Profound mind.

Man can hardly know his own mind. But who can fathom the depths—the depths of divine love, mercy, and compassion—of “this mind”?

Let this mind be in you!

The mind of Christ Jesus—he who was in the form of God.

God has no form. He is Spirit. God is not material, so he is not limited by form or extent. He is infinite and infinitely exalted as the God who inhabits eternity. Form refers to that which is essential and intrinsic to a thing. So the form of God is the being or essence of God. Jesus Christ possessed the being and essence of God. He is God. He is of the same essence with the Father: God of God; Light of Light, true God of true God; begotten, not made. Jesus Christ is the Word who was with God and who was God. To be in the form of God is to possess all the rights and prerogatives of God. The honor of God is his. The glory of God is his. The riches and fullness of God are his. The self-sufficiency of God is his, so that he has need of none and is perfectly blessed as God. The blessedness of fellowship in the divine being is his. The bliss of triune life with the Father and the Spirit is his.

Jesus Christ is God.

The bedrock of the Christian faith.

All who deny it are antichrist.

Jesus Christ—the one who was conceived in Mary’s womb by the Holy Ghost; who was carried by Mary all around Nazareth for nine months; who was transported to Bethlehem by her; who was born in the same bloody way as other men are born, was swaddled by her and nursed by her; who was raised in the home of Joseph and Mary, though a prodigy, so that at age twelve Jesus debated the theologians; who walked and talked on the earth; who preached and taught the kingdom of heaven; who was captured, tried, and crucified by men—he is God. Jesus Christ is the brightness of God’s glory and the express image of his person. He made all things in the beginning, and he upholds and controls all things by the word of his power. He is worshiped by angels and has need of nothing.

Jesus Christ thought. 

His mind.

He thought it not robbery to be equal with God. Jesus Christ is God. He is of the same essence with the Father. He is equal with God. He did not think his Godhead a thing to be exploited for his own advantage. He is due all honor, praise, and glory. He possesses all majesty. He is infinite and infinitely exalted in eternity. He did not think this to be exploited for his own advantage. 

Profound.

Mysterious.

The mind of Christ.

But he made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men. God became a man, a man who had the form of a servant. Jesus Christ did not cease being God. He could not un-God himself or give up his divine virtues. But his Godhead, his glory, his bliss, his blessedness, and his self-sufficiency did not stop him from becoming a man. He did not cease being God, but he added another nature to his divine person, the nature of man, and he became like one of us in all things, sin excepted. He did that by the power of the Godhead. He did not use the power of the Godhead for his own advantage, but he used the power of the Godhead to take on him the form of a servant. He did not think that becoming a man was beneath his dignity as the Lord of glory!

That act of becoming a man by the power of the Godhead meant that in that form of a man the Son of God lost everything. When the second person of the holy Trinity became a man—when he was conceived and was brought forth, when he added to himself the human nature—he lost all, for he took the form of a servant. He did not become a king, a senator, or a master of men, but he became a servant. The incarnation was the loss of riches. As owner and proprietor of all, he lost all and became poor. The incarnation was the loss of bliss and blessedness, the loss of dignity and honor. As one to whom all honor and glory is due, he made himself of no reputation; he was despised and rejected, captured, and beaten. As the lawgiver he was made under the law and had to obey. As the self-sufficient one who made and upholds all things, he had to be cared for by others. As the one who knows all, he had to learn, even obedience by the things that he suffered. 

Becoming a man did not yet exhaust his loss. He lost his life; but more than that, when he was forsaken on the cross, he lost the favor of God, which was dearer to him than life.

Oh, the mind of Christ! If there was an act that exhausted the divine power, it was the incarnation. But if there was an act that exhausted the divine mercy and grace, it was the incarnation because he lost everything in the incarnation. Like some great man who gives up all for a beggar exhausts human compassion. The depths of the compassion in Christ when he took on him the form of a servant became evident because he lost all. Look how much he loved his people! Look how he was not interested only in what was his by right, so that he exerted his power and used his power to receive what was his; but that he gave it up and exerted his power, all the power of the Godhead bodily, in order that as God he might pay God what God was owed in order to redeem his people.

Apart from this mind, then, there is no salvation. Because he did not think his Godhead a thing to be exploited for his own advantage, he was crucified. In that form, the form of a man and the form of a servant, he was found. And being found he humbled himself to death, even the death of the cross. Being found he was crucified.

Found by whom?

Man discovered him in that form, man who by nature hates God and his neighbor. In that form of a servant, men found one whom they could push around, and he did not strike back; they found one whom they could revile, and he reviled not again. He hid his divine majesty from men, with the result that they found him with no form or comeliness that they should desire him. Man found God in the form in which man could kill God and reveal the perversity of man’s heart and his hatred for God. Man found God in a form in which man could do something to God. Man. Herod tried to kill Jesus; Pontius Pilate, Herod, the leaders of the people, and the Jews and Gentiles conspired against God to cast his bands from them. In the form of man, Jesus came. The result was that man rejected him. Man betrayed him, bound him with ropes, tried him, lied against him, put him under oath, mocked and ridiculed him, spit upon him, and nailed him to the cross, damning him. And he answered not a word, although at any moment he could have called legions of angels.

And Satan found him in that state. Satan found God as a man. Like a man discovers an emaciated and helpless old lion, which he can poke and prod with no response, so Satan found him. And Satan expressed what he thinks of God. Satan with his devils pressed upon Jesus Christ and bruised his heel. Satan and all the hosts of hell came and opposed Jesus, tempted him, and stood in the counsels of the ungodly to put him to death.

God also found Christ as a man. From all eternity he determined that Christ would come and that he would be crucified. From all eternity he chose Jesus Christ to be the head of his people and united his people to Christ by divine election. Jesus Christ is the lamb slain from before the foundation of the world. He came in this form so that God would find him in the form of a servant, that God would curse him and pour out his wrath upon him and forsake him. Christ’s deepest humiliation took place in the blackness of the cross, where the eternal weight of God’s wrath pressed on Christ, and God forsook him and made him a curse. God found Christ in that form, the likeness of men, and on that human nature poured out his wrath upon Christ, so that he suffered the torments of hell itself upon the cross.

God found in him, in the Son of God made flesh, the perfect substitute for the lives of his people. God said to Christ, “You must die the bitter and the shameful death of the cross. My justice demands it. My love for my people demands it.” Because the Son of God came in the likeness of flesh, he was the perfect substitute. In him there was the perfectly righteous man, who was also the Son of God, who was able to suffer for man according to his humanity, and according to his Godhead to sustain his humanity under the weight of God’s wrath.

Willingly, deliberately, purposefully, Christ humbled himself. He became obedient unto death. The perfect obedience of Jesus Christ to God. The saving obedience of Jesus Christ to God.

Look what power it took to humble the mind of man and to make the mind of man obedient unto God: it took the power of the Son of God in the flesh. The power of the Son of God in him was to make him as a man perfectly obedient unto God and to say, “Thy will and not mine be done,” and in that obedience to suffer complete loss.

By that the Son of God saved us. He willingly endured that loss, the opposition of sinful men, the wicked assaults of Satan, and the wrath of the living God; he humbled himself and was obedient to the death of the cross to save his people. In that he looked not on his own things but on the things of others, the things of his chosen, elect people. He looked at their miserable and helpless condition. He looked on the offended honor, glory, and majesty of God and the demand of God against them that God receive his due. Christ looked to those things, and he thought nothing of his own things. He willingly gave up all things and exerted all his power for their things. There at the cross, because he was cursed and lost all, his people were delivered from the cross and made heirs of all.

Let this mind be in you! Profound mind. The mind of Christ. Profound change. This mind in us? Yes, he gives this mind to us. His own mind. He makes us Christ-minded. Being joined with us, Christ makes his abode in us and imparts his own mind to us. By the power of his grace, our sinful, selfish, vainglorious minds are crucified with him, and we receive from him the mind of Christ—a new mind, a mind that likewise minds not the things of self but looks on the things of others.

How antithetical is Christ’s mind from the mind of man, a mind of strife and vainglory! Strife is politics. With this mind a man plays politics in the church of God and does things politically in the church of God, so that electioneering, influence peddling, power politics, lobbying, bribery, threats, intimidations, ambition, intrigue, nose-counting, and all manner of political calculations enter into all that he does in the church, in his family, in the school, and in his whole life.

Vainglory expresses the motivation for such politicking in the church of Christ. It is an unbelievable pride born of Satan’s. Satan in pride thought to overthrow the rule of God in heaven and in the whole universe by his politicking in heaven, by which he raised schism in heaven itself and turned the very angels against God. So the man who does things by strife or vainglory is motivated not by the mind of Christ but by the work of Satan.

To be sure, those who are motivated in the church by strife and vainglory do things. They are very busy in the church. They are busy in secret meetings, private conversations, and deal making. They are busy backbiting, whispering, slandering, destroying, lying, hating, and tearing down. Paul mentions earlier in the epistle that there were those who preached Christ of envy and strife and contention, wishing to add affliction to the apostle’s bonds, so that they did the most noble thing, which is to preach Christ, yet they were motivated by wickedness. So that, then, though a man preach Christ from strife, he does nothing commendable. None of what he does proceeds from the mind of Christ, though his actions appear to glitter and gleam and he uses good words and fair speeches. All of it proceeds from the mind of the natural man, who is carnal, sensual, and devilish and who always looks on the things of self rather than on the things of others. It is all self-motivated and self-serving.

And it is easy to tell, for these preachers never suffer loss. Never do they suffer loss of name, reputation, honor, place, or dignity.

Those are the two different motivations for doing things, and they are as mutually exclusive as Christ and Belial. They do not mix. If a man is not doing things because the mind of Christ is in him, then he is doing things out of strife or vainglory; and if he is doing things out of strife or vainglory, then you can be sure that he does not have the mind of Christ in him, so that he lives out of it and his whole life proceeds from it.

The world that we live in aggressively promotes a mind of self-glory and self-fulfillment and self-image. That is because natural men are children of Adam. Very different from Christ’s mind was the mind of Adam. Look what he did to his wife, his posterity, his kingdom, his garden, his home, his whole life, and the creation. He grasped at the throne of God. For the taste of one piece of fruit, he was willing to ruin himself, his wife, his children, and all of his future, indeed to bring the whole creation into the bondage of sin and death. He looked only on his own pleasure and his own desires and his own wants. The mind of the natural man is exceedingly selfish and self-seeking and self-glorifying. In the mind of the natural man, everything is done out of strife and vainglory, and he esteems no one better than himself, and he demands that all things serve him.

Is this not the mind of man, the mind that also exists in us and which by faith we hate and from which we are called to turn? As a father, he insists that everything in the home must serve him. As a mother in the home, if she stays at home at all, everything must serve her, and she will not empty herself. As children in the home, everything must be for them and the way they want. In our lives this selfish and foolish mind has time for no one and nothing that does not serve our particular interests. It is entirely wrapped up in self and is annoyed by the needs and demands of others. Husbands brutalize their wives, insult, demean, and demand that all serve and conform to them, using all their power to manipulate and destroy their nearest neighbors. Young married couples will not have children and do not desire children because children are expensive and exhausting and take away from what the couples want to do. Young women do not even desire to get married and to have a family because that would take away from their lifestyles, from their pursuits, and from their pleasures. To have children would get in the way of their looks, their happiness, or their careers. Young men do not desire to find wives with whom they can start a family because that would take away from their pursuit of pleasures.

In the church, ministers, elders, and deacons suppose that the church exists for them and not they for the church. Men will not give up their pleasures, their comforts, or their ease for the church, or as hirelings they serve in the church only for money, power, or prestige, and they treat God’s heritage as their private fiefdom!

Crucify that mind that was crucified with Christ. A man must loathe and humble himself before God. We have in us, and retain in us until our dying day, a mind that is of the earth, of Satan, and of the world, that is from our first father; and that mind will be subject to no one, not even to God. And that mind must be crucified.

Let this mind be in you: the mind of Christ. Let husbands empty themselves for their wives and take the form of a servant and love their wives. Let wives empty themselves for their husbands and be subject to them. Let fathers and mothers empty themselves for the sake of their children. Yes, not only having children but also teaching them this mind both by word and deed. Let young people have this mind too. To make ourselves servants to those who are least and to deny ourselves. Singleness is not for selfishness. In that state singles may not look on the things of themselves but on the things of others, especially the church of Christ.

Let elders, ministers, and deacons have the mind of Christ. The apostle mentions himself and Epaphroditus as officebearers. This mind must be evident especially in the officebearer as a servant of Jesus Christ for the church. Not lords over God’s heritage! Submitting themselves in everything they do to the word of Christ with the mind of Christ. So also the man who has the mind of Christ—not only the officebearer but every man who has the mind of Christ—must be church-minded. Christ was church-minded. The one who visits the sick, cares for the poor, fellowships with the saints, prays for the people of God: the mind of Christ! Let each member of the church, where it is possible and when it is necessary, empty himself for the benefit, advantage, and salvation of the other members.