“The Case for Christ - The Mind of the Holy Spirit”

Turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians, chapter 2. 

As we saw last week, Paul, in instructing the Corinthians about the evils and disasters of the church, laid down the answers to many of the transitory questions of life that have become guideposts, or measuring sticks, for the Christian walking in the Light of the Life of Christ.

This was the matter before the Corinthian church and is the point of concentration we will start looking at this evening: the divine mind as it has been shown to us in the ‘mind’ of God and the Holy Spirit, and then, next week, Lord willing, also in the ‘mind’ of Christ. This is all in relationship to the ‘mind’ of the new nature belonging to the believer - of that Light of Life in Christ.

The question before us is, then, ‘what is the divine mind that the Corinthians and we should be alert to or be conscious of?’

In the Corinthian verse, as well as in Phil 2:5, the word ‘mind’ signifies ‘to think, to be minded in a certain way, to think of, to be mindful of’. 

To break it down to simple terms, it is the mind created and fostered in the believer by the Holy Spirit that leads to an ‘understanding of’ that which guides and influences to right action.   

We start with a very brief look at the ‘mind’ of God.

What is the mind of God that we are to be mindful of?

In the Old Testament, God’s mind is summarized in Micah 6:8. There the prophet said: ‘He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good:...’ (or ‘acceptable’) - in other words, what is righteous.

And what is it that is ‘good’ in the mind of God? What is it that the Lord sought of them that would lead to this ‘good’?

The writer answered: ‘ ...to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.’

‘To do justly - to love mercy’ - to freely and willingly show kindness to others, of doing righteousness and of exercising love towards them - to live in a conscious fellowship with God that exercises a spirit of humility before Him is the ‘good’. That was the proper heart attitude He sought - that was God’s mind for His people.

When Christ came, this ‘mind of God’ was not abrogated for Christians since God set up the new way of life in Christ and the Corinthians had that as their gauge for living now.

But how was this to be brought about in the Corinthian Christian and in we Christians today?

To answer this, let us go over to Romans 8:26-27. There, Paul gave a view of the ‘mind of Christ’ in the form of the Holy Spirit’s deep work in the heart.

Usually this verse is applied to the intercession of the saints for others, a fact that cannot be disputed.

And - if we apply this verse to the ‘mind of the Spirit’, we will see it merged with, but, yet, unlike, the usual way it is interpreted. 

But before we go on - let me say this as an aside about interpreting Scripture: we humans - in studying the written Word, of course, follow the normal process of hermaneutics,  that process of critical explanation and interpretation of what the Bible says - and we come to various conclusions. That is right and normal to do.

But - human conclusions are just that - human conclusions!

Remember - it is only the Lord Who knows what His written Word says and means and - when He interprets it to our hearts, His interpretation is always right.

It always comes to the same end, and that same end is that Christ is all and in all. All of men’s attempts to interpret God’s written Word for God pales in the light of the spirit of glory that rests upon His own interpretation of His own Word. His interpretation always begins and ends with Jesus Christ.

It was that way with Paul. Paul, himself, was deeply intellectual and a masterful orator. He was very familiar with the philosophies of the day. He also knew the Jewish history of his ancestors and all of the background that it included. He knew what was required of the Jewish religion of the day.

But, as brilliant as Paul was, he came to the place where the only thing he could say was, in 1 Corinthians 2:2: ‘For I am determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ and Him crucified.’!   

I repeat - God’s interpretation of His own Word always begins and ends with Jesus Christ - if we miss that, we miss it all!

So - to say that we are above and beyond the ministry of Christ and Him crucified is the height of arrogance. I hope we are able to see that clearly.      

Let us go on now and see how the mind of God applies in Micah 6:8 in relationship to the mind of the Holy Spirit as it appears in Romans 8:26-27.

In Romans, since righteousness is the key to man’s relationship to God, Paul spelled out the ‘riddle’ of living according to God’s mind of Micah 6:8 and the struggles connected with it.

In the beginning of the Romans letter, he spoke about the righteousness of God in Christ and contrasted that to the righteousness of man.

And the conclusion was that man cannot attain to God’s standard of righteousness. Man has a mind set so contrary, it shifts into the high gear of rebellion and gets stuck there.

His way of thinking is contrary to the mind and direction or outlook of the Holy Spirit. 

And Paul carried the Romans on to the point where he showed them how much disharmony there actually is  between what God has given the believer and what the believer endures in his body of flesh. 

That causes something to take place within the Christian where the Christian himself does not know what is right and proper to pray for.

Paul spoke of that ‘something’ as a low cry of distress, a groaning that is happening inside as the Christian waits for the redemption of his body.

And what is that groaning all about?

That groaning is the Spirit of holiness supporting the Christian as a deep searching of the heart is taking place.

He sees the burden of the Christian’s ‘infirmity’, that infirmity being the bondage of corruption and decay, the slavery to death that would seek to keep him shackled. (See verses 19-22 in that same chapter, if you like, on your own.) 

That is a weakness we are all under but the mind of the Holy Spirit sees far beyond that to the victory Christ has already wrought for the Christian so He helps the Christian  in his weakness’, or, yet another translation, Who helps ‘us weak ones’.

Let me just read to you verse 26 of that eighth chapter of Romans: ‘Likewise, the Spirit also helps our infirmities for we know not what we should pray for as we ought - but the Spirit Himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.’ (‘with unutterable groanings’)
  
The Christian has no remedy to propose for himself, to help himself - he has nothing to express to God of what he thinks the best thing would be to alleviate the distress of his heart.

This is when the ‘mind of the Spirit’ takes over. In this instance, it is not the Christian’s mind but it is the Holy Spirit’s mind Who is interceding with groanings, pleading for God’s own people in God’s own way.

The Scripture helps us with defining divine ‘groanings’ by the example of Jesus, Who groaned in His spirit, at the tomb of Lazarus in John 11:33.

When Jesus ‘groaned’ there, what did it signify? If we look at verses 9-11 and 25-26, we are given an insight of it. 

He ‘groaned’ at the sight of what sin in this world had done - it led to death and the grip death held on the human condition - sin and death, spiritual death, a cutting off from God.

His groaning expressed a deep, deep feeling - a feeling of sorrow, yet also a feeling of indignation, a feeling of what sin brought into the world.

He was feeling it acutely: He was distressed to the most extreme degree, agitated, righteously detesting the evil that sin created.

Everything that was contrary to His holy nature moved Him to confront and to resist the evil and corruption represented at this scene of death. His holy nature was recoiling from the very presence of the Evil One that death and its finality represents. 

And, of course, those who heard Him groan surmised the reasons for His groanings with their earthly assumptions. And we cannot blame them for that for how could they know the depth of His distress - there was no way they could grasp it! His groanings were far deeper than they could envision.

And - neither can we know the depth of what the Holy Spirit is uttering in His groanings when He helps ‘us weak ones’.  

We have a great deal of trouble with arrogant surmisings and prideful assumptions - do we not? We have the tendency to think that we have the answer to our problem. Since we are such clever and learned people, we think we know so much - we think we know it all so well already!  

But - let me shock you by saying that what the Holy Spirit is praying for goes far beyond ourselves. In fact, He is doing what He is doing because God is searching the very depth of the heart of the Christian with a very definite purpose in mind. 

Probably, if the truth were really known about us, we are heady and high-minded, full of divisions and controversies.

But - I believe that the Christian ought to - slowly but surely - come to the place in his Christian growth in which he lives with that certain pause, that ‘red flag’ check, as I call it upon his life.

It is a check on our impulsiveness, a check on our own way of ‘seeing’ spiritual things and of reasoning about them, a check on our rashness, a check on our acting under agitation and of bulldozing our way through things. 

It is a check on everything about us that includes how we behave and even look. If we are responding to the Holy Spirit, there should be changes being made in our conduct, changes in our appearance and behavior toward modesty, changes in our habits: those should all be spontaneously being made without anyone else saying anything about it.

That check that reaches right down into the center of our lives is what the Holy Spirit sets up. 

You see, it is that work that takes us back to the work of the cross of Christ making its effect upon us. 

And, so the searching of the Holy Spirit calls for His mind to reach into the very depth of the heart.

And why does He do that? 

Jesus had told His disciples that the Holy Spirit was coming - and when He came, He would testify of Jesus - did He not?

So we know that the mind of the Holy Spirit seeks to glorify Christ upon the earth. And we can be sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Holy Spirit is plunging right into the depth of the divine intent to glorify Christ.

Is that not exactly what Jesus intended on doing when He healed Lazarus? 

In John 11:4, Jesus said there: ‘...this was for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby.’

So - let me ask once again - what is the mind of the Spirit in this instance of Romans 8:27? What is He doing for ‘us weak ones’?

By the mind and power of the Holy Spirit, the Christian is being raised up above himself into the glory of the Son of  God.

He is leading the Christian. And where does He lead them? It is ‘...in the paths of righteousness for His Name’s sake’. (Ps 23:3)

Let me say it again in this way: the Holy Spirit is interceding on behalf of ‘us weak ones’ for the glory of Jesus Christ, for the glory of the actual righteousness of Christ to break forth from this weak vessel into the ‘hope of glory’.

The establishment of His righteousness in the believer would bear witness of His all-sufficiency for the believer. 

We are being blessed with greater knowledge of Christ, with the spiritual intelligence to understand the true nature of the mind of Christ.

This is what the Corinthians and all Christians could count on.

And - where is this intercession taking place?

The intercession does not take place in heaven, although it is in vital contact with heaven. No - it takes place in the Christian’s heart. 

And - it is not of the Christian’s own doing - the Christian cannot imitate it - the Christian cannot dispute it - the Christian cannot defy it - it is just there - produced by the mind of the Spirit that ‘the Son of God might be glorified thereby.’

Remember - the angel sent by God told Mary that that which was in her soon to be born was ‘that holy Thing’.

Nothing about Him and His holiness has diminished down through the ages - absolutely nothing. We are prone to forget how ‘holy’ this ‘Thing” is that the Holy Spirit is guarding in His unutterable groanings of intercession.  

Thus the Corinthians were shown, not only Christ’s actual righteousness to be established in them by the power of the Holy Spirit, but that Christ is in the place of safekeeping in the mind of the Holy Spirit Who stands guard in the Christian’s heart for the glory of Christ.

Now - I ask you - with support like that - of the mind of the mighty Holy Spirit - should the Christian not become the conqueror of sin - in fact, even more than conquerors, as Paul said in v 37 of Romans 8? 

Should the Christian not be pleasing the Lord in a way that gloriously honors Him?

I close with this one thought: This is the message of Christianity that makes up the Church: the Holy Spirit striving to convince us with His groanings of intercession on behalf of ‘us weak ones’ for the breaking forth of the righteousness of Christ upon the earth. Do we listen to the Spirit Who is striving to convince us of this?

Or are we - in an obstinate unbelief, or in an aloof indifference - too thick to be pierced? Let us be careful that we do not resist the Spirit of God. 

Think about it, pray about it, and let the Holy Spirit minister it to our hearts.
 
Next week, Lord willing, we will look at the ‘mind of Christ’. I hope you will keep that in prayer with me. 

May the Lord bless you richly this week.

Amen. Let us pray.