable and perfect. And the question is, so what's the test? You look at the teeth of the will of God, or you put your tongue on the behavior you're testing?

Do you put some match to it? What is the test? And Paul answers, "the renewal of your mind is the test." By the renewal of your mind, you will be able to discern by testing what is the will of God. So here's the picture I have in my mind.

My renewed mind, renewed by the Word of God, renewed by the Spirit of God, renewed by soaking in the revealed nature of God in Scripture, is litmus paper which turns green when the good and acceptable and perfect will touches it. Green, go! Go for that! And it turns red when it considers some act which is not the will of God.

It's not good. It's not acceptable. It's not perfect. So my mind is being shaped by God into the kind of mind that when it contemplates a behavior or an attitude or a word, there's something that reflexively says no or yes to it because of the way our mind has been formed.

And here's a great example that shows you how the mind is being renewed for this very purpose. It's in Romans 1.9 where Paul's praying that this would happen. He prays like this, "It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and insight so that you may prove"—now there's the word—"approve what is excellent." So he's saying what happens to your love is that love gets more knowledge in Scripture and love gets more insight in Scripture and love gets more of everything it needs to be the kind of litmus paper it needs to be so that when you're out there in the world and you're navigating at work every day and you don't have your little lists in your pocket to say, "Oh, where's a list I can consult?" Well, you can't consult a list for every decision you have to make.

I would say 90% of the decisions we make through the day don't have a list that applies to them. We've got to make judgment calls over and over again as to what is good, what is acceptable, what is perfect, and that's why our minds are being renewed day by day.

And let me say one more thing that I think is crucial here. The translation "discern by testing" might give the impression that all that's implied is, "Well, you test, you discern, and you know that's the will of God. You don't like it, but you do it anyway." That's not what's going on.

The word "documazo" doesn't just mean "prove and discern." It means "prove and then when something is found to be genuine, approve, approve of it." We know that because in Romans 1:28 it says, "The sinners did not approve to have God in their knowledge." And that's the word, "documazo." They didn't want it.

They didn't love it. And so the renewed mind is the mind that not only has the mental or intellectual or knowledge or insight capacities to discern something that's good and acceptable and perfect, but it also has the spiritual taste so that when something is seen to be of God, it tastes good to us.

We delight in it. We approve of it. Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast. Email your questions to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org. Visit us online at DesiringGod.org to find thousands of books, articles, sermons, and other resources from John Piper, all free of charge. I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

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