| THE MIND OF THE SPIRIT
Much of what has been written in these pages over recent
years has dealt with one side of the Christian mind. It has attempted to offer a glimpse
of an alternative consciousness, which Christians should have in contrast to the worldview
of modern western humans. Over the last three hundred years that worldview has made human
reason the final judge of truth. By using the scientific method it has come to believe in
evolutionary materialism as the only key to the nature of reality. I do not mean to
denigrate science. It has, by uncovering previously unrecognized laws and connections in
the created world, made life vastly easier for us moderns than it was for the ancients.
But the emphasis on human reason has pushed God, and with Him the church, to the sidelines
of human consciousness. In contrast, the Biblical view of reality begins with creation by
the Word of God, and the upholding of creation by that same Word. It maintains that the
truth is personal in Jesus Christ, and that He is the truth in ordinary things just as
much as in spiritual things. It supports a radically different view of knowledge from that
of modern psychology, and it maintains the existence of absolute moral values and of
beauty which ultimately center in God Himself. This is a Christian worldview, and it is
expressed most commonly in intellectual or cognitive terms. Our effort has been to make
clear what this Biblical worldview is and to encourage Christian readers to "think
Christianly."
However, there is another whole side to a Christian mind. It is deeper than the rational
or intellectual side. It is the life side, which underlies and directs the intellectual
side. For example, when Philippians 2:5 says, in the King James, "Let this mind be in
you, which was also in Christ Jesus," it turns out to be talking about humility,
which is not, strictly speaking, an intellectual characteristic. Philippians 2:5-9 is the
strongest New Testament passage on the humiliation of Christ. And Philippians 2:3 makes
clear that Paul is encouraging the Christians to whom he writes to have humble minds. This
is part of the life side of the Christian mind.
We, as Christians, are far more deeply influenced by the mind-set of our time than we
realize. The viewpoint of the Enlightenment, which has come to be known as modernity, has
now been overtaken by what is called post-modernity. Post-modernity has undercut
confidence in human reason by pointing out that scientists are as prejudiced in their
thinking as anyone else is. It denies the existence of absolute truth and virtue and even
calls into question the existence of an enduring human personality and a racial unity. My
point in mentioning post-modernity here is really parenthetical, but perhaps worth raising
nevertheless. The intellectual side of the Christian mind is dependent upon a Christian
use of reason, and is therefore quite defensible. At the same time, it may be reflective
of our conformity to the Enlightenment mind set. Looking at the life side of the Christian
mind, however, puts us into the ballpark with post-modernity. While there is much about
post-modernity that is antagonistic to a Christian worldview, an emphasis on the life side
of Christian thinking may enable us to speak more suitably to those who are impressed with
the approach of the post-modern thinkers. At the very least it is important for us to be
aware of the danger of an overly intellectual approach to the Christian mind. It is a good
idea to be familiar with the thought patterns of the age when offering concepts from a
Christian perspective. A new war should not be fought on the basis of the situation in the
last one. The French tried that in World War II with the Maginot Line and were summarily
defeated. Hence the comments in this paragraph about post-modernity.
So we want to think about the life side of the Christian mind. A good place to begin is
Romans 8:6, which contrasts the mind of the flesh with that of the Spirit. Actually it
speaks of "the mind set on the flesh" and "the mind set on the Spirit
" (NASB). The former "is death", while the latter "is life and
peace." Peterson, in The Message renders it, "Those who trust God's
action in them find that God's Spirit is in them--living and breathing God. Obsession with
self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a
spacious, free life." Given the perplexities of expressing the thoughts of one
language in another language, and for another culture and time, there is no question that
the verse is talking about the Christian mind, which 1 Corinthians 2:16 says that we have.
Moreover, Romans 8:6 is clearly dealing with the relation of the Holy Spirit to that mind.
But it is not talking only about the intellectual or worldview side of the Christian mind.
It is, rather, talking about the relation of the Holy Spirit to that mind and to two
qualities of it, life and peace. These three thoughts will provide the outline of what is
said below.
The Mind of the Spirit
The Holy Spirit works quietly in the creation and in human
lives. He does not call attention to Himself, but works, in humans, below the level of
consciousness. But He works, powerfully and effectively. He worked in Jesus' human life,
from his conception (Matthew 1:20) through his baptism and temptation (Matthew 1:16-2:1)
to his sacrificial death on the cross ((Hebrews 9:14). Thus the Holy Spirit shaped and
empowered the entire human life of Jesus, a life which, as we will see below, He now
communicates to those who believe in Jesus (John 7:39) This life clearly includes the mind
of Christ, both in its intellectual side and its life side.
The Holy Spirit is the third member of the Trinity. He is equal to the Father and the Son,
and is a separate Person in the One Divinity. The theologians say that the Father plans,
the Son commands, and the Spirit effects the will of God. For example, when Genesis 1:2
says, "...and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters," it
refers to the Spirit's working to effect the Word of God. When Psalm 33:6 says, "By
the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of His mouth all their
host", it is describing the work of the Spirit. So Psalm 103:30, in discussing the
life and death of the multitudinous animal inhabitants of the world, asserts, "Thou
dost send forth Thy Spirit, they are created; and Thou dost renew the face of the
ground." Isaiah 40:13-14 speaks of the Holy Spirit when its says, "Who has
directed the Spirit of the Lord, or as His counselor has informed Him? With whom did He
consult and who gave Him understanding? And who taught Him in the path of justice and
taught Him knowledge, and informed Him of the way of understanding?" It is important
for us to recognize the being, nearness, and activity of he Spirit, not only in creation
generally, but also in the Christian mind, both on its intellectual and its life side. And
that brings us to the first thing that Romans 8:6 says about the mind set on the Spirit.
Life
The first thing is that it involves a gift of
life. This is really a definition of what salvation is. It is more than the forgiveness of
our sins and the assurance of acceptance into heaven when we die. When we come into a
personal relationship to Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit, we receive a new life. This
is what Romans 8:29 is asserting, "For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to
become conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born among many
brethren." Again, Ephesians 2:10 tells us, "For we are His workmanship, created
in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in
them." This is not just the erasure of our past sins so we can try again to please
God in our own strength. It is the gift of new life, Christ's life implanted and worked
out in us by the Holy Spirit
Professor Dallas Willard has written three books (In Search of Guidance, The Spirit of
the Disciplines, and The Divine Conspiracy) in which he communicates his concern with
those who present the gospel primarily in terms of the forgiveness of sins and the escape
from hell. He insists, quite rightly, that the gospel offers a new life, here and now, in
the midst of the modern world, and that to offer it simply on the "fire escape"
basis is to misunderstand it. Oswald Chambers echoes the same thought in his message on
John 7:38: "We must distinguish between the revelation of Redemption and the
experience of regeneration. We don't experience life; we are alive. We don't experience
Redemption; we experience regeneration, that is, we experience the life of God coming into
our human nature, and immediately the life of God comes in it produces a surface of
consciousness, but Redemption means a great deal more than a man is conscious of. The
Redemption is not only for mankind, it is for the universe, for the material earth;
everything that sin and the devil have touched and marred has been completely redeemed by
Jesus Christ. There is a day coming when the Redemption will be actually manifested, when
there will be 'a new heaven and a new earth', with a new humanity upon it. What the
Redemption deals with is the sin of the whole human race, not primarily with the sins of
individuals, but something far more fundamental, viz., the heredity of sin.
Pseudo-evangelism singles out the individual, it prostitutes the terrific meaning of the
Redemption into an individual possession, the salvation of my soul.
This is to say that when Jesus tells us we must be born again He is not talking about a
renewal job on a broken-down automobile. He does not intend to repair our sinful hearts,
but to give us new hearts, new life. And this life is the life of Jesus Himself. This
becomes clear when we look at John 7:38-39, "He who believes in Me, as the Scripture
said, 'From his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water.'" But this He
spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive; for the Spirit was
not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified." The Holy Spirit does not put a
Band-Aid on our old life; He implants in us the very life of Jesus, thus making us new
people.
Life is not easy to define. If you don't believe that, try defining it. The best the
dictionary can do (because this is the best that science can do) is to say, "life is
an organismic state characterized by capacity for metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli,
and reproduction". The problem here is that science can only deal with empirical
evidence and logic. The Bible, on the other hand, identifies life with something
transcendent. It says that humans are formed of the same materials as the soil, but that
God breathed into Adam's "nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living
being" (Genesis 2:7). Life, then, involves a relationship to God's breath, which is a
Biblical term for His Spirit. This was lost when Adam and Eve declared their independence
from God in the Garden of Eden. It can, however, be regained through Christ's redemptive
work. When it is, Jesus defines it as unending, when, in His prayer in John 17:3 He says,
"and this is eternal life, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus
Christ whom Thou hast sent." The mind of the Spirit finds its basis and its reality
in the gift of Christ's life through the work of the Holy Spirit.
The outworking of this new life given by the Spirit is described by Paul in the rest of
the paragraph in Romans. It involves our dying to "the deeds of the body" (vs.
13), our being led by the Spirit of God (vs. 14), our sense of having been adopted into
the family of God (vs. 15), which we become aware of through the witness of the Holy
Spirit (vs. 16), our becoming heirs of God with Jesus and our suffering with Christ before
we are glorified with Him (vs. 17). This is a description of the life side of the mind of
the Spirit, which is the mind of Christ.
Peace
The other thing which Romans 8:6 associates with
the mind of the Spirit is peace. The reason why Paul speaks of this in connection with the
mind becomes clearer when we remember how rare true peace of mind is in today's world.
Whether one thinks of the recent catastrophe in the Littleton, Colorado high school where
two students killed twelve other students and a teacher, as well as themselves, or of the
hundreds of thousands of native Albanians recently evicted from Kosovo by the Serbian
effort at "ethnic cleansing", the absence of peace of mind in modern society is
indisputably evident. Leslie Newbigin said that when he and his wife returned to England
not many years ago, the thing that impressed them most deeply was the lack of hope. No
matter how bad things might have become in the India they had left, people had hope for
some improvement. Not so in England. One wonders, with the problems that India faces
today, whether hope is as common there as it was formerly.
Modern people have so effectively pushed God out of the public consciousness that
it does not occur to them that the lack of peace may have some connection with Him. They
look instead for help from the therapist. The reality is that modern humans' lack of peace
is because the natural heart is at enmity with God, and peace can come only from Him.
Paul speaks of peace in connection with the mind of the Spirit because he has already
mentioned it as the basic element in our salvation. "Therefore having been justified
by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have
obtained our introduction by faith into the grace in which we stand; and we exult in hope
of the glory of God" (Romans 5:1-2). The apostle goes on to explain that this
"hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our
hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us" (vs. 5).
Not only does the life, which the Spirit gives to us, give peace within our own hearts, it
also gives peace with other Christians. Paul illustrates this in the latter part of
Ephesians 2 when he points out that Christ has given peace to Gentiles and Jews. This was
a peace that must have seemed virtually impossible to pious Jews and proud Gentiles until
the reality manifested itself in the early church. It says to us that the life, which
comes with regeneration by the Spirit, is one of peace with other Christians. This is
something we sometimes have a hard time experiencing and expressing.
Thus the mind of the Spirit, which is the mind of Christ, is based upon the new life given
by the Spirit. It is characterized by peace with God and so peace with ourselves and with
each other. The particular life qualities which express this mind are described in the New
Testament, but these must wait for another essay.
Al Greene
Alta Vista College
Alta Vista
1719 NE 50th Street
Seattle, Washington 98105
Phone: (206)
524-2262
Fax: (206) 524-1837
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