If Romans 12 is, in many ways, the flesh and blood of the “life that is really life” Jesus promises, the first two verses are the soul of that life. In verse 2, Paul urges us to resist the pressures to conform to the spirit of this age, calling us instead to allow the mind and Way of Jesus to set our life’s course. This is the kind of transformation that enables each of us, individually and as church communities, to grow into exactly who God intends us to be.