And that ye be renewed in the spirit of your mind. Eph 4:23
In the spirit of your mind. I always translated this “in the way I think” or even better “in the worldview underlying my mind, reasoning, and decisions”. It could also mean to get a new set of intensions driving your thinker. But what if the phrase is not used metaphorically? If it really means what it says: the spirit of your mind?
God is a triune God. Three personalities, three persons even, but so much one and united that they are one.
We are made in the image of God. I believe that this is true in many dimensions. One of which is the building plan for our personality: we are triune as well. Body, soul, and spirit. It is easy to see that the body is built after Jesus. He who before the laying of the foundation of the world was given on the cross as a sacrifice had a body like we do. And we read in Acts and Revelation that he still does after his death. A glorified body. Obviously the Spirit posed for the spirit. And God the Father is the soul of it all.
Traditionally we describe the soul as being mind, will, and emotions. This I want to challenge.
Let us look at the body. I propose that the body thinks. The body has a mind.
Everybody will agree that the body has a memory. One example: reflexes, where the body remembers past hurt and reacts accordingly without involving even the brain. And the body thinks. Our thinking is affected by chemistry, be it body functions, hormones, or medicine. Granted, this could be the body signaling the soul that it needs attention. But many functions just work without involvement. I am thinking of the vegetative nervous system, keeping the heart pumping and the lung breathing.
Obviously, our soul thinks. This is the place of consciousness, self-consciousness, reasoning, creativity, communication with other members of our species (and animals and plants and computers at times). This is the seat of our ego. It is obvious that all these are functions of the soul. They are eternal, according to the word, whereas the body is not, but we get a new, glorified body. But they are also available to people that have not been born again, thus have a dead spirit.
But what about the spirit? The spirit is the part of us that lives outside of time. It is seated with Christ in heavenly places. As much as God is spirit, we are. Thus, the spirit of the mind is where we tap into the eternal. This is where we experience the unconscious, the unknown, the future as well as the secrets of God.
The old prophets asked: who knows the mind of God? And Paul answers: we do. Because we have the mind of Christ.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. Isa 55:8-9
By whom has the spirit of the Lord been guided, or who has been his teacher? Who gave him suggestions, and made clear to him the right way? Who gave him knowledge, guiding him in the way of wisdom? Isa 40:13-14
has now become
Who has knowledge of the mind of the Lord? or who has taken part in his purposes? Or who has first given to him, and it will be given back to him again? For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things. To him be the glory for ever. So be it. For this reason I make request to you, brothers, by the mercies of God, that you will give your bodies as a living offering, holy, pleasing to God, which is the worship it is right for you to give him. And let not your behaviour be like that of this world, but be changed and made new in mind, so that by experience you may have knowledge of the good and pleasing and complete purpose of God. Rom 11:34-12:2
For who has knowledge of the mind of the Lord, so as to be his teacher? But we have the mind of Christ. 1Co 2:14
Do I mean by that that we can become teachers of God? God does not need a teacher. But he admonished his people, especially the prophets, to stand in his council. (Jer 23:22)
In Psalms we see that God took his place in the council of the gods.
God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment: “How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked?” Ps 82:1-2
The question here is: who are “the gods”? The word elohim is used of God himself, angels, but also means holy ones. When we look into the book of Revelation, we see who the group was that was asking this:
And when he opened the fifth seal, I saw underneath the altar the souls of them that had been slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held: and they cried with a great voice, saying, How long, O Master, the holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? Rev 6:9-10
We have the right to enter the council of God. Not only the right, but the responsibility. For this is how we tap into the third part of our mind: the spirit of the mind. Christ’s mind.
For we do not have the mind of Jesus, we have the mind of Christ. He the head, and we the body.
Science tells us that we only use a minimal part of our brain capacity. The method this has been found out is more than questionable: burning a rats brain with an iron and seeing at what percentage it could still function. This only shows on how little of the very flexible physical brain an animal can remember and perform complex tasks. Complex for rats, that is.
But other experiments have shown that our brain is running with brakes on.
That can have many reasons. One of which is that we do not tap into the eternal part of our mind, the spirit of the mind.
Why wouldn’t we?
Well, we do not believe it exists. We have relegated the mind to the soul realm. For too long the church has told us that thinking is bad because it belongs to our old nature and has to be sanctified. We have overcome that. But we have not tapped into the heavenly, out-of-time dimension of the mind yet.
There are exceptions. People have asked God for solutions. Many things, from cures for diseases to designs of battleships, of all things, have been inspired by God through the spirit of the mind. Let’s believe that God wants to give us creativity far above the knowledge and information of the time.
Secondly, we do not believe that the world is worthy of this kind of knowledge, insight, creativity. We believe that the world is bad and will become darker and darker. We believe that earthquakes, tsunamis, AIDS are the punishment of God. Why find a cure, why find protection and early-detection systems – we do not want to hinder God’s plan with this earth. And I am not talking about one-by-one supernatural healing through the laying on of hands. I am talking about a cure and the extinction of AIDS, just as it happened with so many diseases – pest, polio.
We need another eschatology, another teaching of the end times. A teaching about a glorious church and a victorious God. An eschatology that brings the foundational truth back to us that God is for us – us meaning all humanity. That he is a good God. That he wants light to abound.
I believe that the mind is triune just as we are: that the mind has a body, a soul, and a spirit part. Let’s start to think with our spirit as well! Let’s tap into the eternal, out-of-time, supernatural riches of knowledge and wisdom. Let’s unlock the rest of our brains.
Change your view of the world, of God’s plan with it. Bring heaven to earth. That is God’s plan.
What do you think about this? Which part of your mind told you so?