The Mind of Christ – Renewed
The Mind of Christ – Renewed.
“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.
“Be constantly renewed in the spirit of your mind.” (Ephesians 4:23).
Renew – (Greek, “ananeousthai”), which means to be in the process of moving upward to a new reality; to move upwards to newness; to go to a higher stage, taking new strides; to come to new levels of spiritual understanding; the process of making our minds new with the mind of Christ; the renewal of the mind is akin to a resurrection of the mind; to renew the mind is essentially to take an old mind and recreate it into a new one.
Spirit – (Greek, “pneuma”), which can be translated in a few different ways. On the one hand, it is the word for spirit, Spirit, wind, breath; rooted in the word “pneo”, which means to set air in motion, to blow a breath, to produce a gust of wind; the pneuma is often associated with the blowing of the Holy Spirit into each of us, literally “inspiring” us; the above verse could mean the Holy Spirit blowing His presence into our mind, inspiring us daily as our minds are recreated in Christ. On the other hand, pneuma has also been translated as attitude or disposition, the spirit in which we express our mind’s thoughts. The spirit of the mind is not what we think but how we think it, and how our inner thoughts are expressed outwardly as they are set in motion. Allowing the Spirit to renew not merely what we think, but the attitude with which we think it, the spirit in which those thoughts are expressed.
So we could understand our theme verse above in Ephesians 4:23 in various ways:
Renew the thinking of your mind by the Holy Spirit;
Allow the Spirit to make the attitude of your mind like brand new;
Allow the Spirit to recreate your mind with fresh new attitudes;
Take a fresh breath and allow your human spirit to be changed by the Holy Spirit;
Let yourself be inspired to develop new attitudes to your ways of thinking;
Allow yourself to be made new in the attitude of you understanding;
Be inspired each day to let the Spirit change for the better your attitudes and thoughts.
It appears that the daily renewal of our minds is not a passive experience for us, in which we just sit back and refuse to take any responsibility for what’s going on. We don’t have the supernatural power to renew our own minds, but we have been graced with the ability to use our God-given minds to grow in making good decisions. The best way to begin the process is deciding to simply open the door to our minds every day and allow God to enter in and engage in His renewal work. Yes, God does the heavy work, but we participate in this daily renewal by doing our part in the power of the Holy Spirit… Letting Him in; surrendering to Him; allowing the process of renewal to take place. The Lord is a consummate Gentleman, and he won’t force His way into our mind without our cooperation. It is up to us to open the door and welcome Him in.
“That is why we do not lose courage. Though our outer self is progressively wasting away and heading for decay, our inner self is being progressively renewed daily. So we’re not giving up. How could we! Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside where God is making new life, not a day goes by without His unfolding grace.” (2 Corinthians 4:16, AMP and MSG).