Mind

Romans 12: 2 NIV

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.  Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Are You Fully Utilizing Your Mind?

If you are like me, thinking comes in fits and starts.  The other day I was working on a sermon and I went on line to look at a couple of articles completely unrelated to what I was doing.  Then I worked on the sermon.  Then I started thinking about the weather forecast the next day.  I was hoping it would be cooler and so I went on line to find out what was predicted.  I went back to the sermon and thought about the sweet tea I had in the refrigerator.  I quickly gave up on studying and went to get some sweet tea.  I sat back down and immediately began to wonder who would start for the Raiders at cornerback.  Would D J Hayden or someone else?  I thought about that for a while and then considered the possibility that the Raiders would trade a draft pick to get someone.  I knew though that did not seem to be the way the general manager operated…he liked those draft picks… but then the cornerbacks were the weak link of the team and something had to be done.  This was perplexing.  I started working on the sermon again and really concentrated on the topic.  But then I thought about someone I needed to call and once again the “cow was out of the barn”.

When you and I think, and we are at some level thinking all the time, what dominates our thinking?  Is it sex?  Is it work?  Is it the text messages we have received?  Is our mind on our children, our marriage, our plans for dinner, are we reliving conversations and correcting them in our head?  Do we think about a date we have planned or one we hope to have, about an argument we just had, a terrifying task we must undertake, the messiness of our child’s room, an important document we have lost, the headache we have developed, some movie we just saw, a blouse we saw on sale?  Most of us probably think about all sorts of things over the course of an hour and if our minds are undisciplined, we think without purpose or direction.

Perhaps surprisingly, the Bible has much to say about our thinking.  How we think is quite important to God and to Christianity.  The Bible makes two categories of thinking.  One sort comes out of the “sinful mind” and the other form of thinking is generated by the “mind of Christ”.  The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so. (Romans 8:6-7 NIV)  The sinful mind might be quite disciplined in its thinking.  It may have quite effective methods of accomplishing tasks, making sense of things and solving problems.  There are great scientists, philosophers and CEOs of corporations who have this sort of mind and they are successful at what they do.  There are two skill sets though that the sinful mind is unable to develop.  It cannot get past the great barrier of death.  There is nothing the sinful mind can do to stop the dying it has entered. Regardless of what it thinks should or will happen to it, the sinful mind shall die.  It cannot live forever.  The second skill set the sinful mind lacks is the ability to connect with God as God actually is.  It can think about God, develop theories of God, create wild, unfounded proposals of what God is but the sinful mind is hostile and disconnected from who God is as a person.

The sinful mind may be quite proud of its accomplishments, satisfied with its values and priorities but it is dying and it cannot stop that dying and it has no love for the real God who exists.  This mind has a ceiling and it can only go so far when it comes to thinking.  The other day I heard a famous atheist talking about the universe and he clearly is brilliant but his thinking can only go so far and no farther.  He cannot think with God and he cannot gain the knowledge God possesses of what is happening.  The book of Ecclesiastes calls every form of intellect without God a vanity of vanities, a puff of smoke that disappears and is in the end meaningless.  You can think of atoms and stars and black holes and all sorts of matters that seem important and valuable but you lack the very beginning of wisdom and insight if the mind of sinful man is all you have to work with.  You cannot think your way into what is most crucial to your life because it is all hidden to you by your inability to get there with the mind you have.

The second sort of mind is the one that is “the mind of Christ.”    The Bible speaks of it as a sort of treasure or something precious to possess because of its connection with 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. 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.  This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words.  The man 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. The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man's judgment: "For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?"  But we have the mind of Christ.  (1 Corinthians 2:11-16 NIV)

The psychology of the mind of Christ is different from the sinful mind much like a car is different from a lioness.  One is alive mechanically, the other is fully alive.  The topic for discussion is not the sinful mind so we must abandon it for now but we turn our complete attention to the mind of Christ.  There are two scriptures that at a casual first glance seem to contradict each other.  The first is what we have before us.  The person who has been made new by the Spirit of God has the mind of Christ.  It is a fact declared by Scripture.  When we are born again and the Spirit of God is in us and joined to our spirit, we have the Mind of Christ.  But why is it that we don’t seem to think with His mind.  Why are we so confused and perplexed, easily offended, frustrated by circumstances, worried about things, angry with people, discouraged and depressed, bitter, apathetic toward the scriptures, holiness and purity?  It is really quite simple.  Our second scripture passage explains our difficulty thinking through the Mind of Christ we have when we are truly Christian.  Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. (Romans 12: 2a NIV)

We must be transformed by the renewing of our mind if the Mind of Christ is to join our thinking.  But here is where we can be completely off on our approach toward this.  The natural assumption is that to think with the Mind of Christ, we must study more or become more Biblically astute.  If we just could understand better key doctrines that are confusing like predestination, the Trinity or eschatology…if we even knew what that was…we would gain access to the Mind of Christ but that is not the case.  We do not think with the Mind of Christ by studying God ideas or God principles.  We are in fact transformed by the renewing of our minds when we stop conforming to the pattern of this world.  That sounds so simple.  Do not conform to the pattern of living found in the world and you will think with the Mind of Christ.  Your mind will be transformed.

The Mind of Christ becomes operational for us when we think long and hard about what God wants us to do or how Scripture tells us He thinks about the matters of life.  Once we know a single thing the Lord is directing, then we do that thing whatever it is.  He might tell you to ignore an insult.  He might tell you to forgive a wrong done you.  He might tell you to respond to an enemy with real love.  He might tell you to turn off a certain movie that is not good for your mind or the minds of your family.  He might tell you to help someone.  He might tell you to take a step of faith.  He might tell you to apologize for your bad language, your judgmental attitude, your lazy effort, your self-pity.  Whatever God tells you to do as you see it in Scripture, you do it and immediately you begin to think with the Mind of Christ.  You see things His way.  You understand God’s perspective.  You see how He is working with different people and how you can join Him in His work.  The love that comes from God becomes the love you possess.  You know in a supernatural way when to go forward and when to hesitate.   The Mind of Christ is worked out in you as you submit to the direction He gives you.

A few examples should help us here.  When the Lord blinded Paul and He spoke to him with a voice Paul’s companions could not understand, He was given orders.  God told Paul to go to Damascus.  It was only after he went to Damascus that Paul would be told further what to do.  “Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked.  “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied.  “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.” (Acts 9: 5-6 NIV)  First he had to go at the Lord’s orders, then Paul would learn more.  When the Disciples were saying their good-byes to the resurrected Lord Jesus just before He went back to Heaven, Christ told them all to stay in Jerusalem.  Only if they stayed in Jerusalem would the Holy Spirit come upon them and the Mind of Christ would then become more known to them.  If they went back to their homes in Galilee, they might have discovered all sorts of things but never would they have had the Mind of Christ made known to them in the way that they did on Pentecost.  When Peter, who had a very natural and rational dislike for non-Jewish people, was told by Jesus to go with some very non Jewish people to a non-Jewish home, Peter had to go if he was to gain more of the Mind of Christ directing his thoughts.  …Peter went inside and found a large gathering of people.  He said to them: "You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile or visit him. But God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean. So when I was sent for, I came without raising any objection… (Acts 10:27-29 NIV)  Peter could not stay where he was if God was going to think through him.

Our Lord will stop thinking through us the minute we refuse to do what He has told us to do.  We immediately become on our own.  We still have the sinful mind to use to plan and decide, calculate and choose but the Mind of Christ becomes dim and silent to us.  Jesus asked the most important question we face.  “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?”  (Mark 8:36 NIV) We must ask a second question that is very close to it in substance.  What good is it to do anything if the Mind of Christ is not directing your actions?  What do you hope to gain without the wisdom of Jesus Christ processing everything before you?  It is so very simple to have the Mind of Christ thinking through you if you have become Christian.  You just do what God tells you to do when He tells you to do it and then His thoughts start flowing freely through you.  What good is it to think without God thinking with us?  We might as well be atheists if that is the case.  But since we aren’t, and we have the Lord of the Universe longing to think through us as we think, why wouldn’t we want Him guiding our thoughts and pointing out the way for us as we work through all the difficulties, big choices and opportunities that are awaiting us today.  We face a big world.  Why not have a big God to guide us in it!