It’s All in Your Mind

Philippians 2:5-11

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death-- even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:5-11 NRSV)

You have heard the expression: “It’s all in your head” or “It’s all in your mind.” Well it turns out that it is true. Not entirely true for all things. For example, a few weeks ago I went to my primary care physician complaining of daily headaches that have been going on for weeks – on the right side of my head. After examining me she did not find any physical cause, so she suggested it was likely due to stress. She told me to take a vacation. In other words, she was saying, “It’s all in your head.” Well it turned out that a couple of weeks later that the culprit was revealed. I had a molar that was cracked apparently, and the nerve was dying, but couldn’t identify it as the source of the pain. Eventually the tooth broke right in two. Then I knew exactly where the pain was coming from! The oral surgeon explained that the nerves on the side of the face transfer pain right up the head and that would account for the pain I had been having. A course of antibiotics, pain medication and a tooth extraction took care of it. Even though the pain really was all in my head, it was not all in my mind. But I am still taking the vacation after Easter!

When it comes to spirituality it is all in your mind. I am not saying that God is all in your head, or that God is just a mental hallucination or anything like that. Atheists joke that God is a Christian’s imaginary Friend. I am not saying that. But I am saying that the spiritual life involves a transformation of the mind. The apostle Paul says in our passage: “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.” The NRSV puts it “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.” You could say he is talking about a mind transplant. Not a brain transplant, but a mind transplant. We are to have the mind of Christ Jesus in us.

Jesus had the mind of God. As Christians we say that Jesus was God incarnate, that he was the Son of God. That he knew the mind of God, as well as a human being could! It doesn’t mean that Jesus was omniscient – that he knew everything. His human brain had limitations. The scriptures clearly tell us that Jesus learned things and he grew in knowledge. Jesus admitted that God knew things he did not know. Concerning the end of the world he said, “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” But still we say that he had the mind of God.

We are to have the mind of Christ. In fact the scriptures say that we already do have the mind of Christ. The apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:16 “For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him?” But we have the mind of Christ.” Therefore it is accurate to say biblically that in some we already have the mind of Christ. When we read the context of that verse it is clear that Paul is talking about the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. The Holy Spirit is God, and the Holy Spirit is in us. That means that God is in us. The Holy Spirit is called elsewhere the Spirit of Christ. Therefore we can say that Christ is in us. And therefore we have the mind of Christ in us. This means that we have this tremendous spiritual resource in hand.

I heard a story from a couple of years ago about the Iowa state lottery. It turns out that somebody bought the winning ticket worth over $16 million dollars but never came forward to claim it. And as far as I know never has, and I suspect the time for claiming the prize has past. Some person unknowingly was a multi-millionaire. He or she had the winning ticket sitting on a dresser or in a desk drawer or a pocket or purse and didn’t know it. Probably they even threw it out thinking it was worthless, not knowing it was a valuable treasure. That is us spiritually speaking in regard to the living Christ within. We have the solution to all of our spiritual and emotional needs and questions and problems – within us and we don’t know it. We have the mind of Christ. The key to unlocking this treasure within is to “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.”  It is a matter of allowing the mind of Christ to inform our minds.

What is this mind of Christ? Our passage tells us that it is a Mind of Humility. Verses 5-6 “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited…” The NIV puts it this way: “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage…” It says in verse 8 that “he humbled himself.” To say and believe that we have the mind of Christ does not mean parading some type of spiritual superiority. That is what the Pharisees did. They thought they were spiritually or religiously superior. Some Christians have been known to feel, believe and act superior to others. That is not the mind of Christ; that is spiritual arrogance and self-righteousness and has nothing to do with Christ. The mind of Christ is a humble mind.

It says in the next verse that Christ “but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.” Jesus was a servant. On Maundy Thursday Jesus went around the table at the Last Supper washing his disciples feet as if he were the lowest of household slaves. Then that scene says, “So when He had washed their feet, taken His garments, and sat down again, He said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? You call Me Teacher and Lord, and you say well, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you. Most assuredly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master; nor is he who is sent greater than he who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.”

Jesus said elsewhere, “If anyone desires to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all.”  He said, “But he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” When we are exhorted to have the mind of Christ, we are being urged to humbly serve. The Mind of Christ is a mind of Humility.

Paul says this means to empty oneself. Verse 7 is the most powerful verse in this entire passage in my opinion. It says that Jesus “though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself….” We are to have this Christ-like mind that is willing to empty itself. It doesn’t mean we are to have empty minds. It is not about being brainwashed or willing to believe any nonsense some preacher or spiritual teacher says. It means that we are to empty ourselves of ourselves in order to be filled with the fullness of God.   We cannot receive anything from God as long as we are full of ourselves.

We are our own worse problem. We would be perfectly fine, content, happy and at peace, if it weren’t for ourselves. As the saying goes, we are out own worst enemies. We are the problem. We think the problems we face in life are out there somewhere in the outside world and we need to fix them. Other people are the problem. Our failing bodies are the problem. Money is the problem. The government is the problem. Big business is the problem. In our relationships it is the other person who is the problem. If only people would be reasonable and agree with me, everything would be alright. No, the problem is in our mind. We are too full of ourselves. We try to fix things and fix people so that the world conforms with the ideas in our minds. If we just emptied ourselves and allowed God to fill us with the mind of Christ, then things would look very different. It is all in our mind. Christ emptied himself. We don’t need more self-esteem; we need more self-emptying. We need the mind of Christ.

The mind of Christ is also a Mind of Obedience. That is a word you don’t hear much these days – obedience. We have been studying Richard Foster’s book “The Celebration of Discipline’ during Lent, exploring twelve of the classic spiritual disciplines. It was fine talking about meditation, prayer, fasting and study of spiritual books, but then we came to the chapter on Submission. That is a dirty word today too, just like the word obedience. People don’t want to submit; they want to assert themselves. The apostle Paul talks a lot about obedience in ways that chaff the modern soul. Why? Because obedience means that we don’t get our way.

Even Jesus did not get to do it his way. He submitted himself to God. Jesus did not want to go to the Cross. He wanted to accomplish God’s plan for the Kingdom some other way. So he prayed and wrestled in prayer with God in Gethsemane, begging the Father for some way to let this cup of suffering pass from him. But in the end he obeyed, saying, “Not my will but thine be done.” The Book of Hebrews goes so far as to say of Jesus, “who, in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear, though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered. And having been perfected, He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him.” (Heb. 5:7-9) The mind of Christ is the mind of obedience. Christianity is not freelance work. It is submission to the will of God.

The Mind of Christ is the Mind of the Cross. Our passage says, “he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death-- even death on a cross.” The cross is the symbol of our Christian faith. It is unlike the symbol of any other religion. Buddhism has the figure of the serene Indian saint sitting in tranquility in Nirvana or the wheel of Dharma. Taoism has the Yin Yang symbol depicting light and dark, good and evil in cosmic harmony. Islam has the heavenly images of the crescent moon and star. Judaism has the menorah – symbol of light in the darkness. What do Christians have? A cross – the symbol of a torturous execution of the founder of our religion!  Yet we say that the Cross is the key to spiritual life and eternal life. We say that Christ’s death broke the hold of sin and death over our human lives when we embrace it by faith. But more than that. Christ invites us to embrace our own cross. The cross is not just something that happened to Jesus. The cross happens to us spiritually. He says that whoever would be his disciple must deny himself, take up his cross and follow him. Christ calls us to die before we die. The mind of Christ is the mind of the cross.

It is the mind that embraces the suffering and death of Christ as God’s way of redeeming us from the forces of death and evil and suffering. It is a mind that can embrace our own suffering and death. This is where the cross has practical everyday power and is not just a theological doctrine about Jesus and how to get to heaven. The cross is a deep spiritual truth that can be lived now. The mind of the Cross doesn’t fight death; it embraces death and find in it new life. The Mind of the Cross doesn’t fight suffering; it embraces suffering and finds in it a transcending of suffering. We find in the cross a dying to ourselves and living to Christ. We find in the cross a dying to the things of earth and a resurrection to the things of heaven. I am not just talking about an afterlife. I am talking about here and now. The Christian gospel proclaims the physical death and the physical resurrection of Christ. We don’t proclaim a gospel that says that Jesus died and then his spirit rose to heaven. We proclaim that Jesus died and his body rose from the grave. There is a huge difference. It means that we have eternal life now in the physical body as well as in the next world.

The death and resurrection of Jesus proclaims victory over suffering and death now. That is the meaning of the resurrection appearances of Christ. It is significant that in the Easter stories that Jesus goes out of his way to point to the scars on his hands and feet and side. This is not a Jesus who is healed of his wounds; this is a Christ who still bears his wounds. This means that with the mind of Christ we still bear our wounds. God doesn’t make the wounds of life magically go away. But he gives us the power of the resurrected Christ to live a new life with the wounds. It takes the emotional suffering out of the physical suffering. The mind of Christ is a mind of peace in the midst of the worst that this earthly life can throw at us.

Lastly the mind of Christ is the mind of Exaltation. Our scripture text ends not with Jesus’ death on the cross, or even his resurrection, but with his exaltation. “Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” If we have the mind of Christ, then we will exalt Christ. Our knees will bow and our tongues confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. And we ourselves, who are in Christ, are exalted with Christ. Paul talks elsewhere about us being seated with Christ in the heavenly places. Paul says in Ephesians, that God “made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”

Have this mind in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus. The Mind of Christ, the Mind of humility, the mind of obedience to God, the mind of the Cross, and the Mind that exalts Christ and is exalted with Christ. I invite you to lose your mind in the Mind of Christ.