Romans 12:1,2 the Epistle to the romans by Douglas J. Moo

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"This world" literally "this age," is the sin-dominated, death-producing realm in which all peopl, included in Adam's fall, naturally belong.
But it is "to deliever us from the presen evil age" that Christ gave himself (Gal. 1:4); and those who belong to Christ have been transferred from the old realm of sin and death ino the new realm of righteousness and life....
Pauls' command that we "not conform to this wolrd," then, builds on the theology of Rom. 5-8 (and of Rom. 6 especially) and calls on us to resist the pressure to "be squeezed into the mold" of this world and the "pattern" of behavior that typifies it (see 1 Cor. 7:31).

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whereas the verb translated "be transformed" refers to an inward and genuine resemblance.
The tense of the verb is agian present; and in this case the fact that the renewing of the mind is a continuing process justifies us in thinking that Paul uses this tense to stress the need for us to work constantly at our transformation.

"The renewing of your mind" is the means by which this transformation takes place. "Mind" translates a word that Paul uses especially to connote a person's "practical reason," or "moral consciousness." Christians are to adjust their way of thinking about everything in accordance with the "newness" of their life in the Spirit (cf 7:6). This "re-programming" of the mind

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does not take place overnight but is a lifelong process by which our way of thinking is to resemble more and more the way God has resulted in God's giving them over to a "worthless" mind: one that is "unqualified" (adokimos) in assessing the truth about God and the world he has made. Now, Paul asserts, the purpose of our being transformed by the renewing of the mind is that this state might be reversed; that we migth be able to "approve" (dokimazo)the will of God. "Approving" the will of God his moral direction is clear from the way Paul describes it: this will is that which is "good," "acceptable [to God]," and "perfect."

Paul's confidence in the mind of the Christian is the result of his understanding of the work of the Spirit, who is actively workingn to effect the renewal in thinking that Paul here assumes (cf. Rom. 8-4-9)
He knows that the renewal of the mind is a process and that as long as we are in these

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bodies we need some revealed, objective standards against which to measure our behavior. Hence Paul makes clear that Christians are not without "law," but are under "the law of Christ" (Gal. 6:2; 1Cor. 9:19). This "law" has its heart in Jesus' own teaching about the will of God, expanded and explicated by his appoined representative, the apostles. But Paul's vision, to which he calls us, is of Christians whose minds are so thoroughly renewed that we know fom within, almost instinctively, what we are to do to please God in any given situation. We need "law"; but it would be to betray Paul's call to us in these verses to substitue external commands for the continuing work of mind-renewal that is at the heart of God's New Covenant work.
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