The mind is a powerful thing. Our daily lives are a result of the thoughts we think and the perceptions that they form. Consciousness and awareness determine the directions we take in our imagination, including dreams, visions, daydreams, and fantasies. To say the mind is part of our life is a big understatement. The mind we live in daily is the answer to why we succeed or fail in living for God. We must have the right mind if we are to walk as the children of God. To get the right mind, we must look to Jesus, the only one who can give us the mind we need to live in the kingdom of God.
Jesus Christ was God manifest in the flesh, the Son of God born of the Spirit into a world that did not honestly know God. He was the fullness of God in bodily form and was sent down from heaven to become the greatest gift of God we have ever received on earth. He was born to be the mediator that we needed to restore the communication gap between God and us that was lost in the garden when Adam sinned against Him. (Genesis 3) How Jesus lived His life on earth gave all who lived, past, present, and future, the answer we needed to return to God and live in eternal life free of sin and death.
The life of Jesus is an amazing thing to read about in the scriptures. He walked with such purpose, such power. His teachings astounded the people, and His miracles caused the multitudes to follow and press upon Him for their needs. His truth caused the religious leaders (Pharisees) to hate Him and even provoked them to kill Him eventually, and yet He never swayed from the truth that He walked in. He was tempted in all things as you and I, yet He was without sin.
How was all of that possible for Jesus? It was possible because of the mind that He lived and walked in. His mind was like no other before or after Him. The mind He walked in when on earth made Him the anointed image of God.
Jesus had the mind of Christ.
Jesus was not led around by what He saw and heard on the earth. His thoughts were not of the earth; therefore, He was not seduced to go outside His Father’s will to follow the world’s teachings. His thoughts were heavenly because His mind stayed in the things His Father told Him. The prophet Isaiah said of Jesus that He would not judge after the sight of His eyes, nor reprove after the hearing of His ears, but that He will judge with righteousness. Righteous judgment can only come from God. (Isaiah 11:1-5).
Jesus said I am in my Father, and my Father is in me. How awesome is that? He was revealing to us the oneness that He had with His Father. (John 17:21-23) He walked in the same thoughts as His Father, and He did nothing without that mind. He thought about everything in unity with His Father. They had the same mind and did the same work. You could not separate them because they were one Spirit.
Even though Jesus was living on the earth, He was without sin because He lived by the same Spirit as His Father, and He never departed from it. He also prayed that we would be joined with Him and His Father in the same mind.
The glory which you gave me, I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one.
The apostle John taught us how to live and think as one with God.
John 3:31–36 (ESV)
He who comes from above is above all. He who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks in an earthly way. He who comes from heaven is above all. He bears witness to what he has seen and heard, yet no one receives His testimony. Whoever receives His testimony sets his seal to this, that God is true. For He whom God has sent utters the words of God, for He gives the Spirit without measure. The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.
Isaiah also said heaven is above the earth, like God’s mind is above man’s. (Isaiah 55:6-8) Yes, the mind of God is above the mind of man. If you learn to live in the same mind as Jesus, you will always be united with the Father and the Son. A three-fold cord is not easily broken. (Ecclesiastes 4:12)
Just as it is in the parables of the earth, it is the same in the way we think. Heavenly thinking is higher than earthly thinking, and Jesus knew how to think higher.
The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy which means that Jesus testified of the things He saw in heaven and, by the Spirit, taught us how to become like Him. He was joining us to the same mind as Him.
We must pay close attention to the testimony of Jesus and where it comes from. Jesus is a witness of what He sees and hears from above. Jesus got His wisdom and understanding from the thoughts of God and then taught after its likeness. He did not get it from studying a book or listening to earthly conversations. I appreciate a good testimony of what God has done to meet our needs in this life, many you may remember, and some even forget as time passes. But a testimony that speaks of a visitation from God is an eyewitness of heavenly things. That’s a testimony that you will remember forever.
A heavenly experience is a testimony of eternal life. That’s the mind of Christ.
Jesus did many great works on the earth, and it would be easy for us to examine those things and rejoice that a great man walked among us and did powerful things. We excel to be like Him and do the same things He did. But in all that, we must not lose the real thing that Jesus did in the message that He spoke. Every word and miracle had a greater understanding than what we see with our eyes and hear with our ears. They revealed how to think like our Father. They tell us how to think as heaven thinks.
Jesus was revealing the secrets of heaven. These secrets are about His Father’s love for us. They are secrets about our existence before our life on earth and what will restore us back to God. They are secrets that reveal the revelation of Jesus Christ and who we are in that revelation.
Jesus indeed had many secrets, and for all who are willing and obedient, God will give access to this same mind so that they can learn every one of them. The only true way to be one with Jesus is to have the same mind that He had.