Romans 12. Romans 12. That's on page 792 in the Pew Bibles. Romans 12, a well-known portion of the Word of God, maybe even if a location could choose a theme verse. This may be Central Florida's theme verse because of Ligonier Ministries being so close by. Romans 12, beginning at verse one. I'll read to verse eight. Hear the word of God. I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. and do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is good and acceptable and perfect will of God. For I say through the grace given to me to everyone who is among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith. For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function, so we being many are one body in Christ and individually members of one another. Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them. If prophecy, let us prophesy in proportion to our faith or ministry, let us use it in our ministering. He who teaches in teaching He who exhorts in exhortation. He who gives with liberality. He who leads with diligence. He who shows mercy with cheerfulness. And here ends the reading of God's holy and inspired word. And again, may God bless that to our hearts and our minds. And one of the things that I like to listen to for in conversations, and maybe you've picked up on this in conversations as well, is sort of dividing people in your mind between those that will say in a discussion, I feel that such and such versus those that say, I think that such and such. So there's feelers and there's thinkers, and we divide people in those sorts of ways. And in one sense, both of those are legitimate. We have a right to feel and we have a right to say, here's how I feel about a situation. And we also have a right to say, here's what I think about a situation. But it's an interesting intellectual exercise to listen to how people talk and discuss ideas or thoughts or events in the world and those who are the feelers and those who are the thinkers. And sometimes it's just the way we speak. Someone may say how they think but they'll use how they feel and others may give an emotional response and they'll say this is what I think about this. But this is that division that we hear sometimes in our head. Now the psalmist in Psalm 8 that we've been looking at a very small part of asked that question, what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you should visit him? Now what we've been meditating on, at least in part, in this discussion of the psalm around this question, what is man, is we have meditated on and we've thought through just how amazing and wonderful it is that God has made a humanity in his image with dominion, male and female, in a unified race. And then last week we saw that not only are we a body, but we are a soul. And our body is not merely an avatar that holds our true self. Humanity is not separated from body and soul in the word of God. And as we continue to look at the soul and what it means that we are soulful people or part of us is soulful, we need to understand that part of that soul is that we are people that think and we are people that feel. This is part of humanity. We legitimately think as our mind acts. And we legitimately feel as we would say our heart acts. And this is the discussion that I would like to have with you today as we continue this discussion on personhood. And I would like to think with you on what are called the faculties of the soul. The faculties of the soul. Again, we talk about heart, we talk about mind. We're very quick to divide those out. I remember in in college a chapel message where the whole student body, it was a Christian college, it was a reformed Christian college, and the speaker divided the whole student body between those that are emotional and those that are cerebral. And it was on the stage, it was real catchy to use props. There was a book and there was a teddy bear. And the Christian school was divided as to those that are more attracted to a book or those that are more attracted to a teddy bear. Is that not totally offensive, right? And the idea was that as Christians, there are some of us that are mind people and some of us that are heart people. And I want to say that that's wrong. It's 100% wrong. It is not human. for us to be divided in that way. The faculties of the soul, which we'll come to, are not parts. They're not divided. We're not some that think and some that feel and some that experience and however you want to divide that up, however modern pop psychology wants to divide up the different styles of the way our souls respond to a world around us, we are not divided. We are unified in soul as humans. These things are not put against each other. They are faculties, which mean they're functions of the soul. If you are a Christian, if you're a Reformed Christian, and the only thing that you can give the church is a mind, you have problems. And if you're a Reformed Christian and the only thing that you can give us is emotion or feelies, you also have problems. The Word of God does not divide these things. Faculty is a function. It's defined as an inherent capability, power, or function, the way that we would talk about the powers of the mind or the faculties of hearing. These are activities of the soul. Some would say that these are the things that happen within our soul, things that the creator God has placed within us that are part of our response as humans, not parts, activities. of the soul. God has created the soul to function in a certain way in response to him, in response to the creation, in response to others as relational humans. And we call these faculties. Listen to the faculties that are given in our Confession of Faith, Chapter 8, Paragraph 8. It's thinking of the redemption purchased for us by Christ. It says, to all those for whom Christ has purchased redemption, he does certainly and effectually apply and communicate the same. making intercession for them and revealing unto them in and by His Word the mysteries of salvation, effectually persuading them by His Spirit to believe and obey and governing their hearts by word and spirit, overcoming all their enemies by his almighty power and wisdom in such a manner and ways as are most consistent to his wonderful and unsearchable dispensation. So God, even in the way that God calls us as Christians, in the way that God calls us to respond to him as Christians through these ordinary things that we call the means of grace, God is calling us according to our various faculties to respond. So if you come to church and all you hear is a lecture from Pastor Nathan, I have failed you. But if you come to church and all you hear is a sobbing emotional response that's logically incoherent, I have also failed you. Because the job of those that bring the word of God and the way that God has designed the scriptures and how he has designed us as persons with body and soul in a faculty of functions within the soul is that all of these components of the soul are called to respond to who God is. So what are those faculties? One theologian said the human soul is made by God with the capacity to act in a number of ways. In the scripture, the heart is the command center of human activity. From the heart flows all the issues of life, that's Proverbs 4. A study on the Bible's use of terminology for spirit or soul should readily reveal the soul's capacity for acts that we would consider mental, such as knowledge and understanding and memory and meditation, and emotional, such as desire and anguish and sorrow and joy, and volitional, such as choices and inclinations. So as we think about the faculties of the soul or what the human soul is designed to do, I want to look at with you briefly at the several aspects of the soul. I want to look at the mind and I want to look at the will. and I want to look at the affections, and I want to look at the conscience with you today. So we're going to begin with the mind. Now we know that the word of God says that we are called to love the Lord our God. That's in the law. The Lord Jesus gives it as the greatest commandment. And how are we to love the Lord our God? We're to do it with heart and with mind and with soul and with strength. See, the law in the Word of God, and as Jesus picks up on that, the way that we are to love God is that all of these faculties of the soul, all of these functions of the soul, are gathered around who we are as we reach out to God. And we look at, firstly, the mind. That's that rational aspect of the soul. It's responsible for our intellect. and our thought and our understanding and our knowledge. It's considered that faculty by which humans engage with truth, the ways that we understand God's revelation, both in the creation as well as the special revelation that we have within the Word of God. And we take that truth as we grow in that faculty of the mind. The way that we grow in it is we move from these intellectual activities to what the scriptures call wisdom. And this is the application of this faculty of the mind. We can see it in various places in the Word of God. 1 Corinthians 2.11, for what man knows the thing of a man except the Spirit within him? Even so, no one knows the things of God except by the Spirit of God. So we understand that part of that faculty is the use of the mind and the exercise of that intellectual component that makes up the human soul. And we are to know God, and we are to know humanity, and we're to know the creation around us through this. And we grow in these things. Isaiah 29 says, these also who erred in spirit will come to understanding. Those who complained will learn doctrine. So we see that this component of the soul that we call the mind, this is something that every one of us as humans are to be interacting with. Now I want you to think about the way that our society divides these things. The heart and the mind and the way that sometimes we talk about the heart versus the mind, and we pit them against each other, even in the way that we make decisions, or the way that society considers the way that decisions are made. How many of you, by friends, have been told to follow your heart? And the idea behind Follow Your Heart is essentially turn off the mind, turn off the intellectual part of it, and respond to that emotional call for whatever it is that you are being called to do. The scriptures do not pit these against one another. They're all part of the faculties of the soul, and the mind as that rational aspect of the soul. It is sort of the drive or the intellectual drive of the soul, but flowing from that is the second faculty that's connected to this heart and mind distinction, and that second faculty is the will. We are, as people, volitional people. We're willful. And we are people that are able to make decisions. And we're people that all of life is put around us in a series of decisions that need to be made. And from our soul, we do make those decisions. So the will, the decision-making faculty, we could talk in the Word of God, we could expand each of these in a very long series, we could talk about desire, and we could do a whole study on desire. We could talk about choices, and we could have a whole study on choices according to the word of God. We could talk about intentions, what our intentions are from the will. And we could see that the word of God puts all of these things forth under that category of will, under the function of the soul. So in the Word of God, we see that our wills are deeply affected by sin. We all know that our minds and our hearts are tainted by original sin and by actual sin. We're inclined towards sin, and then we're regenerated by the Holy Spirit, and then The ability for the will to act is something that is different once one is regenerated. Later on in this series, we're going to do some discussion on what's called the fourfold state of humanity. So you can kind of pause some of that will discussion for there. But the emphasis on the will aligns with both our understanding of God's election and predestination, and our understanding that God is sovereign over all things. But we understand also, as Reformed Christians, that our will is free to do what it wants. Now that may sound like not a reformed statement to you, but the reality is, is that our wills are able to do what they want. And our desires, whether those willful desires are informed by the word of God and one is regenerated, or whether our desires are because we have an unregenerate heart, and we do not know God, our will is going to conform to one of these two things. And you can read in our own confession of faith that we have a whole chapter on the freedom of the will and a discussion on the way that the will, the human will, is both bound and free. You can think of the law of God, for example, on the Sabbath, we're told to work six days, and the seventh day is a holy Sabbath of rest unto the Lord, and we're told that that is something that we must will to do. It's something that is put before us as believers, and you could categorically pick anything as a moral principle and interact with that on that level of will. that excuse or the excuses of humanity where one might say that their mind was into it and their heart wasn't into it or maybe their heart was misplaced or they weren't thinking and all of these ways that we divide the soul among itself to be an excuse maker from doing what God's word commands. These are things that are out of bounds, according to the word of God. Even the unbelieving Cyrus, king of Persia in Ezra one, says that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be filled. The Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia. so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and he put in writing, thus says Cyrus, king of Persia, and then goes on and eventually releases the Jews back to their homeland. So the Lord stirs that within his heart, but it's Cyrus that makes that decision. And we see that interaction of will or volitional people from the soul is something that the Word of God puts forward. So the mind as a function, the will as a function. Thirdly, affections or emotions as a function. So affections refer to this emotional aspect of the soul. So we could talk about love and joy and sorrow and fear. We could talk about other emotional responses to life, whether good things or bad things come. Some may look at emotions and those responses, even the ones I mentioned, love, joy, sorrow, fear, and say those things are secondary in our theology. That is wrong. They're not secondary. The intellect and the affections go together both as functions of the soul. As I said before, if you're over here as the book or you're over here as the teddy bear and you don't have both of these things going on from your soul, you are not in alignment with what the scriptures call humanity. to be like. And friends, these things in our society are hit against each other all the time. You could spend all day tomorrow taking psychological tests online telling you what type of person you are and where you fall on the thinky-feely scale of life, and you will find that often those thinky-feely tests are putting these things against one another. as we're conformed to the image of God, we should seek to be whole persons. And in our whole personhood, being conformed to the image of Christ, our affections need to be aligned with the word of God, and our minds need to be aligned with the word of God, and our wills need to be aligned with the word of God. Isaiah 26, with my soul I have desired you, Isaiah says. In my spirit I seek you early. Those are all affections or Job 7. Therefore, I will not restrain my mouth. I will speak the anguish of my spirit. I will complain in the bitterness of my soul. That's a negative aspect of the affections. Jonathan Edwards writes the classic book, Religious Affections, and in that he says, as all the exercises of the affections are in some sense acts of the will, so that which is commonly called the affections are only modes of the exercise of the will, and therefore it must be that the affections are no other than the more vigorous and sensible exercises and inclinations of the soul. See, these are aspects of who we are. And I don't want, in our doctrine of humanity, I don't want our young people, the ones that we've been primarily speaking to in this series, to divide within their minds that they're only this type of person or they're only this type of person, because we're not called to be this or that. We're called to be whole in our souls and in our bodies as we look. to Jesus Christ. And then lastly, conscience. Conscience is not always included in that list of the functions of the soul. Sometimes it's seen as that drive of decision-making that takes all of these things into consideration as a moral aspect of the soul, but we know that this is that sense of right and wrong that is shaped first by the light of nature as whatever's left of God's law within humanity And then it's something that's further shaped by being informed by the Word of God as we grow and come to understanding. The Confession of Faith says God alone is Lord of the conscience. He's left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men. which are in anything contrary to the word or beside it, if in manners of faith or worship, so that to believe such doctrines or to obey such commands out of conscience is to betray true liberty of conscience and requires implicit faith and absolute blind and obedience that destroys liberty of conscience and reason also. So this idea that our consciences as part of our souls need to be informed by the Word of God so that we can grow in this area as we're more and more conformed to the image of God. One said, the conscience is that which accuses or excuses. It leads us to comfort or distress in relation to the law of God. So how do we conclude this as we think about these functions of the soul. We know, again, the Word of God talks about loving God with heart, mind, soul, and strength, all of these various faculties. These are ways, as we grow in them, they help us in our love and our service to God. We know that we, by nature, are enslaved to sin and in need of regeneration through Jesus Christ. And this is really what is that beginning point of the true humanity being restored within us. I want you to think about how beautiful that is. It's almost like someone could write a film and not necessarily talk about it in regard to generation, regeneration, but there's a sense in which there's a true humanity that's growing in the way humanity is to be growing, and there is a non-true humanity that is essentially deforming under a society that is constantly removing the truth of humanity from us. So how do we apply this? I'll give quick applications. An application for your mind, from Romans 12, renew your mind. So in the word of God, be in God's word. Renew your mind, grow and stretch yourself in your reading and in your understanding of God's word. Dive deeply and swim in those waters. because we're told that in the faculties of the soul, that renewal, and however God has designed us as humans, that renewal begins from the mind. Our mind informs our affections, and our mind informs our conscience, and our mind informs our will. So we need to be feeding our minds with the word of God and the things of God. Second application concerning the will, and as I said, we'll look at the will more in weeks ahead. Love the Lord your God with heart, mind, soul, and strength. That's a commandment. that the Word of God puts forward. It's one that Jesus gives as the great commandment. Speak to your soul. Speak to your will. And call upon your own will to do this. To love God more deeply. Submit your will to the word of God that you may love him more deeply. And connected to that is our affections. Our emotions and our desires should be directed towards God in things that honor him. We're called to love God with all of our hearts. And I think, you know, this pitting of people against people, as Reformed Christians, let's admit that we tend to be over here often. We're called to love the Lord with our hearts. Be in the word of God and love the Lord as you respond. The scriptures and worship and the Christian faith, these are not merely intellectual activities. We're called to love even with our affections. And then lastly, related to the conscience, I would call upon you to inform your conscience. Inform your conscience from the Word of God and to grow in that area as your soul is more and more richly conformed to the image of Christ. Conscience is a knowledge within man, and conscience is something that needs to be informed by the word of God that we may judge rightly. So we consider again, what is man? That's our question. And we've talked about man as body, and we've talked about man as soul. And when we come over to the soul, the way that the soul is often dealt with today is it's chopped up into these categories, and we're put in these categories. The Word of God does not do that. The soul is a whole, and the soul is to be dealt with as a whole, and yet it has various functions all used so that we may worship and grow in our love and knowledge of God in Jesus Christ. Amen. Father, we thank you that we are able to love you with heart, mind, soul and strength. Help us, Lord, more and more to grow in these areas that Jesus Christ would receive the glory. Amen. Let's stand and we'll sing