November 2024
The Already/Not Yet Christian Mindset
Feature Article
November 2024
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The Christian is to interpret all of life through the lens of God’s plan, revealed in His Word, and providence, discerned in time. How we think about God and His decree will determine how we think about every providence in life, whether it’s an unexpected medical bill, the loss of a job, or an unfulfilling vacation. We process the events of life according to our mindset, which entails our deepest affections, aspirations, attitudes, and axioms. Our reactions and actions in life, therefore, betray our mindset, just as Christ’s mindset led to and was demonstrated by His work of humiliation, as Paul writes in Philippians 2:5–11. Staggeringly, this mind of Christ—His affections, aspirations, attitudes, and axioms—becomes ours through the work of the Spirit that unites us to Christ in a glorious, mystical, and inseparable union. Many of us, however, tend to undervalue the sweeping implications of this blessed union. Every salvific benefit that we enjoy flows to us from that vital and intimate union with our Head, including a new, spiritual frame of mind. So while we possess the mind of Christ through this union, we’re also called to imitate the mindset of Christ.
the already Christian mindset
The already aspect of our mindset can be seen in Paul’s assertion “But we have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16). By virtue of our union with Christ, we currently have His mind. This doesn’t mean that we ontologically possess His brain; it means that Christ, by His Spirit, has enlightened our minds to see God’s revelation and wisdom in the gospel. We’ve come to perceive and receive the Holy Spirit’s “thoughts” penned in the Scriptures and applied to us by the Spirit Himself. The Holy Spirit gives us a spiritual mind whereby we now see things according to God’s wisdom. He “enlighten[s] our minds in the knowledge of Christ” (Westminster Shorter Catechism 31). Through His Spirit, Christ has given His regenerate people His own mind to discern and comprehend what the natural man cannot. This is why you see the world so differently from your unbelieving friends and family. Christians think through every issue in life with spiritual (albeit imperfect) minds—that is, minds that have been enlightened by the Spirit. To have the mind of Christ, then, is to have a spiritual mind and to see things as they really are because the Spirit has enlightened our minds to believe the mind of Christ that comes to us in the Scriptures.
the not yet Christian mindset
While we have the mind of Christ through our union with Him by faith, that mindset needs to be appropriated by every Christian through the means of grace, especially when a fleshly and worldly mindset creeps in. The not yet aspect of the Christian mindset is perhaps more apparent in Scripture. The Apostle Paul tells the Philippian church to adopt the same mindset, disposition, and attitude as Christ (Phil. 2:5). We are to “put on Christ” (Gal. 3:27). We seek transformation through the renewal of our minds (Rom. 12:2). We are to “take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5). In these instances, the call is to assume a mindset based on the mind that we already possess. In other words, since we have the mind of Christ, we put on the mind of Christ. In this process—and it is a process— the Spirit directs our thoughts and fashions our minds to Christ’s. Aligning one’s thinking with Christ’s is not something that the natural man can do or would even want to do (see 1 Cor. 2:6–16). The Christian alone endeavors to see everything—the world, current events, hard circumstances—the way that God sees them. When he falls into an unchristian mindset, he seeks to recalibrate it to that of Christ through His appointed means of grace. Since we still fall into a fleshly mindset, this “tapping into” a Christian mindset takes great exertion as we “prepar[e] [our] minds for action, and being sober-minded, set [our] hope fully on the grace that will be brought to [us] at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:13). Toiling to resist the world’s attempts to impose its hermeneutic on us, we strive to “set [our] minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth,” because we “have died, and [our] life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3:2–3). May we think, see, and live accordingly, as the old hymn says: “May the mind of Christ my Savior live in me from day to day, by his love and pow’r controlling all I do and say.”