To live the life of a proper believer, our mind is crucial. Our mind is the organ we use to interact with our surroundings and the vehicle that helps us to know the Lord. But when our mind becomes rusty or weak, or is occupied by many negative things, it becomes not only useless, but even damaging. In Romans 8, Paul tells us plainly where to set our mind so that we have a clear goal and a way to be transformed:
For those who are according to the flesh mind the things of the flesh; but those who are according to the spirit, the things of the Spirit. / For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the spirit is life and peace. (Rom. 8:5-6)
What is our mind occupied with? In what direction is it “set”? Whether or not we are transformed depends on what we are “eating” every day — what we are thinking, or minding. That eating — what our mind takes in — directly renders a result in us: either death, or life and peace. And just as our physical body will reflect the way we eat, so, too, our expression will reflect what we are minding. Minding our flesh is subjecting ourselves to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which feeds our independent, dead self. This kind of minding can never renew us. It can never bring us into oneness with our Lord or bear fruit through that mutual abiding. If we are in this condition of minding, then even reading the Bible becomes the same as reading a history book; we are still separate from the subjective experience of spiritual eating.
Instead, our mind has to have a different target and a different nutrition: “the mind set on the spirit is life and peace.” The mind “set on the spirit” is our practical way to be renewed and transformed. When we set this aim for our mind, we will find that it gives us strength to be able to say “no” to the flesh and “yes” to the spirit. Minding the spirit is the secret to growing and taking in the nutrients of life. We are those who love the tree of life and choose the tree of life — not just momentarily, but constantly! And this eating will render a fruit in us: our mind will be renewed (Rom. 12:2). “Minding the spirit” is the way for us to be constituted and to be brought out of the old creation and into the new. And our eating will have its expression: the Lord will be manifested through us!
Today, the issues we face in our practical churching — our lack of growth or our delayed maturity — is not because our spirit is faulty, but because of where our mind is set. Do we choose, do we believe, and do we set our mind on spiritual things? Or do we still make our decisions based on the fleshly, natural things? The fruit of each is clear: life or death. Our mind(ing) matters, and if we set our mind on the spirit, we will be renewed and have the practical way to be saved, justified, have life, and bear fruit as God’s kind.
(Above are notes of fellowship taken from a gathering on 6/2/2024, not reviewed by the speaker.)