“For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.”
– 1 Corinthians 2:16
Wow, like think about that verse, “Who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him.” The obvious answer is no one. Who can instruct God? Well, no one can instruct God, he is all wise, he has all knowledge, he has all power, he is all loving, he is just, he is righteous, all of his attributes, and there’s no creature who’s going to instruct this creator. But the whole point here, and just let this soak in, where the verse shifts because verse 16 says, “Who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” Well obviously no one’s going to instruct God, but who’s understood the mind of the Lord and he says, but we have the mind of Christ, but we have the mind of Christ, God has given us the mind of Christ.
Living in Union with Christ
The revolutionary truth of Christianity is that Jesus died for us that He might live in us. Our lives are now in union with Him and we have been given the mind of Christ.
Who is Christ? Christ is God the son. We have the mind of God. This is like a combination of all that chapter two has been building towards, we have the spirit of God in us. The spirit of God knows the depths of God, and has freely given us from God everything we need to know, the depths of God. Now it comes down, so we’ve seen the spirit, now we see the son. We have the mind of Christ, this is the revolutionary truth of Christianity, and so many people miss it, so many Christians miss it, the reality that Jesus died for us so that he might live in us, our lives are now in union with Jesus so that we have his mind. This is mind blowing.
1 Corinthians 2:16 Unites our Minds with Christ
What Galatians 2:20 says, “We’ve been crucified with Christ. It’s not no longer us who live, but Christ who lives in us, the life we now live, we live in the flesh by faith and the son of God who loved us and gave himself for us.” His life is our life, we are united with Jesus, which means we have his mind.
What does that mean practically? It means that more and more every day we want to think like Jesus, and we can think like Jesus, like his word, as we meditate on his word, now it all starts to make sense. Psalm 1:1, “Blessed is the one who meditates on his law day and night and finds delight in it.” Yes, because the more we meditate on his word, the more our minds are conformed to his mind, our thoughts conformed to his thoughts, and the more we begin to live according to the life that he’s designed for us to live. His life becomes our life, his mind, our mind, his heart, our heart, his desires, our desires, his love, our love, this is union with Jesus, so live in it today. Grow in it today.
1 Corinthians 2:16 Prays for Our Lives to Reflect Christ
This has been a major theme for me over the last six months, just in a fresh way, realizing that I live with Jesus, Jesus lives with me in me. My life is in him, your life is in him. You have his mind available to you, his thoughts, his desires, not only available to you, but he wants them to become more and more yours. Jesus, we say yes to that, yes, yes, yes, we want our mind to be more like your mind, our desires to be more like your desires, our affections, our plans, our words, our actions to be more and more like yours.
Please may it be so. Make us more like you, Jesus we pray. In this we will experience a deeper, and deeper, and deeper knowledge of you, experience of you, enjoyment of you, and we pray exaltation of you in our lives, oh God. Help us to live today with the mind of Christ, leading, guiding, directing everything we think, everything we desire, everything we do. We pray in Jesus name, Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
