Hold That Thought! Whatsoever is Righteous…
Hold That Thought! Whatsoever is Righteous…
“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is TRUE, whatever is HONORABLE, whatever is RIGHTEOUS, whatever is PURE, whatever is WINSOME, whatever is ADMIRABLE, if there is any MORAL EXCELLENCE, if there is anything PRAISEWORTHY… dwell on these things.” (Philippians 4:8).
Dwell – (Greek, “logizesthe”): an accounting term that literally means to carefully use your reason as you take full account of something; to thoughtfully evaluate something in a sensible way as you consider the worth of something; to calculate with focus and discernment; to personally measure what counts in the eyes of God. In this passage, to dwell on these worthwhile realities is to fix your mind on them, to meditate on them, to fill your mind with them, to focus deeply on them. To dwell on these heavenly realities is to dwell within them, to find a home inside these godly attributes, to think about these things to the extent that you are living into them. To dwell upon these things also means that your mind is creating a home for them to reside deep within you. To dwell upon is to allow these spiritual realities to become a part of your life, dwelling in you and shaping you. These virtues are not merely “passing fancies” or temporary mental events, but are fixed in your mind to the extent that they become a part of your character. The root word for “logizesthe” is the rich, meaningful Greek word “logos.” So, to dwell on these aspects of divine goodness means we are to become “logos-like” in the life of the mind, to think and reason like the heavenly Logos. To be logos-like is to truly use the mind of Logos-Christ which has been given to us. To be logos-like is to actively participate in the renewing of our mind (Romans 12:1-2) within by filling it with that which fills the mind of Christ Himself. To be logos-like is to continue daily the holy process of thinking deeply about those realities that are pleasing to God and would keep drawing us into a personal relationship with Him. Naturally, to choose to dwell on these life-giving realities implies that at the same time we are rejecting those thoughts that are unhealthy, destructive, and unworthy of God’s presence in our lives.
Interesting Thoughts about Thoughts:
(1.) I am what I think. I become what I choose to think about. My character is shaped by the life of my mind. My attitudes are built on the foundations of my thoughts. My lifestyle is determined by whatever I fill my mind with. My destiny begins with my thought life.
(2.) According to the latest brain imaging studies (2022), we each have about 6,200 different thoughts a day. They are called “thought worms” and are distinct, measurable shifts in brain activity that represent the transition from one idea or image to another.
(3.) We each can rewire our brains by how we think. It’s called “cognitive reframing,” based on the plasticity of our brains that are able to build new neural pathways by choosing to think differently. We each have the ability to train our minds to identify harmful thoughts, replace them with life-giving thoughts, and then practice those healthier thoughts through repetition until those new thoughts become a mental habit.
(4.) When dwelling on thoughts like what St. Paul suggested above, we are making new neural pathways that become dominant and succeed in rewiring the brain to have the ability to naturally filter out harmful thoughts and welcome life-giving thoughts.
(5.) When we are “in Christ,” we are inviting God’s Holy Spirit to renew our minds and enable us to rewire our brains, our ways of thinking, which determine our attitudes, behaviors and feelings. Each person hs the ability to do a lot of the legwork in this process, but only the Spirit of God can do the heavy lifting and enable us to think with the “mind of Christ.”
(6.) In this sinful world, harmful thoughts assault us every day, and there’s not much we can do about that. But we can try to keep them at a minimum by not entertaining these thoughts, by not welcoming them into our minds in such a way that we dwell on them and fill our minds with them. As Martin Luther once said about temptations… “We can’t stop the birds from flying overhead, but we can stop them from building a nest in our hair.”
Righteous/Just: (Greek: “Dikaios“) = This word seems to combine both of the Hebrew ideas of saving justice and blameless righteousness, and so be taken to mean both justice and righteousness. Dikaios can be translated as righteous, just, fair, blameless, innocent, upright; one who has a heart that is right with God, whose character and behavior squares with God’s expectations for us; one who is in right standing with the Lord; one has living with complete integrity. And so St. Paul is advising us to fill our minds with those things that are in harmony with God’s standards. Welcome those ideas that follow His straight path and not the crooked ways of the world. Dwell on that which is innocent and blameless in your thought life. Meditate on what principles will further justice and fairness. Hang onto those thoughts that reveal life as it should be. Think seriously about those images of uprightness that come to mind. The followers of Jesus often referred to Him in “dikaios” terms, some of the translations saying He was “the Just One” and others saying “the Righteous One.” (eg, Acts 3:14, 7:32).
Hear and Do. To make sure the Philippian Christians understood the whole point of this teaching, Paul closed this passage with a key Hebraic principle: “Practice what you have learned…” (4:9). The Greek word for practice is “prassete,” which means to keep on practicing, make it an ongoing daily effort to put these aspects of goodness into one’s lifestyle. Keep converting thought into action and it becomes a life-giving mental habit. Paul is saying that dwelling on something isn’t merely a cognitive experience, some abstract exercise in the mind that remains disconnected to the way one lives. Remember to complete the hearing with the doing. Flesh out the spiritual realities. Put these divine qualities into action. All these spiritual realities are intended to be practiced in daily life, becoming a part of one’s character. To fix one’s mind on these aspects of divine goodness results in those aspects becoming a fixed part of who we are in Christ. “Be doers of the Word,” says St. James in his letter (1:22), “and not hearers only.” We could add to that, “and not thinkers only.”
“Mind Set On Jesus” – Tamesha Pruett
Jesus is our Dikaios. In Paul’s famous teaching on spiritual warfare in Ephesians 6:10-18, he uses the phrase “robe of dikaios.” In our role as spiritual soldiers, we are set apart to “put on” something. We are to put on the holy breastplate of righteousness and saving justice, a garment of blamelessness, virtue, justice, goodness, integrity. In fact, what else is this but simply “putting on the Lord Jesus” (Romans 13:14)! God has graciously provided the Lord’s righteous and just character as we live into our calling. His breastplate of dikakios means that this not a breastplate of our own construction. One of the names our Father gave to the Messiah in Jeremiah 23:6 is “The Lord Is Our Righteousness.” Jesus Himself is our dikaios, He is our breastplate. When we put on Jesus and His righteous justice, we are participating in His perfect blamelessness, and not merely depending on our own character to suffice as our ultimate protection. Jesus was strong to resist temptation in the wilderness and throughout His life. Wearing His breastplate will do the same for us. After all, as it is with all other aspects of our Christian life, it’s not about us. It’s about putting on Jesus and living into His righteous integrity. When we put on the holy armor, we are “clothing ourselves in Christ” (Galatians 3:27). We are “putting on the new self which is in the likeness of God and has been created in righteousness and holiness in the truth” (Eph. 4:24). Our breastplate is described well in Colossians 3:12: “And so, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving each other. And beyond all these things, put on love.” That is what our breastplate of dikaios looks like. These are the holy virtues of Christ, and we put them on when we put on His breastplate.
Hid in Christ. When we put on the holy breastplate of Jesus, we are in a sense hiding behind it. We have found our hiding place. His dikaios is covering over us. We are “hid in Christ” (Colossians 3:3) when we put on the breastplate. We are confidently and faithfully hiding behind God’s declaration that we are now in harmony with God’s standards in His eyes. When God looks at us now, He sees Jesus. When God sees us with our spiritual armor on, He sees us wearing the protective gear of Christ Himself. We cannot generate our own dikaios and try to put that on. We instead participate in Christ’s character. We do not declare ourselves to be righteous and just. We live into God’s calling us to those roles in His strength. “He has brought you into His own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before Him without a single fault.” (Colossians 1:22). In our spiritual warfare, we stand firm and protect our hearts because we have put on the righteous justice of Jesus. And we are expected to mature in dikaios, walking in the integrity that has been declared by God and fleshed out in the Lord.
Jason Walker – I Woke Up This Morning With My Mind On Jesus
“And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ – to the glory and praise of God.” (Philippians 1:9-11).