How many times have you been with someone when you blurt out the same thought at the same moment, seemingly by coincidence? How many times have you made the "right" choice of restaurant to take someone to, not rally knowing what they were in the mood for? How many times have you called that certain someone on the phone, only to have them say something like, "I was ust about to call you!" Often, the expression that comes to mind is-"You must have read my mind!"
Such "coincidences" happen only when we know someone so well we can literally "read their minds." I once asked a fellow pastor how God-with free will and all-could know exactly what choice any one of us would make before it happened. Could God never be surprised? And if God knew beforehand, what exactly was "free" about my "will"? Let it be said this theological conundrum will not be answered here, but what my pastor friend did say shed some light on the situation. He said he knew his son so well he felt he could always know what choice his son would make in any given situation. Not that he controlled his son's will; his son was still free in that regard. It was just that he knew his boy so intimately that he could accurately predict the outcome of his decisions.
Paul says that when we're really right with God, we know him so well we automatically make the choices that reflect him, choices that he would approve of. The opposite may be true as well: God knows us so well that he already knows what choices we'll make. Either way, for Paul, this is what it means to have "the mind of Christ." It means we are so attuned with the Holy Spirit, with the will of Jesus, that we think his thoughts, speak his words, and act his ways. We aim to be the kind of people where Jesus could rightfully say, "You must have read my mind!"
Yet among the mature we do speak wisdom, though it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to perish. But we speak God’s wisdom, secret and hidden, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written,
‘What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the human heart conceived,
what God has prepared for those who love him’—
these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For what human being knows what is truly human except the human spirit that is within? So also no one comprehends what is truly God’s except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. And we speak of these things in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to those who are spiritual.
Those who are unspiritual do not receive the gifts of God’s Spirit, for they are foolishness to them, and they are unable to understand them because they are discerned spiritually. Those who are spiritual discern all things, and they are themselves subject to no one else’s scrutiny.
‘For who has known the mind of the Lord
so as to instruct him?’
But we have the mind of Christ.
