We Have the Mind of Christ

December 14, 2015

We Have the Mind of Christ

Those who are unspiritual do not receive the gifts of God’s Spirit, for they are foolishness to them, and they are unable to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. But we have the mind of Christ.

2 Corinthians 2:14, 16b

I believe we are living in a time of great transition for the followers of Christ. Our era may well be referred to as a second Age of Enlightenment, and I don’t mean that as a compliment. While that period of time, also referred to as the Age of Reason, was beneficial to society, it also was a time when the church began to compromise her doctrines in conformity to cultural standards. This year a politician pointed to this direction when in a speech she said, “And deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.” The religious beliefs the politician had in mind were for God as the creator of life. If you remove a reverence for the sanctity of human life from the Christian church, is there anything left?

This time of transition was also pointed to four years ago by an editor of the New York Times in an article lamenting the religious convictions of politicians. He noted that of the 2012 Republican presidential candidates, one was a Mormon, two were evangelical Christians and one was a conservative Catholic. He wrote that this “raises concerns about their respect for the separation of church and state, not to mention separation of fact and fiction” (Bill Keller in the New York Times Magazine, August 28, 2011). There was a time, not that long ago, when a presidential candidate without religious beliefs wasn’t taken seriously. We have transitioned into a new era where the opposite is now becoming the norm.

For the Christian, our understanding, our beliefs about life, death, sin, and our right relationship with God are based only on the Word of God. Cultural norms cannot comfort us in the dark night of the soul. If the Bible is not authoritative in our life about sin and the ethical ways we are to live, how then can the Bible be the source of comfort when we look into the abyss? All that I is more of Jesus, and he is revealed in the Bible. When I edit out the portions of the Bible that conflict with cultural norms, I am also editing out Jesus. I’ve come to the place in my life where I cannot live without Jesus; therefore I take him with his Word, his whole Word!

Sē’lah

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(Selah is a word that appears in the Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about these things.)

These meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his way of life.  The meditations are published on the BLOG, http://seekingthelifeinchrist.blogspot.com/ and they are also distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may subscribe to this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com. The BLOG is also available on Amazon Kindle, by subscription.

Publications by Alex M. Knight:

·        Seeking the Life in Christ, Meditations on the New Testament and Psalms has been published and is now available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.

·        The second edition of  First Think – Then Pray is available on Amazon Kindle.

·        Meditations on The Story of My Life as told by Jesus Christ has been released as an e-book on Amazon Kindle.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188.