“The Mind of Christ”
1 Corinthians 2:1-16
Our little—almost 2-year-old Owen—hasn’t been sleeping well for the past couple of months.
This, of course, means that his parents haven’t been sleeping well either.
We don’t understand why Owen wakes up several times a night crying, wanting to be held and will not fall back to sleep without one of us in his room.
He can’t tell us.
He doesn’t have the vocabulary and we can’t read his mind.
It must be very frustrating for him, not being able to communicate with us exactly what he is going through or feeling.
And the same goes for a lot of us, I would imagine.
We all have things about ourselves that are hard to explain.
Each of us have feelings that are so personal, things which are so private, experiences that are so intimate that no one else knows them except our own individual spirit.
And in our Scripture lesson for this morning, Paul tells us that the same is true of God.
There are deep and intimate things in God which only His Spirit knows; and that Spirit is the only One Who can lead us into an intimate knowledge of God.
A long time ago there was a guy who, more than anything wanted to get to know God and know that God loved him, accepted him and had saved him.
And so he read his Bible.
He studied it hard.
He got to know all the “Thou shall nots…” and the “Thou shalls…”—the whole shabang!!!
He even went off to a really good seminary—one of the best—where he studied about God and the rules of the Church.
And then, he himself became a priest.
And he found a group of like-minded folks, who wanted to please God.
They got together and formed what would soon be called “The Holiness Club.”
And “The Holiness Club” worked really hard trying to following all the rules in the Bible correctly.
They figured that if they just tried hard enough they could be perfect and acceptable to God.
But this was a frustrating thing to try and do, because try as they might, they were just human beings with temptations, flaws, sinful inclinations and so forth just like everyone else in the world.
They did a lot of things.
And their intentions were good.
But ultimately they were left feeling defeated and alienated from the God they were trying to emulate.
Eventually, the young priest who had set out to make himself the perfect Christian decided to give up.
He realized that he couldn’t achieve his goal.
And oh, was he depressed.
And oh, did he feel like a failure.
He had really hit rock bottom.
He felt that he would never, ever be able to measure up to the high standards of God as written out in so many pages of the Bible.
One night a friend of his invited him to go to a special Bible study.
And he didn’t want to go.
He’d been to enough Bible studies to last a lifetime, thank you very much, and see where they had gotten him?
But his friend was persistent.
So, reluctantly, he went.
And this Bible study, well, it wasn’t an incredibly academic affair.
It wasn’t like his seminary classes.
There was no highly educated scholar up front using high and lofty words.
Instead, someone was simply reading something that someone else had written.
It was something that a man named Martin Luther had penned some 200 years earlier.
But as the down and out priest listened to these simple and straight forward words—something started to stir deep in his soul.
And an enlightenment started to come upon him.
His heart started to beat faster, and he felt perspiration begin to form on his skin.
And then something amazing happened.
This man who had been reading the Bible and trying to follow what it said for so long experienced something he had never experienced before.
And the best way he had to describe it is this, he said that he felt his heart become “strangely warmed,” and for the first time in his life he did believe that Jesus Christ had died for his sins—even his—and had forgiven him and saved him from the law of sin and death.
He then, spent the rest of his life growing in his new relationship with God through faith in Christ and sharing it with others.
This man’s name was John Wesley.
He went on to lead the biggest Christian revival the world has, perhaps, ever known.
The Methodist Church is a direct result of God’s actions in his life.
As are many, many other churches—arguably the majority of protestant churches in the United States and the rest of the Western world.
John Wesley didn’t learn about God’s great salvation and love in school.
He didn’t learn it from trying to follow a bunch of rules.
He learned it through the message of Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
It wasn’t a message filled with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power—which gave him insight into God’s secret wisdom.
In our Scripture passage for this morning Paul tells us that “We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us.”
Let me ask you this morning: Do you understand what God has freely given you?
Do you understand what it means that Jesus Christ gave His life in order to save your soul?
Do you understand that it is by grace you are saved, through faith?
And that this salvation is a gift of God; there is not anything you can do to deserve it or get it?
And that God has saved you because He loves you and has great plans for your life?
And these plans are the reason you were created by God in the first place?
Do you know this?
Do you believe this?
Has it warmed your heart?
Has it changed your life?
Christianity is a relationship.
It is an ongoing relationship with the living and loving God Who accepts you as you are and where you are—even as He doesn’t desire for you to stay where you are.
In his writings Paul speaks about living according to the Spirit.
And in Galatians 5:25 Paul says, “Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.”
How do we keep in step with the Spirit of God?
I remember when I was a young boy walking with my dad.
He would take my hand and we would walk together—step by step.
And even though I might not have been thinking consciously about it, by holding on to my dad’s hand as we walked, I was allowing him to direct my steps so that where he went I went.
I like that image when I think about walking in step with God’s Spirit.
I like the idea of taking God’s hand, walking with Him and allowing Him to guide my steps along the way.
Will I still mess up or get distracted, let go of his hand and end up in a ditch?
Sure I will.
But as I lay in that ditch, God’s hand will always be outstretched to mine—offering to help me up and out of the messes and mistakes I make.
This is what it means to live life day by day in an active relationship with the living God—putting our full trust in Him.
Going back to that image of holding on to my dad’s hand…
I was never afraid of my dad.
I knew he loved me unconditionally, and more than anyone in my life, I knew that I could tell him anything and everything about myself.
I knew he would listen, not with a judgmental and condescending spirit that would make me ashamed, but with an understanding ear filled with empathy and the desire to help and support me.
God is not against us; He is for us!!!
God loves us with a love that is beyond our imagining.
God loves us with a love that we can only get a glimpse of through the indwelling of His Spirit in our lives.
And the more we walk with Him.
The longer we live our lives in relationship with Him the more we come to “grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ…that surpasses knowledge.”
Perhaps the biggest difference that living in relationship with God makes is that we know that someone loves us.
It’s like a realization that we are not alone.
There is someone who is here with us in life, caring about what we do and about what happens to us, wanting what is good for us.
And there is someone who we don’t want to hurt or disappoint.
There is someone we can talk to, someone who can help.
Life at its best, the fullness of life that God wants for us is the life of love, and loving has to start with knowing that we are loved.
And this is where the Holy Spirit comes in.
We are told that God’s Spirit witnesses to our spirits that we are children of God which enables us to call God “Abba,” Father, and know that we have been adopted as children of God.
John Wesley called this “the witness of the Spirit.”
It’s how we are assured of our salvation.
In our Scripture Lesson Paul says that “The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.
For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him?
In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.”
And we have received this Spirit.
Therefore we have “the mind of Christ.”
This doesn’t mean that when God’s Spirit enters our lives that we suddenly have all the answers to the universe.
What it does mean is that we have a new awareness and a new love for God and the world that we never would have known existed otherwise.
We come to care about the kinds of things God cares about, and begin to care less about the things we used to worry about—such as the material and worldly things.
It means that when we encounter someone who is in need; we will have to force ourselves—against the Spirit living in us and seeking to guide us to turn from them with an uncaring attitude.
It means that we will begin seeking justice for those who are suffering.
It means that the problems of others will become problems to us.
As the Spirit that has access to the inner thoughts of God works within us we will be on our way to making a very positive difference in our world.
And isn’t this what our world needs more than anything?—People who love rather than hate, people who do not retaliate but empathize, people who seek justice and resist evil, people who feed and welcome the stranger, people who seek to find housing and shelter for the homeless, and live lives of freedom and confidence amidst a world that is cowering and dividing in fear?
Paul says to the Corinthians that when he came to them he “didn’t come with eloquence or superior wisdom…”
Instead, he says: “For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified…My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power…”
If we Christians try and emulate the world’s understanding of power we will cease to be the Church.
The wisdom of God is discerned through the Spirit of God.
And it involves the self-emptying humility of God.
It’s a humility born of love—shown most clearly on the Cross.
When we become empowered by this humble love we not only become who we were created to be, but we also are empowered to become the Church that brings healing and new life to the community and the world around us.
“as it is written: ‘No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him—but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.”
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
