The Christian's Mind; Amazing, Secure

Let's pause to pray. Father in heaven, thank you for the word of God. Thank you that it transforms the mind. Thank you that our minds can become more and more like the mind of the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, grant to us spiritual insight and intelligence. Give us, oh God, the mind that is able to discern and to discover, and give us, oh God, the mind that is able to discipline our lives to glorify the Lord Jesus. Help us as we study today, I pray in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, amen.

One of the easiest things in the Christian life is to get out of balance. Blessed are the balanced. Now, some of the saints are all wrapped up in feelings. They have to be on an emotional high. Their Christian life is sort of a roller coaster. They go from one high to a low to a high, one experience to another, and the higher heights they reach, sometimes the deeper depths they feel afterward.

Now, there's nothing wrong with emotions in the Christian life. We weep with those who weep, we rejoice with those who rejoice. Our hearts are lifted in praise and adoration to God. Emotions are important in the Christian life. We are not cold, mechanical robots. No. But our feelings have to be governed by the mind. We must be intelligent as we express our feelings. In 1 Corinthians 14, Paul told the Corinthians who were having a great time with spiritual gifts, he said, "Now, it's good to pray, pray in the spirit, but pray with the understanding. It's good to do these things, but be sure the understanding is there. Don't just sing in the spirit, sing with the understanding," because it's important that your mind be in control of your life. 

Now, some Christians don't get all wrapped up in feeling; it's all knowing. They're very intellectual. They don't have any emotional feelings, they don't have any service, there's no witness, there's no work for God, but oh, they know Bible truth. They've marked their Bible, analyzed it, synthesized it, categorized it, but there's no practical Christian living there. Now, that's wrong. It's out of balance. Those people need to have a little more heat to go along with all of that light. And then some of God's people emphasize not so much the mind and the emotions, but the will. Their Christian life is duty, duty, duty. They are activists. And sometimes it's zeal without knowledge. They're busy doing things, but they aren't sure what they're doing, why they're doing it, or how God wants them to do it. 

Now, the key to balanced Christian living is a sanctified mind, what Romans 12:2 calls a transformed mind. A mind that integrates the whole personality around the truth of the word of God. Balance comes from integration. The mind and the heart and the will, the whole personality tied together, united, working together to the glory of God. You see, the Christian mind is the mind that loves God's truth, learns God's truth, and lives God's truth to the glory of God. It involves the whole personality. Now, we don't compartmentalize personality. When we talk about the mind and the emotions and the will, we know we're talking about functions that go on in the total personality. Man is one being, one person, but it's so easy for us to get out of balance. 

And we're going to be discussing together and studying together the Christian mind. The Christian mind is that mind that loves God's truth, and learns God's truth, and lives God's truth, integrating it into the total life. The Christian mind is that mind that thinks the way God thinks. Now, it doesn't mean we become God. It means that more and more and more, our minds see life as God sees it, and we make decisions, and we test things, and we exercise discernment the way God wants us to do so. A sanctified, transformed Christian mind is essential in three areas of the Christian life. 

First, our humanity. We are human beings created in the image of God. Now, you know the passage, Genesis 1:26-27: "And God said, let us make man in our image, according to our likeness." Verse 27: "So God created man in his own image; in the image of God created he him; male and female he created them." The first parents were made in the image of God. Now, that means personality. It doesn't mean God has fingers and hands and feet, although those words are used with reference to God to help us better understand how he works. God made us in his image. We have a mind to think with, we have emotions to feel with, a will to decide with. The whole personality is spiritual in nature and related to God. God gave Adam and Eve minds. They could speak, they could name things, they could learn, they could know God. He gave them emotions. They could love, they could worship. He gave them a will. They had dominion. They were exercising dominion power, King Adam, Queen Eve of the old creation. They could make decisions, they could serve. 

Now, this matter of being made in the image of God is very important because life grows out of that truth. We are not animals climbing some evolutionary ladder. We are not just creatures of clay who suddenly appeared somehow. No, we're made in the image of God. For example, in Genesis 9:6 we read this: "Whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God he made man." Here is law based on the fact that we're made in the image of God. Capital punishment—we're made in the image of God.

Or take this matter of telling the truth. That's so fundamental to society. We have to trust each other. Colossians 3:9-10: "Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man who is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who created him." In other words, God is today in our lives recreating that image, the image of God. He said, don't lie. Truth is what helps to recreate the image of God. Or take this matter of the way we treat each other. Not just murder, but even our words. Take cursing. People swear at each other. James 3:9, talking about the tongue: "With it we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the similitude, the likeness, of God." And so when we curse somebody or when we ridicule somebody, when we're mean to somebody, we're touching somebody who's made in the image of God. 

The mind is an amazing tool. Now, just stop to think about it. God gave us a mind. We can think; that takes care of the present. We can remember; that takes care of the past. We can imagine; that takes care of the future. The mind is an amazing tool. We have the ability to learn, to respond in the present. We can think. We can plan for the future. We can imagine creating beautiful things, effective things to the glory of God. We can remember. Suppose every morning you had to start the day by learning the alphabet all over, learning how to count, learning how to drive, how to brush your teeth, how to dress yourself. I understand that the mind is capable of recording permanently 800 memories a second. 800 memories a second, and holds on to them. And if we knew how to retrieve all of those, we'd remember everything we ever felt or saw or heard or learned. The mind is an amazing thing. And when we do not live according to the mind of God, we start living like animals. 

Now, animals can be trained. Some animals are quite smart. I understand the pig is a very smart animal. You can train dogs and horses, even mice, to do amazing things, but they operate fundamentally on instinct, not intelligence. They don't know that they are mice or dogs or horses. They don't know that they are thinking. We can not only think, we can think about our thoughts, and we can think about the thinking about our thoughts. It's possible to have many different levels of thinking going on at one time. But when we don't live like that, when we live ignorantly, we're like animals. 

God ridiculed the people of Judah. Isaiah 1:3: "The ox knows its owner and the donkey its master's crib; but Israel does not know, my people do not consider." The prophet says the animals are smarter than God's people are. They at least know their master. Jeremiah 8:7, he says the same thing, only he uses birds: "Even the stork in the heavens knows her appointed times; and the turtledove, the swift, and the swallow observe the time of their coming, but my people do not know the judgment of the Lord." The birds and the beasts are smart enough to know when the seasons are changing and when storms are coming, and here are the people of God ignorantly living like animals. You see, God is saying, use your mind. Live an intelligent Christian life. You're a human being made in the image of God. And if you don't live an intelligent life, you're living like an animal. 

And so the mind is important because we are creatures in God's creation. And the mind is important because we are saved people; we're children in God's family. It's important to our salvation. Now, the mind of the unsaved person, the mind of the lost person, is not what it ought to be. That's why he's lost. His mind is debased. Romans 1:28: "And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting." And he goes on to describe what these things are: all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, envy, murder, strife, on and on he goes. Where does it come from? A debased mind. Now, the word debased means a depraved mind, a mind that God cannot approve, a mind that God rejects. 

Now, why is their mind like this? Why is their mind debased? They don't want to have God in their knowledge. Romans 1:28: "And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge." They don't want to think about God. 2 Corinthians 4 tells us the mind of the unsaved person is a darkened mind. 2 Corinthians 4:4: "Whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them." A dark mind. Satan keeps them in the dark, oftentimes using religion to do it. Ephesians 4 repeats this and goes on to say it is a futile mind. Ephesians 4:17-18: "This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk"—meaning the unsaved—"in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them." Here's the truth of God, the light of God's word. They don't want it. And so their understanding is darkened and their minds are futile. What does that mean? Emptiness. No purpose. No lasting result. Futile thinking, a futile way of thinking. It ties in with Ecclesiastes: vanity of vanities, all is vanity. 

Paul says they have corrupt minds. 1 Timothy 6:5: "Useless wranglings of men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth." That's a terrible thing. Here the truth of God is available, and yet their minds are corrupt minds, decaying minds, getting worse and worse. In Titus 1:15, they are called defiled minds: "Even their mind and conscience are defiled." Now, that's the unsaved person.

But salvation changes all of that. First, the mind hears and understands the word of God. In Matthew 13, the parable of the sower, five times Jesus talks about understanding. You cannot be saved without understanding the gospel: that we are sinners, that Christ died for our sins, that he rose again, and that all who believe in him will be born from above.

So salvation begins with hearing and understanding the truth. Then there's repentance, which means a change of mind. And that change of mind leads to a change of life, doesn't it? Faith in Jesus Christ, and then the dark mind is enlightened, the corrupt mind is purified, the defiled mind is cleansed. God writes his word on our minds. Hebrews 8:10: "For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my laws in their mind and write them on their hearts." Not on tables of stone outside, but inside. God's word comes into the mind and heart, and the more you saturate your mind and heart with the word of God, the more you have the mind of Jesus Christ. 

And so our salvation involves the mind. Let's notice a third fact. Our Christian living involves the mind. Peter's last words in 2 Peter 3: "You therefore, beloved, since you know these things beforehand"—there's the mind—"beware lest you also fall from your own steadfastness, being led away with the error of the wicked." There's the mind—truth and error. "But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." Now, you can grow in knowledge and never grow in grace. A lot of people have Bible knowledge who live like devils. But you can't grow in grace without growing in knowledge. Christian growth depends upon knowledge. The mind and the heart receiving the word of the living God.

Now, this makes us more like the Lord Jesus Christ, doesn't it? Paul wrote that to the Colossians. We read that. You've put on the new man, says Colossians 3:10, who is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of him that created him. And as you read the word of God and meditate and pray, you become more like Jesus Christ. You learn the will of God. Romans 12:2: "That you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God." How? By having your mind transformed. We get victory over the devil through knowing the word of God. Paul talks about that in 2 Corinthians 11:3: "But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ."

And so we need intelligent spiritual minds to overcome the devil, and the world, and the flesh. And to overcome that thing that we call worry, in Philippians 4, Paul talks about the mind that is guarded, the heart and the mind guarded by the Lord Jesus Christ. Our Christian living depends upon a mind that receives the truth of the word of God. Someone has well said that the mind grows by taking in and the heart grows by giving out. You put those two together in the Christian life, and you're going to have growth, you're going to have victory, and you're going to discover yourself becoming more and more like the Lord Jesus Christ.

[Interview]

Arnie Cole: You said that the mind grows by taking in and the heart grows by giving out. Explain the natural progression of taking in and giving out.

Wiersbe: I think that that comparison originally came from Winston Churchill. He says we go through life, we grow by taking in and we also grow by giving out. You know, you can't keep on taking in. At some point, you have to give out. This is true of breathing. If all we did was take in, take in, where would we be? Billy Graham, I think, is the one who used to say God gave us two hands: one to receive and one to give. And I think he's hit the nail on the head. As people, as human beings made in the image of God, we need to realize life has to be balanced. If all we do is take in, we're selfish. If all we do is give out, what are we giving? It takes balance.

Arnie Cole: You say that we have a mind to think with, emotions to feel with, and a will to decide with. And when these are in balance, our life is in balance. But in my experience, I never had a balanced, stable life until after I came to know Christ. And what about those people that live in horrible situations? Where do they get balance?

Wiersbe: We can give thanks to God for his grace, because what you just said about yourself, we could all say about ourselves. We get out of balance. When you're out of balance, you can't walk straight, you can't think straight, you can't talk straight. And yet, when you know Jesus as your Savior, he puts everything together. In my own devotional life, one of the first things I do in the morning is, "Now, Lord," I say, "here I am, and I'm giving you my body," that's Romans 12, "and I'm giving you my mind and my heart and my will. That's all I have, I'm giving it to you. Now help me today to be what I'm supposed to be." I've been doing that for years, and I want to tell you, it works. It's Romans 12:1-2 and it gives you that balance. You think the Lord's truth, you feel that experience in your heart, and then with your will, you do something. Now, if you don't obey, if I don't do something, it won't work. I'm putting myself out of balance. I think it's a terrific thing to be a Christian in spite of all the problems we may have.