10.3 Two Minds
© 2019 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
At this point, in our desire to understand what keeps our brothers and sisters in Christ from knowing the Jesus who lives inside of them and inside of Whom they live, we could feel quite discouraged. Let me strengthen your heart. His name is Jesus, and He is very good at His job.
Jesus said that as He, our Seed of life, is planted into our earth, He will bear in us much fruit, that is, you and me just like Him. In saying that, Jesus indicated that He never wanted to be alone. The Lord Jesus wants to share His suffering for the sake of His people with you and you with Him; He wants you to be a living part of His heart carrying them. He wants you to know Father by knowing Himself moving as one with and through you.
Romans 8. Through the final two chapters we will expand briefly on this wondrous quality of the One who lives inside of us, that He wants to share ALL that He is and does together with us. In this lesson, however, we want to sum up the meaning of this great choice between two inside of every Christian soul and before every created being.
May I suggest, for your own knowledge of God, that you read through Romans 8, the strongest expression of Paul’s gospel, several times, going back and forth between the New King James and the Jesus Secret versions. You are not contrasting the translations, but rather drawing every Word God speaks as Jesus into yourself through “Let it be to me.”
[I have inserted the new version of Romans 6-8 into the website. (Click on the link) This is much closer to the final version of the Jesus Secret Version. You will see how much the gospel of the revelation of Jesus Christ really sings all through the New Testament.]
The Two Trees. Paul alternates, throughout his writings, between reasoned and carefully thought out argument and any rabbit trail that shows itself for him to run down. Romans 1-8 contain surprisingly few rabbit trails.
Through the first seven chapters, Paul establishes sin based on the story of Genesis 3. Then, he establishes our redemption based on the outline of the Tabernacle of Moses. Romans 8:1a is the conclusion of redemption. But in Romans 8:2-17 Paul sets again, as the central reality of the Christian dilemma, the two trees in the garden. Here is another way to read Romans 8:2 – The tree of life has made us free from the tree of knowing right and wrong. Notice, especially, that Paul places the believer in Jesus entirely and only INSIDE of the tree of life, that is, inside of the Person of Christ.
Living ONLY inside of God. Then, from verse 18 on, the rest of Romans 8, the present reality of being a Christian on this earth, leaves all thought of choice between two or any presence of sin far behind, and places us utterly inside the Holiest, as the very tree of life, synergeoing with God in travail over all creation, knowing that our every step is embedded utterly inside of the love of God.
The gospel of Jesus Christ, Paul’s gospel, presented with all strength in Romans 8:18-39, puts you and me into a realm in which no sin or falling short or disconnection from God could ever exist or even be remembered. But we can live inside of such a Salvation ONLY IF we accept Paul’s purpose for Romans 7 – stop considering your flesh, one way or the other, for your body is clean and holy, fully acceptable to God as it is (Romans 12:1 – Hebrews 10:22).
The Two Trees. For us to live every moment inside of the Holy of Holies, inside of the Tree of Life, that is, inside of Jesus, we MUST first sign over to Him all title to “our flesh.” “This flesh belongs only to you, Lord Jesus; You are utterly responsible for me.”
“Justification” means that we have been tried in a court of law and been found innocent of any sin against God. “Glorification” means that we are the revelation of Father to His creation. Romans 8:30 makes it quite clear that these things are already and long since fully real, the only reality we know.
In the remainder of this lesson, then, we want to see the clarity with which Paul, in Romans 8:2-17 places the two trees in the garden before every Christian.
Life Only or Death. At the same time, we have shown with convincing proofs that these two trees are also two “Jesus’s,” the Jesus alive inside our hearts connecting us always with Father – versus – the imagined “super-Christ” existing in Christian’s mind by Nicene “theology,” that is the arguments of the serpent. Paul expresses these two trees in three ways, with the verses in-between serving as explanations of each.
1. The law of the Spirit of life inside of Christ Jesus has made you free far away from the law of sin and death.
2. Death is the thought of the flesh, but life and peace are the thought of the Spirit.
3. If you live according to the flesh, you are about to die; if, however by the Spirit, you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
The One Death. But – we also include Paul’s conclusion in Romans 12:1-2, that our bodies are HOLY and clean, fully acceptable to God, and that Christian’s problem is the wrong thinking of the mind – be transformed by – thinking Christ. For this reason, we know that Romans 8:13 – put to death the deeds of the body – can mean only one thing. – Put whatever your body might or might not do into the one death of Christ by taking upon yourself the mind and thinking of the Spirit, that is, Christ written upon your heart.
Then, to “live according to the flesh” means to live as if the flesh means something one way or another, going back and forth between fake self-denial and the pursuit of fleshy pleasures and defining one’s self by the very thing Jesus traded His life in order to take it far away from you.
Put on the Lord Jesus Christ. Here is LIFE – Put on, enclothe yourself with, sink into the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not give thought [one way or the other] regarding the desires of the flesh (Romans 13:14).
We want to bring back in, now, from Lesson 9.2, the three aspects of the knowledge of good and evil as they replace the Tree of Life through “theology.” Those three things are form and ritual as the “way” to God, “the Bible” as intellectual knowledge of God’s “truth,” and a fruitless “struggle against sin” as the normal Christian “life.” – The way to God is to line yourself up with correct form and church order. The truth of God is knowing in your intellect what God expects and then trying to do it. The life of the Christian is an endless struggle against sin.
Nonsense versus Jesus. It is essential for you in this present moment to grasp fully the fundamental nature of the serpent’s words and ideas. The devil was blowing smoke. He was making it up as he went. He was speaking complete fantasy and nonsense.
Yet Christian can walk free from this false spell cast upon his mind only by his absolute confidence in the Jesus of his heart, now living as him, as he stands firm against all the wailing accusation screamed at him by the “Christ” in his intellect. Your primary outward task, then, is to show to Christian the joy and wonder, the power and absoluteness of the Jesus alive inside of him written as every Word God speaks upon all the pathways of his heart and now the only LIFE he is. (More on your full task in the next chapter.)
Life and Peace. Life and peace are the thought of the Spirit. – Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
Thinking according to the flesh means thinking “I am on my own. I have to get it right. I must hear and obey. I must seek God’s will and do His will and not my own.” We are astonished as we remember how many thought processes in our minds once came out from this fake responsibility. This way of thinking always includes, then, all thoughts of “I am fallen short,” that is, a refusal of Christ my life.
Knowing that we live only inside of Jesus and He inside of us is the greatest wonder of life and peace we have known.
Bless and Curse? Jesus said that as we eat and drink of Him, that is, as we believe into Him and He into us, then the river of life will flow out of us bringing life and peace to all.
Here is what James said about what comes out of our mouth, however. – The tongue is set among our members, staining the entire body… With it we bless and speak good things of our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, those continually and actively coming into being as the likeness of God. Out of the same mouth comes good words and words of cursing. My brothers and sisters, these things ought not to be so. Can the spring out of the same opening pour forth both fresh and bitter? (James 3:6-11 – reduced). Does Christian then eat from both trees, his own self separate from God, that is, “sinful” AND Christ?
“I” or Christ. Paul says that the Word coming out from God’s thoughts, the Lord Jesus Himself, is inside our mouth and written all through the pathways of our hearts, and he instructs us to acknowledge all the good things of Christ inside of us, to speak that same Word that is Jesus. Jesus sustains us. Jesus brings forth, carries, and gives us His life every moment. And He does so by and as the Word of His power.
Yet God’s precious people, our brethren, halt between two, eating of “I am responsible before God” and then eating of “Christ is my life,” back and forth, speaking and thinking blessing and cursing, sending forth life and death from the same source. As James asked, “How can this be?”
An Honest Heart. Do you know what the real answer is?
Honesty. One moment of complete honesty. “I am wrong. I am lost. I cannot ever please God or measure up or keep His word. I must have Someone else to be what I cannot be and to do what I cannot do. I must have Jesus, my Savior, the One upon whose breast I always lean my head, to be the ONLY life I am.”
That is the very best thing that could ever happen to anyone, for only the lost know salvation. Only those who go silent before God can ever know Christ as the rightness of their life. Only an honest heart will ever give one’s self to Jesus, the one who lies to self that “I must obey” is already lost.
Inside of Father. Which tree did Jesus eat from as He walked this earth? Did Jesus rely upon His own performance of the law? Did Jesus even walk according to the law, that is, did He choose between right and wrong? Or did Jesus keep Himself, with strong crying and tears, inside a total dependence on the Father, the only One who was, every moment, saving Him from death?
Jesus never once thought about trusting in Himself, in His own ability to hear what God says and then to do it. Rather, in all ways and in every moment, Jesus walked in the absolute conviction that His Father directed His every step inside of love, that everything inside of Him was coming only out from Father.
Speak Christ Alone. We walk as Jesus walked, never trusting in ourselves, for we are dead, but always speaking and thinking that we are coming out of our Father through the good speaking of Jesus every moment, for we are alive to God, connected with Father through Jesus. We never eat of right and wrong, of halting between two, of back and forth. Rather, we eat only of One, that is, of LIFE.
God commands all who come before Him to be silent about themselves. But we have a problem, you see, for God made us just like Himself, that is, we cannot stop talking. Therefore, God gives us a different story to speak, Christ Jesus, the only story we are. Speak Christ Personal as yourself with all your might; speak Christ alone. You are already inside of Him!
One Mind Together. Let this same “mind” [phroneó] be in you that was also in Christ Jesus (Philippians 2:5). – Phroneó means a gut-level manner of thinking, the inner story you tell yourself about yourself. – We possess the mind [nous] of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16), but not separate from Jesus, rather He in us, sharing the same mind together.
Nous and phroneó are not two different “minds” in the sense of being double-minded, but rather in our human construction, the thinking of the gut undergirding the heart and the thinking of the brain. As Christ Jesus is our only story of self, so these two places of thinking work always in perfect harmony together. In fact, it is the speaking of our mouth that enables them to be in harmony, the rudder that steers our ship, as James said.
Nonetheless, the gut mind is always more important, for it is the thinking of the heart. As Solomon said, “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.”
Through Faith. Moreover, without faith one is incapable of pleasing God; indeed, it is necessary for the one approaching [everything inside of God] to believe that God is and that He becomes the rewarder of those seeking out and requiring of Him (Hebrews 11:6). – Christ lives inside of our hearts through faith.
Faith sees Christ alone, with a single eye. Faith receives every Word God speaks as Jesus Himself, the only One who is and who does what God says. Faith, then, disregards all sight of the eye and all judgment of the human. Faith disregards ALL outward appearance and all human feelings. Faith closes its ears against every accusation of being disconnected from God.
Faith possesses one mind, not two. Faith places the same Jesus of the heart into all the thinking of the mind. Faith speaks out from the Jesus of the heart. Faith places itself utterly and only into Jesus, and there, faith remains.