The Mind of Christ

The Spirit is the member of the Godhead who brings God’s salvation — the transformation of our hearts and minds, conforming us to the image of the Son — into reality in our lives. The Apostle Paul identified the Spirit as the one who is transforming us “from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18).

The Spirit’s work has many dimensions to it. In my last blog (A Spirit of Adoption, June 27, 2021), we saw how the Spirit nurtures within us a spirit of intimacy, freedom, and boldness in our relationship with God. The Spirit teaches us to trust God’s steadfast, faithful love (grace), thereby leading us beyond guilt and shame, beyond the fear of condemnation and judgment.

A second dimension of the Spirit’s work is teaching us to think with “the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16). As we grow in Christ, our thinking begins to be shaped by the character of God and the ways of God. The Spirit guides our thinking (1 Corinthians 2:13), moving us beyond the way the world taught us to think. The Spirit teaches us to be spiritually discerning (1 Corinthians 2:14). In short, we learn to think differently.

Paul spoke of this change in how we think as “the renewing of the mind” (Romans 12:2). He identified it as the key to being transformed. This same understanding is found in Ephesians 4:22-24 and Colossians 3:9b-11 where putting off the old self and putting on the new self happens by being “renewed in the spirit of your minds” (Ephesians 4:23).  

Putting on the mind of Christ occurs as the Spirit teaches us the character of God and the ways of God (1 Corinthians 2:10, 12-14) along with the ways of the Kingdom that Jesus taught and lived (John 14:26). These new understandings, in turn, confront the spirit and attitudes of our hearts. Through these confrontations, the Spirit works to cleanse the heart. “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10). The heart is cleansed as the mind is made new. Our hearts and minds are changed and our lives transformed through the work of the Spirit.

As the Spirit fashions the mind of Christ in us, we begin to relate out of grace and forgiveness, laying aside merit-based thinking. We learn to view and value, accept and embrace each person as a beloved child of God, moving beyond the us-them mentality of tribal thinking. We learn to value diversity as a gift from God, moving beyond the comparing and competing of better than-less than thinking. Secure in our identity as a beloved child of God, we no longer seek to establish our identity at another’s expense — “I’m not like them. I’m better than that.” As we learn to live out of the mind of Christ, we use our power to serve others rather than to manipulate, control, or dominate others for our own advantage. All of this kind of shifting from … to is the work of the Spirit in our lives.

And it all begins by the Spirit teaching us to think differently — from a spiritual perspective. Changing how we think leads to the cleansing of what is in our hearts. By changing our hearts and minds, the Spirit changes how we live. We are transformed by the renewing of the mind (Romans 12:2).