Having the Mind of Christ
I’ve oftened listened in my car to the Gravity Leadership podcast. It’s been so helpful to me! The hosts say so many good things, I'm often flummoxed in trying to stop the car to capture their thoughtful insights. So, I was so happily grateful on Tuesday when IVPress sent an email announcing a book by the hosts, pastors Ben Sternke and Matt Tebbe.
They have brought clarity to many of my thoughts and anchored them in Scripture and put cohesion to what often seems disjointed. One place I’ve needed help is considering how my tradition views salvation as transactional, a one-time prayer, an exchange of goods—my repentance in exchange for escape from hell. It’s effectual, I think, but not sufficient for the kind of formation I long for in a lifetime of trinitarian embrace (as I wrote about last week).
**Also, I realize some of our summer Friday posts have been longer and meatier than usual. Consider them both book recommendations and beach reading! And please respond in like with what has been helpful to you!
Read on to see what these friends have helped expand for me. This paragraph anchors the context from which they will move forward in their wonderful new book, Having the Mind of Christ: 8 Axioms to Cultivate a Robust Faith.
Whatever we position at the center of our faith determines the shape our Christian life takes. We contend that our faith is centered on a person (the God revealed in Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit), and the relationships of love--with God and each other--this God enables through the incarnation of Christ and the sending of the Holy Spirit. Beliefs and behaviors, knowledge and morality, cognition and conduct are not at the center of our faith but are rather oriented around and contextualized within the true center: a covenantal relationship of loving communion with the triune God.
More from Matt and Ben:
Many of us inherited a view of salvation that describes it essentially as a transaction between us and God. In this view of salvation, sin is primarily seen as “bad actions” whereby we accrue offense to God and guilt for wrongdoing, and to rectify the situation a penalty must be paid for this offense and wrongdoing (death and separation from God). So Jesus pays the penalty for us, we are forgiven for our guilt, and we get in to heaven when we die. While this is admittedly a caricature, it is the popular story of salvation that many people assume. In this view, salvation is essentially transactional, an exchange of goods between parties.
But in a transactional relationship, there is no need for people to interact with each other in any way after the transaction is over. In a transactional view of salvation, God is only needed to secure the transaction (forgiveness of sins, which usually means escaping punishment), after which we can simply enjoy the benefits of the transaction (a ticket to heaven) without any further need to interact with God at all.
However, remember that sin is not merely offending God by breaking God’s rules. Sin is our estrangement from God. The disruption of communion that sin brings about is not a penalty imposed by God, but rather inherent to the nature of sin itself. When we turn away from God’s presence, we disrupt our communion with God, and this is its own punishment. Our problem is inherently relational; we have disconnected ourselves from Life itself! God’s solution to our sin cannot be a transaction whereby God gives us some thing. Salvation must be the restoration of communion-in-love, the joining of God and humans together in love. If sin is idolatry that leads to isolation from ourselves, creation, each other, and God, then salvation is the undoing of our estrangement and aloneness.
Salvation is the glorious restoration of the original purpose of the world: God’s people living in loving communion with God, each other, and all creation. Communion-in-love with God and each other is salvation. We are (re)united to ourselves, creation, God, and one and other. Forgiveness of sins isn’t merely a “get out of jail free” card to deal with our guilt problem, it is a liberation and healing that enables communion with God. We are set free from bondage to death, decay, and destruction, to be connected in loving communion with God and each other. Every epistle in the New Testament was written to address breakdowns in communion-in-love, calling believers back to living out their salvation by realizing and consenting to this union with each other and God.
The rest of the New Testament repeatedly tells us that loving communion with God and each other is the goal and center of a genuine Christian spirituality. It is described in many ways:
Partaking of God (Hebrews 3:14; 6:4; 2 Peter 1:4)
Being in Christ (1 Corinthians 1:30; 2 Corinthians 5:17; 1 John 2:5)
Christ indwelling us (2 Corinthians 13:5; Galatians 2:20; Colossians 1:24, 27; Ephesians 3:16)
New creation (2 Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 6:15)
Life is Christ (Philippians 1:21; Colossians 3:1; 4; 1 John 5:12)
Oneness with God is oneness with the church (Ephesians 4:1-6, 15-16; John 17; Acts 9:4; 22:7; Galatians 3:27-29)
Eternal life (John 20:30-31; 1 John 5:13)
Vine and branches (John 15:1-18)
God living in us by the Spirit (Romans 8:9)
Australian theologian Ben Myers notes: That phrase “in Christ” just keeps tolling like a bell through all the Pauline letters. It’s not that Christ was an instrument that God used to fix things up. Rather, for St. Paul, Christ is himself our salvation. Christ is humanity made new, he is the place where human nature now resides, he is the new Adam who includes all human beings within himself, he is the oldest brother of many adopted siblings, all of whom now share in his status.
Christ is God’s child by nature, and we are God’s children by grace. We get to share by grace everything that belongs to Christ by nature. We are adopted, but God treats us with all the privileges of natural sons and daughters. We eat at the same table with Christ. We exercise the same freedoms that we see in Christ. We address God with the same words, “Abba, Father.” We know God as Christ knows God—from the inside.
To say that it’s all about love is to affirm that:
Our goal and center is righteousness (covenantal fidelity as communion-in-love with God), not mere rightness (having correct ideas about God).
Our goal and center is connectedness (to one another and God in communion-in-love), not mere correctness (about each other and God).
Our goal and center is mutual indwelling (partaking of the divine nature of the incarnate God in communion-in-love), not mere moral perfection (correct morality).
This is the foundational paradigm shift that undergirds all the others: God is love, life is all about communion-in-love.
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Now, try putting this shift in practice, using Scripture and your “holy imagination.”
In Acts 17:27-28, Paul tells a group of pagans in Athens, “[God] is not far from each one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being.’” Let’s engage our imaginations to explore this truth.
Find a quiet space free from distraction. We are going to set our minds on “things that are above” (Colossians 3:1) for a few moments, to allow the reality of our communion with God and each other to seep a little more deeply into our self-understanding and self-conception. Take a few deep breaths, get in a comfortable seated posture, and close your eyes.
You may want to keep these questions close by. Spend as much time as you like on each one before moving on to the next one:
Imagine your life existing “in” God: As you close your eyes and ponder this reality, what comes to mind? What pictures, Scriptures, events, relationships flash in your mind? Allow everything that comes to mind and be patiently curious about it all in the presence of Christ. Talk to God openly about what you perceive.
Imagine the people you’re closest to (friends, family, and so on). Hold them in your mind and allow your perception of them to reflect the truth that you are one with them as Jesus and the Father are one. Be curious about this: what does that mean? How does that change the way you see them? What, if anything, do you perceive differently about your feelings or your body as you contemplate this reality?
Consider your body as a home for the Holy Spirit: put one hand on your belly, one hand on your chest, and breathe deeply. Each breath is a witness to God-in-you. As you breathe, imagine God in, God out. Like a child who lies on their back and gazes at the night sky, breathe in wonder and awe at this reality that God chooses to live in your very body. Try thanking your lungs for nourishing and sustaining you. Imagine the very air itself—as it comes in and out—crackling with God’s energy and life. Where are you aware of God’s presence on your body? Where in your body do you want to welcome God into? Maybe you have pain or discomfort or numb- ness or tingling: consent to the Spirit filling every part of your being as you breathe. Imagine your breath not just filling your lungs with God’s Spirit but flooding even the places of pain or discomfort in your body with God’s communion-in-love presence.
Repeat this experiment as often as you like.
JUDY