WE HAVE THE MIND OF CHRIST
We have been given an incredible gift. The Apostle Paul tells us that we have the mind of Christ. And in this study we want to focus on what that means for us as people who have become witnesses of the cross of Jesus (for having heard the message of the cross in our previous study, you have seen the glory of the cross). If you believed what you heard and saw then you have received the mind of Christ.
The mind is the steering wheel of your person. Everything we do is amazingly computed and transferred to the corresponding actions through the mind. What we choose to do and believe comes from the working of the mind. However, our minds can fail us and our thinking can be faulty.
My favorite quote on the mind comes from Dan Quayle, Vice President under George Bush senior. When speaking to the United Negro College Fund he said, “What a waste it is to lose one’s mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.” His intention was to quote UNCF’s slogan, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” But history remembers differently.
Quayle, our example of a wasted mind, is remembered for his great quotes, such as these: “It isn’t pollution that’s harming the environment. It’s the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.” And, “The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation’s history. I mean in this century’s history. But we all lived in this century. I didn’t live in this century.” “One word sums up probably the responsibility of any vice president, and that one word is `to be prepared’.” And finally, “If we do not succeed, then we run the risk of failure.” (The Quayle quote hall of fame).
You try saying the right thing all the time with a microphone stuck in your face 24-7. It is no wonder that God saw fit to give us the mind of Christ; our minds can get us into a lot of trouble if we open our mouths to use them.
We learn from our passage today that there are only three categories of thinking you and I fall into. This begs the question: What kind of mind do you have?
Do you have the mind of the natural person?
Of course I do, you think to yourself. I am a natural person. I am as natural as the next guy. What do you mean natural?
The natural mind is the mind you are born with. It is a mind that is capable of learning many things, creating, inspiring and developing in many ways. It is the natural mind that built the Eiffel Tower; it is the natural mind that wrote “to be or not to be.”
But no matter how amazing the works of the natural mind can, the person with the natural mind cannot understand the things of the Holy Spirit. This person is what we call unregenerated; this person is not transformed by the renewing of his or her mind through believing in Jesus Christ, and him crucified. Spiritual things are tedious and burdensome to the natural mind. Grasping the mystery of the cross is elusive for the person with this mind.
Paul described this person in v. 14: The (person) without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.”
No other time was this as clear to me as when a group of us went to watch The Passion of the Christ at the movie theater. I had already watched the movie and knew it would be an emotional roller coaster for my friends and me. It was incredibly hard not to weep at the dramatic and poignant portrayal of what Christ went through for us. But what struck me as odd was the couple in front of us. All through the movie they ate pizza, drank soda and yawned. They were restless but not from wrestling with the powerful images; they wrestled with their boredom. Others in the theater also showed disinterest and a lack of appreciation for what they saw. I know not everyone liked the movie; however, it was clear that some people didn’t get it. They just didn’t get it. They were there out of curiosity for what Mel Gibson had done, not what Christ had done.
The natural mind is not able to appreciate those things which make up the beauty and awe of the spiritual realm, the things of the Spirit of God. These things are foolish to him or her whose mind is natural. These minds are handicapped to the spiritual meaning and undertones of life around them. These minds might be able to understand geography, history, algebra and philosophy but spiritual things are incomprehensible to them. They lack the capacity to see the Cross for what it is. Therefore what is foolish and fable to them they cannot understand or communicate to others.
It was the natural mind that conceived of the plot to kill Jesus. As Paul said, “None of the rulers of this age understood it (the mystery of God), for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” It is this same mind that sees as logical things like euthanasia; putting people to death who are deemed too old and useless for society to deal with. This is seen as sensible and responsible. It is this same logic that promotes abortion; killing a life so that it won’t inconvenience the woman who did not realize what kind of power she had in her body to give life. The natural mind does not see or care for what the Word of God clearly declares as murder, the taking of human life. And ultimately it is the natural mind that produces the horrifying theology of Nazism that is able to coldly eliminate a whole human race. That kind of thinking is due to the natural mind that does not understand the things of God.
If you have this mind then none of this matters.
Do you have the mind of the Spiritual person?
I pray you do. The mind of the Spiritual person is a mind in right relationship with the Holy Spirit. This person has believed in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins and has allowed the Spirit to move freely through his or her life. If you have this mind, your natural mind has transformed into a spiritual mind.
Paul said, “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.” Paul Fritz described this gift this way: “The Spirit gives us supernatural perception to discern spiritual truth, realities and insights that transcend human senses. The Holy Spirit enables us to see things that allow us to apprehend more of God’s truth through all of our natural and Spirit given senses. The Spirit of God renews, revives and reconfigures our thought processes as we have the mind of Christ.”
Though the apostle speaks of a “secret wisdom” or “mystery”, the veil that obscures the view of the natural mind is lifted for the spiritual mind. We can see the mystery; God has revealed it to us and we can see that the mystery is Christ. That is why what seems so clear to you, so simple it seems like a grade one SS lesson, is confounding to the pre-Christian or unbeliever.
“The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God,” we are told. Here is a connection that should give you chills; it should give you chills to realize that the Spirit who is from God and is God searches the very depths of God’s mind and makes them known to you. This Spirit is in you…let that sink in.
That same Spirit enables you and empowers you to speak about the things that God has revealed to you. He helps you teach others these mysteries of God. “This is what we speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. That word “spiritual” may mislead some of us as we tend to think of “spiritual” as being otherworldly, some kind of angelic tongue or something. “Spiritual” is simply a way of saying “things of the Spirit.” So when we speak of spiritual truths we mean we are telling each other things we know about Jesus. The Spirit helps us to do that because his job is to glorify Jesus in the Christian’s life.
Another thing the Spirit does in our minds is to help us discern what is of God and what is not. That’s what Paul means when he says, “The spiritual (person) makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man’s judgment…” The Spirit warns us about error in sermons or books or movies and reminds us of what is truth. If anyone is in doubt about what is truth, the Spirit can reveal it to us in the Bible. I remember attending a worship night where an exuberant worship leader jubilantly declared that God is so great he worships himself. I was rocked by this expression and told my friends this is an error. But I was told I was just looking for trouble. Let me tell you, if you don’t find it in the Bible, what people say about God, it isn’t true.
Most importantly, having the mind of a spiritual person means having the mind of Christ. Ray Stedman explained it this way: “We have the very way of thinking about life that Jesus himself had, with that keen ability to observe what was going on around him, that ability to evaluate the changing standards of men and to come right through to the very heart of the thing. That is the mind of Christ, the ability to know what was in man. He needed no one to tell him because he understood men. That is the mind of Christ. The mark of it, of course, is that we will behave as Jesus did. In the midst of this present world we will be compassionate when others are severe; we will be severe when others are tolerant; we will be kind to the ugly, the poor, the obscure, the people of no ability or power, but we will be frank with the rich and the powerful and the mighty. That is the mind of Christ.”
Do you have the mind of the Carnal person?
What is a carnal person? This is a person who is caught between two kingdoms. The word “carnal” may conjure up thoughts of sexual sin, but it is not limited to that. This is a person who is ruled by their fleshly or worldly desires. By this person’s faith he or she is united to Christ but finds no satisfaction in Christ alone. He or she possesses the Spirit of God and has a spiritual life but it is stuck in the infant stage.
This is why Paul was writing to the Corinthians, a people wise in their own eyes, but immature in things of the Spirit. They were divided on so many issues and fractured the witness of the church. By choosing to follow silver-tongued speakers or raising one spiritual gift, tongues, above the others making it a sign of spiritual supremacy, they had shown themselves to be mere babies.
“Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly – mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly?”
Consider a baby a five or six months old who is nursing in the comfort of mother’s arms. It is warm and secure there, familiar and comfortable. The youngster desires solids like apple sauce and other tempting treats – dad’s slurpee and Doritos – but ultimately retreats back to mother’s bosom. How long can the child stay there? Eventually it must grow up and eat solids or it will never truly grow. As C. S. Lewis said, one can’t go on indefinitely being an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.
The lack of love for each other, the envy, and the infighting made the Christians look like spoiled brats who cry for the toy another kid has. Paul has to yell at them, “Grow up. Stop acting like babies!”
Gerald Van Horn noted the results of such immaturity:
• These carnal Christians fall into narrow sectarianism. They talk about and follow human leaders of their liking. Any excess talk of human leaders is baby talk because any speaker or preacher’s job is to lead people closer to Jesus.
• Secondly, they tend to be contentious. They find things to fight over. When those not of the church see this they judge the church and declare all religion to be hypocrisy and empty.
• The carnal person is easily defeated spiritually. Tests, temper, lust, jealousy, pride and unforgiving heart find this person easy prey. He or she fails in their prayer life and any victories are small at best.
• The carnal person is often dominated by the standards of this world. While professing to be united with Christ they have never really broken with the world system. Everything is perceived through cultural and societal glasses and judged as such instead of how God sees things. This constantly grieves the Holy Spirit.
Andrew Murray said, “The Christian who is still carnal has neither desire nor strength to follow after God. He rests satisfied with the prayer of habit or custom.” That is the picture of a grown man who thinks he can still crawl into mama’s arms.
Well then, what mind is in you? If you desire to have the mind of Christ, what do you need to do? If you want to have the Spirit of God fill your life and guide you into higher spiritual planes, what must you do?
Paul told us in this passage: “’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.” Therein lies the beginning of your adventure with the Spirit – loving God; loving his Son, Jesus who died on the Cross as the expression of God’s love and forgiveness. Love the man who died in your place and commit yourself, your whole self to living for him. Then let the Spirit reveal to you things in your life that are of carnal nature.
Charles Simeon described a life continually filled with the Holy Spirit as a hot air balloon. He said: "One time it was my privilege to watch the ascent of a balloon. It was bound to the earth by many cords. As the process of filling it with gas began, it struggled to get free. The first line was cut, and immediately that side was lifted from the earth. Then the second and third ropes were loosened, and finally the others. When the last cord was snapped asunder, the balloon rose majestically toward the heavens, showing the high destination for which it struggled to get free. I thought to myself, that’s a picture of the attitude I should possess as a Christian -- one whose affection is set on Heaven. In proportion as my heart is filled with the Holy Spirit’s presence, I will demonstrate my aspiration and earnest longing for an eternal inheritance. As one by one the carnal cords are cut that bind my soul to earth, it will rise in its affection to Heaven where it so greatly desires to be."
Ask the Spirit to help you cut the cords of this earth that hold you down and set you free. What things in your life make you fight your brothers and sisters in the Lord? What things make you jealous of others? What is it that makes you bitter? Confess this to the Lord and let the Spirit make you a spiritual person. Ask that the Mind of Christ be made new in your mind.
AMEN
