nstantly subdue our dispositions and
control our wills, not obeying the dictates of reason and desire.
Always we are to conduct ourselves in a manner unlike the way of the
world. So shall we be daily changed--renewed in our minds. That is, we
come each day to place greater value on the things condemned by human
reason--by the world. Daily we prefer to be poor, sick and despised,
to be fools and sinners, until ultimately we regard death as better
than life, foolishness as more precious than wisdom, shame nobler than
honor, labor more blessed than wealth, and sin more glorious than
human righteousness. Such a mind the world does not possess. The mind
of the world is altogether unlike the Christian's. It not only
continues unchanged and unrenewed in its old disposition, but is
obdurate and very old.

21. God's will is ever good and perfect, ever gracious; but it is not
at all times so regarded of men. Indeed, human reason imagines it to
be the evil, unfriendly, abominable will of the devil, because what
reason esteems highest, best and holiest, God's will regards as
nothing and worthy of death. Therefore, Christian experience must come
to the rescue and decide. It must feel and prove, must test and
ascertain, whether one is prompted by a sincere and gracious will. He
who perseveres and learns in this way will go forward in his
experience, finding God's will so gracious and pleasing he would not
exchange it for all the world's wealth. He will discover that
acceptance of God's will affords him more happiness, even in poverty,
disgrace and adversity, than is the lot of any worldling in the midst
of earthly honors and pleasures. He will finally arrive at a degree of
perfection making him inclined to exchange life for death, and, with
Paul, to desire to depart that sin may no more live in him, and that
the will of God may be done perfectly in himself in every relation. In
this respect he is wholly unlike the world; he conducts himself very
differently from it. For the world never has enough of this life,
while the experienced Christian is ready to be removed. What the world
seeks, he avoids; what it avoids, he seeks.

22. Paul, you will observe, does not consider the Christian absolutely
free from sin, since he beseeches us to be "transformed by the
renewing of the mind." Where transformation and renewal are necessary,
something of the old and sinful nature must yet remain. This sin is
not imputed to Christians, because they