The mind of Christ - Chambers, Oswald

Philippians 2:5–8

Have this mind in you, which was also in christ jesus . . . (rv)

We are apt to forget that the mind of christ is super natural, his mind is not a human mind at all. Never run away with the idea that because you have the spirit of christ, therefore you have his mind. God gives us the spirit of jesus, but he does not give us his mind; we have to construct the mind of christ, and it can only be done as we work out in the habits of a holy life the things that were familiar in the life of our lord. We cannot form the mind of christ once for always; we have to form it always; that is, all the time and in everything. Acquire your soul, i. E. , the new way of looking at things, with patience (see luke 21:19), and learn never to say fail! When god re-creates us in christ jesus he does not patch us up; he makes us a new creation (rv mg). Every power of our being is no longer to be used at the dictates of our right to ourselves, but to be subordinated to the spirit of god in us who will enable us to form the mind of christ. The type of mind paul urges us to form is prescribed clearly the mind of true humility; the mind which was also in christ jesus when he was on this earth, utterly self-effaced and self-emptied; not the mind of christ when he was in glory. Humility is the exhibition of the spirit of jesus christ, and is the touchstone of saintliness.

His deity and our dependence

who, being [originally] in the form of god, counted it not a thing to be grasped [mg] to be on an equality with god . . . (rv)

Paul precludes the idea that jesus thought nothing of himself: our lord thought truly of himself. There was no assertion in any shape or form, and no presumption. It was along this line that satan tempted him remember who you are: you are the son of god; then assert the prerogative of sonship command that these stones become bread; do something supernaturalcast yourself down from hence. . . . It was a temptation to the fulfilment of the incarnation by a short cut. Each time the temptation came, our lord blunted it: i did not come here to assert myself; i came for gods will to be done through me in his own way (see john 6:38). Paul connects the two thing son an equality with god: not a thing to be grasped. Our lord never once asserted his dignity, he never presumed on it. When we are sanctified, the same temptation comes to us you are a child of god, saved and sanctified, presume on it, think it something to be grasped. As long as our thought is fixed on our experience instead of on the god who gave us the experience, the habit of making nothing of ourselves is an impossibility. If we think only along the line of our experience we become censorious, not humble. Sanctification is the gateway to a sanctified life, not to boasting about an experience. The habit of forming the mind of christ will always make us obey our lord and master as he obeyed his father, and there are whole domains of natural life to be brought under the control of this habit. It is not sinful to have a body and a natural life; if it were, it would be untrue to say that jesus christ was sinless, because he had a body and was placed in a natural life; but he continually sacrificed his natural life to the word and the will of his father and made it a spiritual life, and we have to form the same habit. It is the discipline of a lifetime; we cannot do it all at once. We are absolutely dependent, and yet, strange to say, the last thing we learn spiritually is to make nothing of ourselves. But emptied himself . . . (rv ) jesus christ effaced the god head in himself so effectually that men without the spirit of god despised him. No one without the spirit of god, or apart from a sudden revelation from god, ever saw the true self of jesus while he was on earth. He was as a root out of a dry ground, thoroughly disadvan- taged in the eyes of everyone not convicted of sin. The reference in 2 corinthians 8:9 is not to a wealthy man becoming poor, but to a wealthy god becoming poor for men. Our lord is the time-representation of a self-disglorified god. The purpose of the incar- nation was not to reveal the beauty and nobility of human nature, but in order to remove sin from human nature. To those who seek after wisdom the preaching of christ crucified is foolishness; but when a man knows that his life is twisted, that the mainspring is wrong, he is in the state of heart and mind to under- stand why it was necessary for god to become incar- nate. The doctrine of the self-limitation of jesus is clear to our hearts first, not to our heads. We cannot form the mind of christ unless we have his spirit, nor can we understand our lords teaching apart from his spirit. We cannot see through it; but when once we receive his spirit we know implicitly what he

Means. Things which to the intellect may be hopelessly bewildering are lustrously clear to the heart of the humble saint (see matthew 11:25).

Taking the form of a servant . . . (rv )

Our lord took upon him habitually the part of a slave: i am among you as he that serveth; consequently he could be put upon to any extent, unless his father prevented it (cf. John 19:11); or his fathers honour was at stake (cf. Mark 11:1519). It was our lords right to be in the form of god, but he renounced that right and took the form of a bondservant (rv mg), not the form of a noble man, but of a slave. Our lord crowned the words that the powers of this world detestservant, obedience, humility, service.

Being made in the likeness of men . . . (rv )

That is, in the likeness of sinful flesh (romans 8:3). The assimilation was as complete as our lords sinlessness would permit, and gave him so truly human a life that by his fulfilling all righteousness in the face of temptation, he condemned sin in the flesh.

The nature was sinless in him because he was sinless in it, not vice versa. . . . Jesus christ does not stand for an originally holy human nature, but a sanctified or made-holy human nature.

Du bose

The first Adam came in the flesh, not in sinful flesh: jesus christ, the last Adam, came on the plane of the first Adam; he partook of our nature but not of our sin. By his mighty atonement he can lift us into the kingdom in which he lived while he was on this earth so that we may be able to live a life freed from sin. That is the practical point the apostle paul is making. .

. . And being found in fashion as a man, he hum- bled himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross. (rv)

Right at the threshold of his manhood our lord took upon him his vocation, which was to bear away the sin of the worldby identification, not by sympathy ( john 1:29). Our lords object in becoming deity incarnate was to redeem mankind, and satans final onslaught in the garden of gethsemane was against our lord as son of man, viz. , that the purpose of his incarnation would fail. The profundity of his agony has to do with the fulfilling of his destiny. The cross is a triumph for the son of man; any and every man has freedom of access straight to the throne of god by right of what our lord accomplished through his death on the cross. Though he was a son, he learned obedience as a saviour by the things which he suffered, and thereby became the author of eternal salva- tion unto all them that obey him. He was crucified through weakness. Jesus christ represents god limiting his own power for one pur- pose: he died for the weak, for the ungodly, for sinners, and for no one else. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. No chain is stronger than its weakest link. In one aspect jesus christ became identified with the weakest thing in his own creation, a baby; in another aspect he went to the depths of a bad mans hell, consequently from the babe to the vilest criminal jesus christs substitution tells for salvation, nothing can prevail against him. The first thing the spirit of god does in us is to efface the things we rely upon naturally. Paul argues this out in philippians 3, he catalogues who he is and the things in which he might have confidence, but, he says, i deliberately renounce all these things that i may gain christ. The continual demand to consecrate our gifts to god is the devils counterfeit for sanctification. We have a way of saying what a wonderful power that man or woman would be in gods service. Reasoning on mans broken virtues makes us fix on the wrong thing. The only way any man or woman can ever be of service to god is when he or she is willing to renounce all their natural excellencies and determine to be weak in himi am here for one thing only, for jesus christ to manifest himself in me. That is to be the steadfast habit of a christians life. Whenever we think we are of use to god, we hinder him. We have to form the habit of letting god carry on his work through us without let or hindrance23 as he did through jesus, and he will use us in ways he dare not let us see. We have to efface every other thought but that of jesus christ. It is not done once for all; we have to be always doing it. If once you have seen that jesus christ is all in all, make the habit of letting him be all in all. It will mean that you not only have implicit faith that he is all in all, but that you go through the trial of your faith and prove that he is. After sanctification god delights to put us into places where he can make us wealthy. Jesus christ counts as service not what we do for him, but what we are to him, and the inner secret of that is identity with him in person. That i may know him.

His dedication and our discipline

And for their sakes i sanctify myself ( john 17:19). How does that statement of our lord fit in with our idea of sanctification? Sanctification must never be made synonymous with purification; jesus christ had

No need of purification, and yet he used the word sanctify. In the words, i sanctify myself, jesus gives the key to the saints life. Self is not sinful; if it were, how could jesus say i sanctify myself ? Jesus christ had no sin to deny, no wrong self to deny; he had only a holy self. It was that self he denied all the time, and it was that self that satan tried to make him obey. What could be holier than the will of the holy son of god? And yet all through he said, not as i will, but as thou wilt. It was the denying of his holy self that made the marvellous beauty of our lords life. If we have entered into the experience of sanctification, what are we doing with our holy selves? Do we every morning we waken thank god that we have a self to give to him, a self that he has purified and adjusted and baptised with the holy ghost so that we might sacrifice it to him? Sacrifice in its essence is the exuberant passionate love-gift of the best i have to the one i love best. The best gift the son of god had was his holy manhood, and he gave that as a love-gift to god that he might use it as an atonement for the world. He poured out his soul unto death, and that is to be the characteristic of our lives. God is at perfect liberty to waste us if he chooses. We are sanctified for one purpose only, that we might sanctify our sanctifi- cation and give it to god. One of the dangers of present-day teaching is that it makes us turn our eyes off jesus christ on to ourselves, off the source of our salvation on to salvation itself. The effect of that is a morbid, hypersensitive life, totally unlike our lords life, it has not the passion of abandon that characterised him. The new testament never allows for a moment the idea that continually crops up in modern spiritual teaching i have to remember that i am a specimen of what god can do. That is inspired by the devil, never by the spirit of god. We are not here to be specimens of what god can do, but to have our life so hid with christ in god that our lords words will be true of us, that men beholding our good works will glorify our father in heaven. There was no show business in the life of the son of god, and there is to be no show business in the life of the saint. Concentrate on god, let him engineer circumstances as he will, and wherever he places you he is binding up the brokenhearted through you, setting at liberty the captives through you, doing his mighty soul-saving work through you, as you keep rightly related to him. Self-conscious service is killed, self-conscious devotion is gone, only one thing remainswitnesses unto me, jesus christ first, second and third. The father abiding in me doeth his works ( john 14:10 rv). Our lord habitually submitted his will to his father, that is, he engineered nothing but left room for god. The modern trend is dead against this submission; we do engineer, and engineer with all the sanctified ingenuity we have, and when god suddenly bursts in in an expected way, we are taken unawares. It is easier to engineer things than determinedly to submit all our powers to god. We say we must do all we can: jesus says we must let god do all he can. As the father taught me, i speak these things ( john 8:28 rv). The secret of our lords holy speech was that he habitually submitted his intelligence to his father. Whenever problems pressed on the human side, as they did in the temptation, our lord had within himself the divine remembrance that every problem had been solved in counsel with his father before he became incarnate (cf. Revelation 13:8), and that therefore the one thing for him was to do the will of his father, and to do it in his fathers way. Satan tried to hasten him, tried to make him face the problems as a man and do gods will in his own way: the son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the father doing ( john 5:19 rv). Are we intellectually insubordinate, spiritually stiff-necked, dictating to god in pious phraseology what we intend to let him make us, hunting through the bible to back up our pet theories? Or have we learned the secret of submitting our intelligence and our reasoning to jesus christs word and will as he submitted his mind to his father? The danger with us is that we will only submit our minds to new testament teaching where the light of our experience shines. If we walk in the lightas our experience is in the light? No, if we walk in the light as he is in the light . . . We have to keep in the light that god is in, not in the rays of the light of our experience. There are phases of gods truth that cannot be experienced, and as long as we stay in the narrow grooves of our experience we shall never become god- like, but specialists of certain doctrineschristian oddities. We have to be specialists in devotion to jesus christ and in nothing else. If we want to know jesus christs idea of a saint and to find out what holiness means, we must not only read pamphlets about sanctification, we must face ourselves with jesus christ, and as we do so he will make us face ourselves with god. Be ye therefore perfect, even as your father which is in heaven is perfect. When once the truth lays hold of us that we have to be god-like, it is the death-blow for ever to attempting things in our own strength. The reason we do attempt things in our own strength is that we have never had the vision of what jesus christ wants us to be. We have to be god-like, not good men and women. There are any number of good men and women who are not christians. The life of sanctification, of service and of sacrifice, is the threefold working out in our bodies of the life of Jesus until the supernatural life is the only life. These are truths that cannot be learned; they can only be habitually lived.