The Mind of Christ and Its Speech

All Scripture quotations are taken from the New American Standard Bible 1995 Ed. (NASB95)

I have long noticed a coldness, selfishness, and disinterestedness of many Christians in our American evangelical culture. Such unfriendliness is due a lot of times to the cultural individualism and isolationism that we are surrounded with in the West. If you take a good, long, look at the way you spend your time, and the way you treat the members of your local Christian fellowship, you’d have to admit that your life is largely disconnected and isolated from the majority of the brethren outside your household. We’ve been trained, whether consciously or not, to focus on ourselves and our immediate family, to the overwhelming neglect of the rest of our Christian family.

And one of the most tangible ways in which our individualism is manifested is through our regular conversations with the brethren with whom we fellowship. This is clear simply from looking at the most prominent instruction for Christians in the New Testament. At the heart of the saints’ service of each other is “speaking the truth in love” (Eph. 4:15). There are many similar exhortations contained in the apostolic letters, such as “encourage one another,” “build one another up,” “speaking to one another,” “admonish one another,” and “comfort one another.” The fact is, the apostles expected growing congregations to spend ample time speaking encouragingly to each other. And if this ministry is neglected, then it’s most likely due to the fact that we’re neglecting to practice the supreme command for Christ’s body, which is “love one another even as I have loved you,” and to “be devoted to one another in brotherly love” (Jn. 13:34; Rom. 12:10).

Even if we regularly engage in encouraging talk with our brethren, we all can improve in our care for each other. Due to our habitual social media and Internet use, and the separated and isolated patterns of behavior that most of us practice, many of us have a hard time thinking of and treating our brethren as the Lord would have us. In light of these struggles, let me give some thoughts about how we can cultivate a more loving and accurate attitude toward our brothers and sisters in Christ. If we’re going to be more effective in building each other up with our words and speech, then the place to start is with our beliefs about our fellow members in Christ’s body. When we think of them, do we really have an accurate understanding of their value in God’s sight? And do we take this estimation of them into our interactions and conversations with them? Let’s use the teachings of the Lord and the apostles to examine ourselves, and to change our thinking to more greatly reflect our Lord’s own thinking.

The Mind of Christ

According to Paul in 1 Corinthians 2:16, we as believers “have the mind of Christ.” This is a foundational truth for our identity. Since we have had our minds changed to rightly see who Jesus is and what He’s done, we now have a Christ-focused and God-worshiping direction to our thinking. We now supremely value what God values most – the glory, honor, and praise of the Lord Jesus.

As such, we don’t need to work up something fundamentally new in our attitudes toward other believers. Because we delight in the goodness, righteousness, and truth that reflects God’s character, we love whatever bears these marks. And since other believers bear these marks through their faith in Jesus, we inevitably have an affection and delight in our fellow Christians. This is exactly what John gets at in his first letter of 1 John. He repeatedly says that if someone doesn’t love other Christians, then they’re demonstrating that they have no love for God, and therefore no faith in Christ.

Yet at the same time, John goes on to still command his disciples to “love one another” (1 Jn. 4:7). So, although we have the seed of love in our hearts, we still require encouragement and instruction to maintain and grow this love for the brethren. Hence, why I’m writing this lesson.

In fact, we can also go to Paul’s letter to the Philippians, and find yet another passage in which “the mind of Christ” is mentioned, but this time in the form of a command. And this entreaty is fundamental to maintaining and cultivating a right attitude toward our brethren in Christ. It reads,

“Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.” – Phil. 2:3-7

Where does Paul tell them to display the mind of Christ? In the whole passage, but explicitly in verse 5, which could also be translated, “have this mind in yourselves which was also in Christ,” as the KJV does. This way of thinking has been termed “others-centeredness” by a couple of respected Bible teachers, and I think this is spot on.

However, what precedes this passage is even more fundamental to possessing this attitude. Paul earlier calls them to,

“make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose.” – Phil. 2:2

Clearly, these instructions are prerequisites for sharing the attitude that Christ had in His incarnation. But what is this “one purpose” that all believers in a local fellowship are to aim at? It is the purpose of pleasing the Lord by carrying out his Commission to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you . . .” (Matt. 28:19-20). If we’re all purposed toward influencing people to worship Jesus and obey His commands, then we’ll be able to “regard one another as more important than yourselves”. Why? Because we aren’t seeking to bless and benefit ourselves, but to benefit our neighbors.

Further down in this mind of Christ is a solid understanding of our individual identity in Christ. The gospel teaches that if you have faith in Jesus, then you’re a partaker of every spiritual blessing that He possesses, including the inheritance of life on the new earth, the complete love, favor, and delight of God, and the power of the Holy Spirit. In other words, you already have everything that will ever satisfy your soul for all eternity simply through your trust in Jesus to provide you with them. Hence, we don’t need to seek more favor, acceptance, or blessing from others. Having been given eternal hope and comfort by God’s grace, we’re now free to seek to share God’s grace with those around us. Instead of seeking what others can give us, we can now seek to most appropriately give to our neighbor.

But this principle of being blessed to bless others reaches a higher dimension when it’s applied to our relationships in the body of Christ. In contrast to our efforts to benefit those in opposition to God through unbelief, every benefit we give to a brother or sister furthers the Lord’s work in the world to make Himself more known. And this is why we ought to have “the same love, [be] united in spirit, [and] intent on one purpose” (2:2). We’re all serving the same ultimate goal of putting Jesus on display as much as possible. But this is only possible if we work together.

In other words, our others-centeredness must be based on our Christ-centeredness and body-centeredness. Because every member of God’s family is a part of Jesus, whenever we’re seeking their good, we’re also seeking the good and joy of the Lord Himself.

Applied to our personal interactions with our brethren, others-centeredness displays itself in us not primarily thinking of blessing them in terms of what good it will do to them, but what good it will do to our Lord. Jesus taught this concept when He described the final judgment of believers in this declaration:

“The King will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.’” – Matt. 25:40

Thus, however we treat our brethren in Christ, Jesus takes it personally. The fact is, He lives inside of each believer, and we all live inside of Him. So when we’re approaching our regular interactions with our brother, especially during our weekly gathering, we ought to be thinking of benefitting him in order to further the glory of the Lord.

Put in Paul’s words, this means that we first think humbly about our relationship to our brethren, and then appropriately “regard one another as more important than yourselves” (2:3). What exactly does this mean? He explains:

“. . . do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.” — 2:4

That is, when we’re rightly valuing the well-being of our brother, then we’ll be concerned with their concerns, rather than our own. Put concretely, if I’m talking to my brother, and I don’t have a problem that I’m immediately dealing with, then I ought to seek to learn what problems my brother has, rather than sharing my own. In my conversation with him, my focus on his concerns should be reflected in my questions and statements. My aim in the discussion should be to learn how I can help him, and not how he can help me.

And this mindset is exactly what Paul illustrates with the most stupendous act of humiliation in all of history. Christ’s attitude of seeking others’ good rather than his own is supremely demonstrated in His decision to leave heaven and become the sin-bearing Servant of humanity. Paul writes that He was living in God’s ultimate form of glory, but decided to give up this shape by acting like a “bond-servant”, or slave, through His adoption of human nature. And whose slave was He? Obviously, He was God’s slave first, but He said Himself that He came to act like the slave of people.

This is what He meant when He said,
“But I am among you as the One who serves.” – Lk. 22:27b

And, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.” – Mk. 10:45

In these self-descriptions, He was explaining how He lived out His attitude toward others. He treated them as more important than Himself, and looked out for their concerns and needs, instead of His own. He could do this as a man because He recognized that the Father had already given Him everything that would satisfy His soul for eternity, and He could gain nothing of substance from the service of others. All He had that satisfied Him and gave Him joy came from His Father. It is this same attitude that His followers should have, and demonstrate toward our brethren.

The Mind of Christ Spoken to the Members of Christ

Because my main aim is to help you generally treat, and specifically speak to, your brethren, I conclude with some application to our conversations. If we rightly value our brother, than we’ll rightly value the opportunity we have to talk to him. Whenever we’re in contact with a brother or sister, Paul’s instructions should be already put into practice in our attitude. But this starts with the right evaluation of our brother.

In order to examine the way we think and feel about the brethren with whom we regularly interact with, it’s probably helpful to ask some questions about our relationship:

  1. How often do I pray for my brother or sister specifically?
  2. How much do I marvel at and rejoice in the evidence of God’s work in their life? How often do I thank the Lord for their place in my life?
  3. Am I more interested in hearing about how the Lord is working in their life, or more interested in telling them how my life has been going?
  4. Am I truly invested in any of their ministries in any substantial way? Do I have the desire to help them be a better steward of their giftedness?

Haven dealt with these issues, we can then think more about what place our close brethren have in our lives. Whenever we have the chance to talk to them, we should recognize that they, in Christ, are a beloved child of our Father, who has been redeemed through the awesome suffering of our Lord, is now indwelt by the Spirit of God, and is destined to perfectly glorify and worship God for eternity. Based on this view of our brother, we can then rightly treat them. Everything we do to them, and say to them, affects Christ’s image in them, or how they manifest Jesus in righteousness. And everything we say has the potential to either renew their mind toward more godly thinking, or hinder them from growing in their knowledge of God. So we have the choice when we speak to them – will we treat them as a wonderful representative and servant of our Master, or will we treat them as our servant? Let us have the mind of Christ, so that we’ll love, honor and serve our brethren in God’s family as Jesus has done for us.