A
renewed mind thinks like God on every issue of life and godliness. This
should be the object of all believers. Two things are involved in the
renewing of the mind as seen in Eph. 4:22-24; first, you put off the
thinking of the old man, then you put on the new man created after God
in righteousness and true holiness. We relinquish our own learned way of
thinking for a new way of thinking that is in line with the word of
God. The latter cannot be until the former is in place. Trying to put on
the new man before putting off the old man is impractical.
There
are things that God has said regarding us that we cannot receive as
long as we have a consciousness of sin, and failure governing the way we
think. According to Colossians1:22, we are holy, unblameable and
unreproveable in His sight (this is how God sees us). But if all we see
of ourselves is the sin that we commit, there is no way that we can own
what God says about us (this does not mean that we are careless about
living right). When we think of ourselves as sinners, we cannot walk in
the righteousness that we have been made to be in Christ. One thing can
be certain, if you intend to follow God by your feelings, you will never
feel up to what God says about you, our feelings will always come short
of what God says of us.
For
example, God calls us holy and righteous, not because we have put all
things in our life in perfect order, but because that is what He did for
us in Christ Jesus. So if we look to ourselves, we will never believe
that we are what God says that we are, but as we look to the cross, we cannot but see that what God says about us is true. Only as we tune our minds around what was done on the cross can we experience the life that it makes possible.
What
to do with what God says about us is simply believe it, not because we
feel up to it, but because that is what God says! Not to do so will be
suggesting that we are wiser than God, or that we are more knowledgeable
than Him, and you know we are not. This is what it means to be proud.
So, set your mind to line up with what the scriptures teach regarding
grace.
Toni
