The Mind of Christ

This is a sort of sequel to my previous post "Christ in Me" further discussing how we can adopt the mind and image of Jesus Christ.

“Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.” ~Philippians 2:5

By memorizing His words and the things that He said we can adopt the mind of Christ.  Luke 6:45 says, “...For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.”  The words of Christ reflect the thoughts of Christ.  So by hiding His words in our heart, we are hiding His thoughts in our mind.  We are copying Him, essentially.  As we do this more and more, we will find that we are beginning to think like Christ without even trying.

Of course, this change will not be sudden, and it will not cover every area of our lives, but slowly, we will notice a gradual change from our thoughts, to His thoughts.

Memorization helps us to conform to Christ.  It is our goal, as laid out in this verse, to imitate Christ.  We must have His mind in us, as Philippians 2:5 says.  This means memorizing the thing He used to express what He thought, namely, the Bible.  If Jesus’ mind dwells in us, then we think as He thinks.  We respond to stressful situations as Jesus would have responded.  The “What Would Jesus Do” idea becomes as natural as breathing, not merely a good idea.

Christ commands us to learn from Him, “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:29).  We can learn from Him, by adopting His standards as our own and His words as our words.

Beyond memorization, this verse also encourages us to love what He loved, to hate what He hated, to desire what He desired, to be moved by what He was moved by, to be motivated as He was motivated; in simple words, to be like Christ.  Let us imitate our Savior in every way possible.  How can we know what He was like?  By reading God’s Word.  Nevertheless, beyond simply reading His Word, we must digest it into the very core of our being.  Memorization takes God’s Word to a whole new level.  We can study it and meditate on it with a new depth of understanding that can only be gained through memorization.

Let us adopt the mind of Christ in our own lives.