Think Like Jesus?

God’s purpose for all Christians is that we be conformed to the image of Christ.  We are to do as Jesus does.  We are to think as Jesus thinks.  The Apostle Paul called this process, putting on the mind of Christ.  Clearly, this places our thought life front and center in the process of being conformed to the image of Jesus.  Simply stated, if I don’t think like Jesus, how can I can love like Jesus?

If we want to be pleasing to God we have to understand that rebellion and sin always find their power in the things we think.   In the Genesis account of the fall of man this principle is clearly revealed.  God told Adam and Eve they would die if they ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge.  The serpent presented a question that kicked off a thought process for Eve (and Adam)  that led them to question the truth of what God had said.   Their thoughts became the supernatural incubator of their sin and rebellion against God.  Eve thought the fruit was pleasing to the eye and she thought it was also good for food.  She thought the fruit was good for gaining knowledge.  So, because the fruit looked good and would taste good and might make them smarter she thought it would be a good thing to eat it.  So, Adam and Eve ate the fruit and died spiritually, just as God had warned them.   The sins of self spring to life in the same way.

All of us have issues in our life that we know are not pleasing to God and every one of them can be categorized within one or more of the seven deadly sins of self.  Every sin of self is hatched in our hearts but it is nurtured and given power by the thoughts we think.  The sin itself originates in our hearts but it is our thinking that justifies it and leads us into sinful behavior!  Adam and Eve wanted to be like God.  That was the sin in their heart.  Eve’s thinking justified the behavior she believed would make her like God (eating the fruit).  If  Adam and Eve had been able to take their thoughts captive and make them obedient to God, they would have refused the fruit.  They would not have sinned and they would not have died spiritually.