The apostle Paul tells us that as Christians we have the mind of Christ, but what does that mean? How is the world’s way of thinking incompatible with a believers way of thinking and are the two sides really that far apart?
Message
Today we begin a new series of messages in which we will learn what it means to have, as 1 Corinthians 2:16 says, the “Mind of Christ.”
Perhaps you have heard this phrase before, but have you ever wondered what it meant? Lately I feel it is more and more important for all of us to make sure we really have our minds molded to thinking like Jesus, especially in this world that seems to have lost its mind.
As I grew up, I never thought there was a big difference between a Christian and a non-Christian. Sure, Christians went to church, gave money to the church and charities, learned the Bible, and prayed before meals. But the non-Christians I knew were nice people who helped the poor, were kind and compassionate, and seemed just like my family – without the trappings of church.
Lately, however, as I watch the news and listen to the radio, I regularly hear stories that show a chasm between the wisdom of the world and the wisdom that comes from a relationship with Jesus. I’m not saying non-Christians have become monsters; often they are kind, caring and compassionate people. However, basic aspects of life we used to agree upon are now becoming dividing lines between people of the world and people of Christian faith.
Without making this a political rant, I’ll give you an example of what I’m talking about.
My friend Greg met a politician at the airport in Las Vegas, and the man highly encouraged Greg to buy a book called The 48 Laws of Power. This is a New York Times best-selling book with over a million copies sold and almost 50,000 Amazon reviews. Greg bought the book, since he loves to sharpen his leadership skills.
When the book arrived, though, Greg realized very quickly that the wisdom from this book was completely incompatible with the wisdom that comes from the Spirit of God! When you read the following chapter headings from that book, you’ll see what I mean.
Law 7: Get others to do the work for you, but always take the credit.
Jesus wraps the towel around His waist and washes feet.
Law 10: Infection: Avoid the unhappy or the unlucky.
Jesus touches the lepers to heal them. He regularly meets with the lame, the sick, and the outcasts.
Law 11: Learn to keep people dependent on you.
Jesus tells His disciples that it’s better for him to leave because the Holy Spirit will show up nd they will do MORE than He did.
Law 12: Use selective honesty and generosity to disarm your victim.
Jesus tells us He is the TRUTH.
Law 14: Pose as a friend; work as a spy.
This law is best demonstrated by Judas. Do you want to be like Judas?
Law 15: Crush your enemy totally.
Jesus tells us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.
Law 17: Keep others in suspended terror; cultivate an air of unpredictability.
The enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy, but Jesus came so we might have life. He offers us grace, peace and hope – not fear, shame and terror.
Law 26: Keep your hands clean. Conceal your mistakes. Have a scapegoat around to blame.
Jesus made no mistakes; instead, He takes our mistakes on Himself. He is the scapegoat for the wrongs of the entire world. Rather than shedding sin, He took it and dealt with it all.
Is this not an incredible list of chapters? Could it be any more anti-Jesus, anti-biblical, or completely opposed to the Mind of Christ? Yet, out of almost 50,000 readers and reviewers, people with worldly minds have given this book 4.7 stars! When I read the titles, my mouth drops open; but when others read it they think, “Yes, this will get me to the top!”
The big question about this book and dozens of other hot-button topics currently blowing up the news cycle is: why do we Christians have a perspective so different from that of the majority of Americans?
Having the Mind of Christ
It is one thing to have a mind for Christ – to think about Him, know some facts about Him, memorize some Bible verses. But it is an entirely different thing to actually have His mind – to think His thoughts, to know His desires, to feel how He would feel. I’d love to tell you I have that kind of brain-meld with my wife, but that’s not true. Sometimes it’s as though she is from Venus and I’m from Mars!
On the other hand, my former boss and I did have that kind of link. We spent two to three hours a day together, five days a week, for eight and a half years. We planned, studied, and strategized. We even started preaching messages together, with a single page of notes and no outline of who would say what. We just knew. We could look at each other and know what the other was thinking. When someone asked a question in a meeting, I immediately knew how he would answer. We were of one mind.
Perhaps you have a spouse, a sibling or a friend with whom you have that bond? Someone to whom you are so close that it’s like you were in each others’ heads? You know how the other person will respond. You know what they need from you.
That type of closeness comes from a ton of time spent together and tons of conversations about all kinds of topics. It doesn’t happen just by hearing about the other person from a third party. It happens in direct relationship.
Here we come back to the Mind of Christ. When we become Christians, we don’t get a lobotomy to remove our brains and give us new ones. Each Christian receives the Spirit of God and a process to develop a mind that aligns with that of Jesus.
Romans 12:2 tells us, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Do you see how the world’s common thinking is opposed to what Paul desires for the church at Rome? Yet the renewing of the mind is not a single-moment experience. It is the process of transformation. It is a renewal. It takes time.
My first year of working for my former boss was hard because I didn’t yet know how he thought. In the same way, when you first become a Christian, you don’t have a fully transformed mind. You still have sinful desires, sinful patterns of thinking, and sinful habits you don’t even realize you have. The expectation is that in time you will grow closer to Jesus. You will know how He thinks, what He likes and desires, and even what He doesn’t like. Then you will live accordingly.
Worldly Wisdom vs Godly Wisdom
After talking about the mind of Christ with hardly any scripture, I want to dive into the primary passage supporting this concept and show you how it all works together.
1 Corinthians 2:4-7 – My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, 5 so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power. 6 We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. 7 No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began.
Paul tells us that there are two diametrically opposed types of wisdom in the world, Worldly Wisdom and God’s Wisdom. When Paul preached, he relied on God’s wisdom and the Spirit’s power to work in people. A second point Paul makes here is that those with the wisdom of this age are coming to nothing. Worldly wisdom, which is opposed to God’s wisdom, leads to worldly living. And that leads to destruction.
1 Corinthians 2:10-12 – The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. 11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us.
Here we see where our Mind of Christ comes from. It is the result of having the Spirit of God within us. Only the Spirit can know the mind of a person; and since we have the Spirit of God, we can know the thoughts of God! This allows us to understand what the world cannot make sense of: “what God has freely given us.” As Christians we now understand God’s plan, His purpose, and how we fit into it all. Neither science, psychology, or philosophy can answer any of those questions apart from the knowledge of God.
1 Corinthians 2:16 – “Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct Him?” But we have the mind of Christ.
Here Paul quotes the prophet Isaiah, who was asking a rhetorical question at the time. Obviously, nobody could know the mind of the Lord. Paul follows up with a new answer for Christians following the resurrection of Jesus and the giving of the Spirit. Now it is possible for us to know the mind of the Lord because we have the Mind of Christ.
1 Corinthians 3:1-3 – Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ. 2 I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. 3 You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly?
It’s really interesting that the members of this church in Corinth were filled with the Spirit – they spoke in tongues and prophesied – yet they were still contaminated by worldly behaviors. They fought about their favorite leader; they allowed someone to be sleeping with his mother-in-law; some got drunk with the communion wine before others had a chance to participate; they made their services chaotic as people tried pridefully to demonstrate their spiritual gifts. The list of naughty conduct pointed out in this first letter to the Corinthian church is lengthy!
Yes, we might think the Corinthian Christians had the Mind of Christ, but they didn’t. They were still worldly and were thinking and behaving like the world. This shows that gaining the Mind of Christ is a process, not an instant gift given at salvation. It is part of the long process of sanctification. It takes effort and intentionality to not only know about Jesus but to know how He thinks in every situation.
1 Corinthians 3: 18-19 – 18 Do not deceive yourselves. If any of you think you are wise by the standards of this age, you should become “fools” so that you may become wise. 19 For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight.
This verse shows how the wisdom of the world actually takes you away from God’s plans and purposes. They are foolishness in light of the way God sees things.
- This world tells us that we need to look out for ourselves rather than trusting God to provide.
- This world says our value is based on how well we produce, how well we are known or liked, or maybe even on our social media likes, follows, etc. Meanwhile, God says our value is based not on US, but on HIM, and that He loved us enough to put us together in our mothers’ wombs. Production, attractiveness, fame, or influence has no bearing on our value.
- This world tells us that we build power on the backs of others, friends and foes; but Jesus showed that true leadership serves others. He washed their feet, He gave up His life, and then He said it’s better that He leave. Yet, Jesus is the most influential person through all of history
Application
We know that having the Mind of Christ is worlds apart from having a worldly mind. We also know that gaining the Mind of Christ is not a one-time work, but the process of transforming our minds. In light of these two truths, we must ask ourselves, “How does a Christian gain the Mind of Christ rather than a worldly mind?”
Spend time with Jesus. Read about Him and think about what He did and why He did it. Pray and ask the Holy Spirit to show you what to learn from biblical passages. Discuss with other Christians what you see and how it impacts you. Simply put, spend time with the One you want to have a mind-meld with.
AND, stop putting so many worldly messages into your mind! There is a competition for your mind; the world is trying to saturate your thinking with its ideas. If you are filling your mind with both the message of the world and that of Jesus, you will end up with a bad mix! You will twist thoughts and concepts that don’t jibe with the clear teachings of the Bible. You’ll end up with a God like a genie in a bottle who does what you want, rather than the God who is ruler over all the world. You will find that you make God small and control Him instead of allowing Him to be the infinite ruler we live in submission to.
Conclusion
Each of us must make a personal decision as to what we believe. Do you believe what the Bible says about Jesus? If so, then your desire should be to BE like Jesus. That means to THINK like Jesus.
Thinking like Jesus doesn’t just happen on its own. You must intentionally choose to think like Him and then put effort into renewing your mind and aligning your mind to the way God revealed Himself to us in the Bible.
Also, having the Mind of Christ is more than stopping at a specific time to ponder and discern what Jesus would do at that moment. It means simply reacting as Jesus would react in every moment of every day without stopping to think about it.
Every Christian should set a goal of being fully steeped in who Jesus is and how He lived. As His representatives in this dark world, we should aspire to living, thinking and acting as He would. Shine His light – and not just when we are intentionally trying to evangelize our neighbors or serving at the food pantry one day a month. Shine His light every moment of every day because our minds, and therefore our actions, are aligned with our God.
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