The Believer and the Mind of Christ
Rev. Aniekan "Mbomboyo" Okokon ·
"For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?" But we have the mind of Christ. — 1 Corinthians 2:16
Paul quotes Isaiah’s unanswerable question — who could possibly know the mind of the Lord? — and then answers it in a way Isaiah could not have imagined. We have it. Not we aspire to it, or we are working toward it. The Spirit who searches the depths of God lives in the believer, and through Him the thoughts of Christ are ours.
Having and using
A man can own a library and never read. Having the mind of Christ is a gift of the new birth; using it is the work of a lifetime. That is why Romans 12:2 commands what 1 Corinthians 2:16 declares: be transformed by the renewal of your mind. The renewal is not acquiring a mind you lack. It is retraining a brain shaped by the world to run on the mind you have.
How the mind of Christ thinks
- It thinks from acceptance, never toward it. Every decision starts from "I am loved," not "I must earn."
- It thinks in terms of the Father’s will, because that was Christ’s food (John 4:34).
- It counts others more significant than itself (Philippians 2:3–5), because that is the mind that went to the cross.
- It sees people and situations as they are before God, not as they appear under pressure.
- It is not anxious, because it knows how the story ends.
The practice
When a decision is in front of you, before you weigh the options, ask a different question: what does Christ think about this? Not what would He do in some hypothetical — what does He, living in you, actually think? Then wait, with Scripture open. You will be surprised how often the answer is clear and how often it is the opposite of your first instinct. That gap is the old mind being renewed by the mind you already have.