The Mind of Christ 4

We find the word mind mentioned six different times in the NT Scripture. We can derive six adjectives that describe God’s ideal for our mind.



I. Alive is the first characteristic. Romans 8:5,6 says: “For those who are living in the way of the flesh give their minds to the things of the flesh, but those who go in the way of the Spirit, to the things of the Spirit. For the mind of the flesh is death, but the mind of the Spirit is life and peace.” Paul is telling us that without Jesus Christ we are dead (Ephesians 2:1). The carnal mind, that is the mind of the flesh, sets itself on the things of this world, that it pulls itself away from Jesus Christ and is therefore dead. The Spirit, though, pulls the mind to spiritual things. Proverbs 23:7 tells us that, “as a man thinks in his heart, so he is.” Where one keeps his/her mind and what one thinks about will determine who that person is and what that person does.


If you focus your thoughts and mind on the gutter, you become part of that filth in the gutter. A person becomes and does what he or she thinks. If you focus your thoughts on religious things, you become religious. If you focus your thoughts on God and righteousness, you become godly and righteous.


The bible points out three things concerning the power of the Spirit and the human mind:


1. The carnal mind versus the spiritual mind; the carnal mind is the mind we are born with, our human nature, that which we inherit from our parents. The carnal mind will focus on three areas of life.


a. It may focus on the base, the immoral, the violent, the material and physical. Some will consume themselves with the desire (lust) for sex, power, money, drugs, etc.


b. It may focus on the moral, upright and cultural life. They center on their own comfort and welfare. They want for themselves and their society to be refined and educated, and as moral and upright as possible so they con focus on commendable things. The problem is that a person can be refined and educated and still live as independently and separated from God as the base and immoral person.


c. The carnal mind can focus on religion: on living a religious life of benevolence and good works, of ceremony and ritual and still this person can live separated from God.


The point is this: A carnal mind, the mind of the flesh is any mind that does not find it’s basis in God. The mind of the flesh may focus on the moral, upright cultural life, on religion and still neglect and exempt God; a mind that finds its basis in this world; in the physical instead of God.