1Corinthains 12:27(NLT) teaches us, “All of you together are Christ’s body, and each of you is a part of it.” All born-again believers are members of the body of Christ; we are what God calls the church. Long ago, many people believed that the church was a physical ‘brick and mortar’ building, but this is not the case. The church is comprised of those that have made Jesus Christ their personal Lord and Savior. 1Corinthians 6:19-20(NLT) states, “19 Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, 20 for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.” Furthermore, God tells us in Acts 7:48-49(NLT), “48 However, the Most High doesn’t live in temples made by human hands. As the prophet says, 49 ‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. Could you build me a temple as good as that?’ asks the LORD. ‘Could you build me such a resting place?’”
As followers and believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, God has made our bodies the place where His Spirit abides. Through Christ, He has made it possible for us to receive salvation and to receive His seed, which is the Holy Spirit. We are His adopted children, and we all belong to the household of faith. 1Corinthians 14:33 informs us that God is not the author of confusion and chaos. He is a God of peace, love, power, order, and stability. As His children, it stands to reason that peace, harmony, and love is His goal for us as well. He commands us Romans 12:16(NLT) to “Live in harmony with each other. Don’t be too proud to enjoy the company of ordinary people. And don’t think you know it all!”
Jesus Christ is the head, and as his followers, we are a part of his body. As the body of Christ, God commands us to have the same mind as the mind of Jesus Christ. In other words, we are to be like minded, and this is the way that we live in harmony with each other. Romans 15:6 instructs us to join together with one voice and one mind to give praise and glory to God, the Father of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. This is the greatest privilege and honor of our existences.
You might think, “How is this possible? We each have different personalities and qualities. No two people are alike, so how can we have identical minds?” Well, lets think about this a moment. The mind is not the brain. The brain is an organ of our physical bodies. The mind is a part of the soul. It is often referred to as the soul’s thinking center. When the body dies, the brain does too, but that isn’t the case when it comes to the soul of a born-again believer. John 3:16(NKJV) tells us, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” Because of what Jesus Christ accomplished on the cross for us by giving himself as a sacrifice for our sins, we can accept him into our hearts and receive the gift of salvation.
God freely gives us the gift of salvation, and we can’t do anything to earn it. Accepting it gives us the gift of eternal life. This means that we will live an eternity with Jesus Christ, so our souls will never die. Our personalities have a lot to do with our physical bodies, and our likes and dislikes according to the five senses. This is life at a very base level, but through Jesus Christ, there is a higher life that brings us in eternal connection with our Creator. The connection to God through Jesus Christ makes us come alive to Him. Our minds are no longer jumping around from one thought to another and sapping up whatever the world doles out. As God’s children, we must have a mind that is disciplined like His.
God only thinks what is good, righteous, perfect, and true. This is the way Jesus Christ thought, and we are commanded to think the same way. He tells us in Philippians 4:8(NLT), “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” These are the kinds of thoughts we should be having. We should make a practice of meditating on God’s goodness continually. This builds us up and makes us a magnet for all that He has in store for our lives.
Life is about relationships, and relationships and life should never be as complicated as we make them. Before Adam and Eve sinned, none of the issues that we witness being played out in relationships today existed. Adam and Eve lived in harmony because they lived in perfect fellowship with God and therefore, they had perfect fellowship and relationship with each other. They walked in God’s love, and their minds were focused only on what pleased God. This changed when doubt entered their minds and they bowed to the devil. They allowed the devil to stir up wrong thoughts that were not in line with God’s truth. Then, those thoughts dropped into their hearts, and sin took root.
Any time that we veer off the path to God’s love, disharmony and chaos will enter the picture. It starts out very subtle in our minds. Then, if we continue to think on things that are not pleasing to God, we lose ground and things go haywire from there. To be likeminded with one another as God’s beloved sons and daughters is to do as God tells us in 2Corinithians 10:5. It is to destroy every high-minded idea and argument that is against the knowledge of God. It is to cast down and expose vain imaginations, and to arrest any thought that opposes our identity in Christ. We are to make our minds hold these kinds of thoughts, ideas, and imaginations captive. While their captive, we should hold them up to what God says, and if they don’t match, we’re to make them disciplined according to how Christ thinks. This does not diminish us in any way. It enhances us as we pursue the plan and Will of our God.
It’s impossible for us to exhaust the Word of God. Even if we lived 10 million lifetimes, we would not reach the end of its wisdom. Our pleasure and privilege are to keep learning and going higher. And to keep seeking Him, because we cannot know a path unless God reveals it. When we understand that God is our everything, our lives will be changed forever, and the more of the mind of Christ that we put on, the closer to God we will become.
Ephesians 4:2-4(NLT) states, “Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love. Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace. For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future.” Christ is the standard, not other people. Growing in him and training our minds to think like him is what binds us together as his body. Ephesians 4:4 declares that there is just one body, one Spirit, and there is just one Gospel to which we have been called. Knowing God through Jesus Christ in the pardon of our sins is the love language we all must speak. We must bring our minds into the unity of Jesus Christ, and together we will all share in the tremendous inheritance that God has in store for those who love Him.■
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
“We Must Have the Same Mind as Jesus Christ”, written for 4theChristianman.com. Copyright© 2023. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.