One great end with God, in the gospel of His grace, is at once so to bring those who believe into fellowship with Himself, that they may be like-minded with Him. Until this be the case, there can be no well-ordered blessing for any intelligent creature. The misery of man’s state is, that he is fulfilling the desires (wills, θελήματα.) of the flesh and of the mind; “that he is alienated in his mind” from God; that his very element is dissociation from God in thought and act. And here is the grace and wisdom of God in the gospel of Christ, that while He meets man in the craving of his own selfishness, His manner of meeting man’s selfishness by the blood of the Lamb at once brings man near unto Him. It is not mere escape from coming wrath, but immediate reception into the bosom of the Father. It is reconciliation through the blood of the cross; amity restored between those who had been separate; and this mighty power of the cross is the one grand object of the mind of heaven. Christ crucified, to them that are saved, is the power of God and the wisdom of God; and then there is unison between man on the earth and heaven. Thus he “minds the things above.”
There are two ways in which the mind of heaven becomes ascertained to us. The one is, in that which is revealed to us respecting Jesus, as in heaven; and the other as respecting Jesus on the earth. In the first He is represented to us as the one grand subject of thought and theme of praise; in the second, He Himself applies the thoughts of heaven to the things of earth. Into both these it is our blessed privilege to enter. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen.” “Whom having not seen, ye love, in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” “We are come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels; to the general assembly and church of the First-born, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect; and to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, which speaketh better things than that of Abel.” It is thus that to faith the door is opened in heaven.
On the other hand, as spiritual, we are called on to judge all things-and ourselves can be judged of by no man. “For who hath known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him? but we have the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2;15;16). “Being now light in the Lord,” it is our privilege to walk as children of light; and what is this but the application of the mind of Christ to the circumstances around us-in other words, to be heavenly-minded? And here is the great importance of the subject; it is not abstraction of mind from the reality of the misery around us into an ideal world; neither is it to become an ascetic, but the ability to associate heaven with the present state of things, through the knowledge of Him who gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us out of this present evil world.
When God had finished the work of creation, He saw everything that He had made, and behold it was very good; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. Then, for man, created in the image and after the likeness of God, it was fitting to mind earthly things, to see the wisdom and goodness of God in the beautiful creation which He had put in subjection unto him. Then the mind of heaven and earth was one, “when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.” God, angels, and men could take complacency in the earth—it was the expression of God’s power, and wisdom, and goodness. Wheresoever man turned to the things around him, they would necessarily be associated in his mind with God. But when man fell under the power of Satan, and subjected the creation to vanity, groaning, and misery, God could no longer be associated in man’s mind with the works of creation, except to his own terror and confusion. Everything around him must have been a speaking testimony to his own sin and dissociation from God. He could not look to the earth, and then look with confidence towards God. He saw the withering power of his own evil. He could no longer rejoice in the earth as the work of God’s hand, because the constant object presented to his view was the ruin and desolation he had introduced. But God did not immediately interfere in judgment; He left man to the trial of his powers to undo the mischief he had done. But evil increasingly developed itself in man, and through him its baneful influence passed on all around him. “The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.” “And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me, for the earth is filled with violence through them, and behold I will destroy them with the earth.” When, therefore, the state of the earth grew worse and worse, instead of improving under the management of man, the condition of blessing could be no longer in minding earthly things, but in walking with God as Enoch, prophesying in word of the Lord coming in judgment, or in testifying by act, as Noah, of its speedy approach.
After the flood, the Lord introduces a dispensation of forbearance and longsuffering, pledging Himself not to curse the ground any more for man’s sake; “for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth.” Again, it is said to Noah, “ Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth:” but instead of investiture of dominion, as unto Adam, and willing acknowledgment on the part of creation to man as its lord, it now is only, “ The fear of you, and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth—into your hand are they delivered; every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you, even as the green herb have I given you all things.” But there was a reservation, and that reservation a constant testimony to man that his life was forfeited: “But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.” This one injunction placed man as a sinner before God, as one who had lost all title to blessing, and needed to approach God through blood. At the same time God Himself interferes in the government of the earth, proving that it was taken out of man’s hand into His own, and that He was the God to whom vengeance belonged. “And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man’s brother will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.” God had not interfered in vengeance against the first murderer, Cain; on the contrary, He had set a mark on him, lest any should slay him, that man might learn, being left to himself, whether he could undo the evil he had introduced. But now God interfered in the ordering of the earth, and earthly things could only be so minded, as to blessing, by man’s seeing his own condition, as before God, and God’s rule in the earth.
But the presumption of man only increased by God’s forbearance; and instead of acknowledging God in the earth, he purposed the vain attempt of subjecting heaven to his rule. When the Lord had scattered them abroad in all the earth, then did He give them up, as it were, as to palpable interference, though “he left not himself without witness among them, in that he did them good, and gave them rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons.” But they speedily turned aside to lying vanities; and since God had left them to themselves, they made gods for themselves, according to their own minds, and rejoiced in the works of their hands. Now it pleases the Lord to interfere in another way; He calls out an individual from an idolatrous world, and makes special revelation of Himself to him. And this communication of Himself to Abram by Jehovah, is the introduction of a new principle, even the knowledge of another portion than things present and seen, in having Jehovah for his shield and exceeding great reward. In Abram, therefore, was the introduction of a new principle; he was the one to whom the promises were made; and that which was now to be minded, was not the state of things before the eye, but those things which were presented to faith afar off, leading to the confession that they were pilgrims and strangers in the earth. Abram knew that a long period of darkness and distress would intervene, ere the land, in which he was a stranger, should become the possession of his seed. But when the set time was come, the Lord, faithful to His word, brought them out of Egypt; and, as though He would not hinder the earth’s blessing, proposes to the children of Israel to vest that blessing in them, by Himself becoming their Lawgiver and their King: “ Now, therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then shall ye be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people; for all the earth is mine, and ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests and an holy nation.” This was the distinguishing blessing-a holy nation, a wise and great nation; because the Lord God was in the midst of it. Here, then, was one nation in the earth, wherein to have minded earthly things would have been to have recognized God. “For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them as the Lord our God is in all things that we call upon him for?” (Deuteronomy 4: 7). An Israelite would have seen God, not only in the tabernacle service, but in his civil relations, in judicial arrangements, in his household economy-every little circumstance became of importance when sanctioned by “Ye shall”— “for I am the Lord” (Leviticus 19).
The mind of heaven, occupies man’s mind, he only walketh in a vain show—he disquieteth himself in vain. That which is before him is vanity—the world passeth away and the lust thereof. His only reality is the sin, sorrow, and death he inherits, and which he seeks to forget in the pursuit of happiness from the creature; but the reality with which heaven is conversant, is the triumph of Him who overcame it all, and who says to His disciples, “Be of good cheer, because I have overcome the world.” This is the victory they celebrate; not greatness in the world, but triumph over it through suffering from it. “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing.” How marvelous is this! everything that the heart of man craves, in order to its happiness, all ascribed to Him whom men by their wicked hands crucified and slew. Who can enter into the thoughts, who into the joys of heaven, but he that glories in the cross of Christ, and sees the world, through that medium, as lying under the wicked one? Surely, to mind earthly things is to be entirely forgetful of this triumphant song. It is assuming a right to ourselves now to receive power and riches, &c., and thus to justify man in his crucifixion of the Lord of glory, and in our hearts to say that Jesus was accursed. He was and is worthy to receive all this because He was slain. He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross; therefore God also hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a name which is above every name. Jesus sought not honor of men, and would not receive the glory of the world, but showed forth its real character and opposition to God, not only in renouncing it, but in suffering from it —He died to it and by it.
How needful, therefore, is unison with the mind of heaven, in order to ascertain our own proper standing in the world! How do they view all those things which man craves? —power, riches, glory, honor,—they cannot recognize them as in the hands of man, for there they are only turned to evil; they only know them as in the hands of Him that was slain. There we should know them, and live by faith on them, as ours, invested in Him for us also, heirs of all His glory. He has received in order to give; and the glory He has so hardly earned, He wills should be given to those who believe on Him.
But while we thus learn the mind of heaven, and, as taught by the Spirit, are led into unity with it, there is yet another way in which that mind was exhibited, and of this our calling is to be practical followers. Whilst we have seen the strong contrast of the mind of heaven with the mind of earth, there is another contrast which we are called on to survey, and that is between the beloved Son of God and the world in which He was. It is thus we not only learn the entire alienation of the world from God, but we have the heavenly mind brought before us, in very minute detail, concerning the everyday occurrences of life. It was He who alone could say, “No man hath ascended up to heaven but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man which is in heaven;” who could show us the thoughts of God concerning the evil in which we are, and point out how those who were made partakers of the heavenly calling, were to walk worthily of it. It is thus that every circumstance becomes an occasion of showing forth heavenly-mindedness. It is easy for us now to see that one use the wisdom of God has made of man’s evil, has been to manifest His own blessedness through it. It is in His dealing with evil that the character of God has been made known to us, and not only to us but to angels. And a further display of God’s wisdom is now being manifested unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places, by the church, called to act in the world on the very same principles that He is acting in it. It is this which gives such distinctiveness to christian morals, which, whilst they do most fully recognize all that is honest and of good report, at the same time present to us that which is really lovely, because a transcript of God. The new man is created in righteousness and true holiness, but the sphere of its exercise being evil, it must only be in suffering, in endurance. He is “renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him,” but that knowledge is to be applied to the circumstances of man, to show that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding;” and that the wisdom which cometh from above, is at direct variance with that of man, as applied to like circumstances. Here is the grand distinction, “that ye henceforth walk not as other gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart. But ye have not so learned Christ, if so be ye have heard Him and have been taught by Him as the truth is in Jesus.” Now Jesus indeed is the truth, for all truth centers in Him; but here the apostle is speaking not of doctrine but of christian conduct, and the real walk of a believer is only to be been “as the truth is in Jesus.” this is the lesson before us, “Learn of me;” the Master does not order the disciple to do anything but to follow Him. And the standard proposed is, “everyone that is perfect shall be as his Master.” It is therefore in Jesus come into the world, that we find what real heavenly-mindedness is, and at once discover that one so minded, could not take complacency in the state of things around us. We, indeed, who are born under the law of sin and death, are made to feel, in ourselves, what misery is; we are “of the earth and earthy, and speak of the earthly,” but He came from heaven, and spoke that which he had seen and heard; and, acquainted with the pure blessing of heaven, He could not take delight in the things of the world. He that came from above could make the contrast, and became a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief, from the keen perception of moral desolation and ruin into which man had hurried God’s creation. Separate from sinners Himself, He could deeply sympathize with the misery of man. He was of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord, and saw man without the fear of God before his eyes. Knowing the blessedness of being in the Father’s bosom, He saw man seeking his happiness in the creature—He knew the wrath of God, and that it was coming, and beheld man living as though he were in the sunshine of God’s favor. He dwelt in the holiness of God, and saw man dead in trespasses and sins, walking according to the course of this world, according to the Prince of the power of the air. All the realities were brought before Him, and He mourned and marveled at man’s unbelief, and was grieved at the hardness of their hearts. He saw the full sway of death, and wept at the grave of Lazarus, and yet man had become so familiar with death as to forget that it was the penalty of sin. This is heavenly-mindedness; no complacency in any effort of the flesh, but seeing all its glory fading before the power of death, no rejoicing in what man was rejoicing in —even in the works of his hands, but seeing God in His works, and discovering more real glory in the lily of the field than in all the splendor of Solomon.
This is heavenly-mindedness; it is the ability to rate evil at all its fearful extent, and to know God to the full extent of His blessedness. It is no ideal speculation, no refined mysticism, but the soul apprehending God in Christ, and applying its apprehension of Him to present circumstances. Here is one great value of the incarnation; it is to us the expression of the mind of God on our circumstances. “I,” says Jesus, “am the light of the world; he that followed’ me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” He did the will of Him that sent Him, and therefore could judge righteous judgment: and it is only as doing that same will that we are in the capacity of exercising right judgment. Our judgment must ever be according to appearances, until we have come to recognize Jesus as God’s standard, by which He tries everything. It is in this that we fail so much of the heavenly-mindedness.
(To be continued.)