The Mind of Christ – Actively Remembering

The Mind of Christ – Actively Remembering.

“Who is able to understand the mind of Lord Yahweh? Who is able to be His teacher? We, however, have the mind of Christ!” (1 Corinthians 2:16).

“We have…” (Greek, “echomen”), which means ‘are having,’ ‘are keeping,’ or ‘are holding;’ to have and to keep on having, an action in progress; a process that is now taking place; the present state is a continuing state. So the literal translation is, “We, however, are having the mind of Christ.” Through the Holy Spirit, we now are new creatures who were given the capacity to learn how to think like Jesus.

… the mind of Christ.” (Greek for mind is “nous,” which means the highest knowing faculty of the soul; the spirit and understanding behind all we think and do). Through the Holy Spirit, then…

We are being given the capacity to think the thoughts of the Anointed One;

We have the growing ability to reason, to be logical, and to think things through like Jesus;

We are being infused with the ability to understand God’s wisdom;

We are being equipped with the moral intelligence of the Lord;

We are being given access to the reasoning behind the actions of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit;

We are in the process of perceiving spiritual matters as Christ perceives them;

We have an increasing ability to understand life from God’s perspective;

We will be continually inspired to develop the divine common sense and street-smart shrewdness that Jesus was known for;

We are gaining insight into what truly matters according to the thinking of God;

We have a growing ability to reflect and ponder according to the will of Christ;

We enjoy an ongoing co-mingling of our mind with Christ’s mind, until the end, when the new will have completely replaced the old, and those two minds will be indistinguishable.

“I want my letters to serve as reminders to stimulate you to pure, wholesome thinking. I want you to be mindful (“mimnesko”) of the words (“rhema”) which were spoken in the past by the holy prophets and the commandment given by our Lord and Savior through your apostles.” (2 Peter 3:1-2).

Mindful (Greek root, “mimnesko”): literally to turn the mind towards; be mindful of; recall; remember; to go where the remembrance leads; to actively follow up on the memory; to allow the memory to move you to action; to take responsibility for the memory through follow-up.

God Needs A Memory? To be mindful of, to remember something in biblical language, is not the act of recalling something that has been forgotten. After all, God doesn’t forget anything, and yet the Scripture repeatedly points to the fact that “God remembered.” In biblical language, divine remembering is totally different from human remembering.  God has no memory, but neither does He have to worry about forgetting anything. God doesn’t need to remember, because He already has the past, present and future factual knowledge in the universe. Whatever is not on His mind has never existed. So whatever God brings to mind is already there. God doesn’t need a reservoir of memories from which to retrieve what is in the past, since there is no past with God. God doesn’t need a memory savings bank from which to draw when needed. God is already thinking about whatever it is that he is remembering. When God remembers, He is preparing for action, He is deciding to focus on something in particular while keeping everything else in mind. When God remembers, He is applying an eternal truth to the present reality. When God remembers, His divine attention will surely bring about divine intervention. God doesn’t need to recall something that is already present in His mind. God doesn’t need to collect his thoughts, since they are already collected at the top of His mind. God is not some absent-minded genius in the sky, but instead He brings something to the top of His mind in order to be faithful to a promise.  When God remembers, be prepared to see God in action. When God remembers, there is a focus of divine attention, and the action soon to come makes clear what God is mindful of. God doesn’t just think about something when He remembers, God actually does something about it. When God remembers, He chooses to participate with what is on His mind. There are a number of times in Scripture when God “remembers:”

God remembered Noah (Gen. 8:1), and the flood receded;

God remembered Abraham (Gen. 19:29), and Lot was rescued;

God remembered Rachel (Gen. 30:22), and her womb was opened;

God remembered His Chosen People (Ex. 2:24), and He delivered them from bondage;

God remembered Hannah (1 Samuel 1:19), and she was able to conceive;

God remembers we are creatures of flesh, and is mindful of how He formed us (Ps. 78:38-39), and maintains His commitment to mercy.

God remembered His mercy-covenant (Luke 1:54-55), and Mary soon conceived Jesus.

The Mind of Christ, then, asks us to be mindful of something in an experiential way. In keeping with the Hebraic tradition of what it means to be mindful of something, remembering in the New Testament is not a passive mental exercise. To be biblically mindful of something means we don’t settle with merely recalling something or bringing something to mind. We participate in our memory. To God’s way of thinking, being mindful of something requires a high level of personal involvement. A memory is not just an offhanded activity of the brain, an incidental exercise of the mind, or something to put on our mental back-shelf. The biblical way of remembering is to go wherever the remembrance leads, to follow through, to remember with an active purpose in mind. When the thief on the cross asked Jesus to “remember” (“mimnesko”) him, it goes without saying that he wanted for Jesus to save his soul, which was soon promised by Him. (Luke 23:42). When the author of Hebrews instructed believers to “remember” (“mimnesko”) the prisoner  and those being ill-treated (Heb. 13:3), the obvious intention was to follow through in the remembrance by caring for them, in the spirit of Jesus’ parable of the sheep and the goats (Matt. 25:31-46).

“Do this in Remembrance (“mimnesko”) of Me.” Perhaps the most significant time when we are instructed to be actively mindful, of responsibly remembering something by participating in the memory, is at the Last Supper. “Jesus took some unleavened bread called matzah, and gave thanks to God. Then He broke it in pieces and gave it to the disciples, saying, ‘This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ After supper He took another cup of wine and said, ‘This cup is the New Covenant between God and His people – an agreement confirmed with my blood, which is poured out as a sacrifice for you.’” (Luke 22:19-20).

When Jesus declared the New Covenant at His Last Passover, He was boldly claiming that the New Covenant as predicted by Jeremiah and hinted at in Ezekiel was now being ratified, inaugurated, put into place. By remembering the New Covenant like He did with His disciples, Jesus is preparing to make good on God’s age-old promises of redemption. Jesus declared that He will now fulfill those prophecies from the Hebrew Bible. Even Moses anticipated the New Covenant in Deuteronomy 29:4, when he told the gathered Israelites, “Yet to this day the Lord has not given you a mind to understand, or eyes to see, or hears to hear.” Moses knew that there would come a day when his observation would come true with the people of Israel. Jesus confirmed that day has indeed arrived, the Passover’s Cup of Redemption is now fulfilled in the Person of Jesus Messiah.

When Jesus said, “Do this in remembrance of me,” He wasn’t limiting remembrance to merely a mental activity. Jesus was referring to the biblical understanding of remembrance, that being mindful involved personal experience. Remembering something always brought with it the purpose of bringing the past into the present, of having the person doing the remembering participate in the memory. Jesus wants the New Covenant to be brought into the current reality whenever we “remember” His body and blood. Jesus intended the Communion act to have an impact on the person who is mindful of the sacrament. He wants the body and blood of the past sacrifice to remain real and effectual, taking effect now as surely as it did during Christ’s Passion. The elements of Communion, through faith in Jesus and the work of the Spirit, are intended to become a part of our spiritual digestive system, a vital part of who we are in our current spiritual walk with God. The body and the blood of the past is intended to become present to us now in its original power and fullness, real spiritual food, enabling us to grow in the Lord.

Rhema Words: Peter intentionally used the Greek word rhema for “words” in this passage. Rhema literally means “a word uttered by a living voice, a thing spoken that has a definite meaning,” and is used seventy times in the New Testament. The rhema word is different than logos, and in fact is based on logos. Rhema is the word that is inspired by the Holy Spirit that speaks to a specific situation. Rhema is a written or spoken word taken from Scripture by the Holy Spirit that speaks to a particular time. Rhema is a passage from the written Word that speaks truth that needs to be said at that time. Rhema is an inspired word from the Holy Spirit that is intended to be directly applied to a situation or a person. The rhema word is a wise and timely passage from the Bible that has special relevance at that moment. Peter is reminding us how important it is to be mindful of rhema words from the past.  As unpacked by Rev. Bill Johnson, the word “nothing” in Luke 1:37 (“For nothing is impossible with God”) is actually the Greek words “no-rhema.” One translation puts the verse this way… “No word of God shall be devoid of power.” In other words, Rev. Johnson preaches, rhema words, the freshly spoken words from the Holy Spirit, will have the power to fulfill what the word says, and has the ability to accomplish God’s intention with that word. “No freshly spoken word is impossible. God equips us, as we ask Him, to wield the fruitful rhema word, which itself is based on the inspired logos Word. Paul tells us in Romans 10:17 that “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the rhema word of God.” General biblical knowledge, Logos, is foundational, but the rhema words inspired by the Spirit of God are vital, because it is what God is telling us personally from Scripture. The rhema word is the Holy Spirit whispering to us an important application of the logos word. The Spirit-Sword is double-edged: the first sharp edge is Logos, and that is followed up by the second sharp edge, Rhema. When the two edges are wielded together, the devil is helpless. The Holy Spirit is the One who turns the logos word into a rhema word. The logos has potential application, the rhema has specific application. One anonymous writer put it this way: “Logos is speaking the Word of God, and rhema is speaking a Word from God.” Logos is Jesus, the Word made flesh. Rhema is His Holy Spirit directing a word from God specifically to each one of us.

The mind of Christ is not content to merely recall something from the past. To be mindful of something with the mind of Christ is to participate in what is being recalled, to live into the memory with one’s whole self, to take responsibility for what is being remembered. We are not to settle for anything less than purposely following through on the memory and turning it from a mental exercise to a personal experience.