---

Some professed Christians have the name, and only the name, of Christ. Some are satisfied to have in sacramental bread what represents the body of Christ. "We," says the apostle, and all true Christians will in a lowly grateful spirit unite in the same profession - "we have the mind of Christ."

I. WHAT IS MEANT BY "THE MIND OF CHRIST"? His earthly ministry, his counsels and promises to his disciples, his willing sacrifice, revealed that mind; and that so fully and so clearly that we may justly say, that mind has become and. is the richest heritage and possession of humanity.

1. His was the mind that saw the truth. He did not reason it out or accept it from authority; he looked it in the face; he was naturally and perfectly and always acquainted with it.

2. His was the mind that loved the good. It was through no fierce struggle that Jesus came to admire and to appreciate moral beauty; for goodness was natural to him and perfectly congenial and delightful to his being.

3. His was the mind that chose the right. The will of man is often vacillating and varying, and in some cases it persistently chooses evil. But throughout Christ's ministry, righteousness was not the law to which he submitted, but the very life he lived. There is no instance of his preferring the wrong; he was without sin.

4. His was the mind that thought and planned and suffered for all men. It is not a just view of the mind of the Lord Christ to regard it as personal character. For he was the Son of man, and took all humanity into the embrace of his great and comprehensive mind. He thought and spake of all men as most closely related to himself. To know his mind is to know alike the mind of man and the mind of God.

II. How can WE PARTAKE "THE MIND OF CHRIST"? When we consider what that mind was, we may well be all but hopeless of possessing and of sharing it. Yet it is his will that his mind should be ours, and he has made provision for our participation in, our appropriation of, his mind.

1. We acquire knowledge of that mind through the record of the gospel. His words, his miracles, his conduct, his sufferings, were all a revelation of his mind; pondering them, we come near to the thought, to the heart, of our Saviour.

2. We receive with faith the all sufficient redemption he has effected. He is not only a Teacher, he is not only a Revelation of the Father; he is the Saviour. And it is in accepting the salvation which is through him that we are re-created in the likeness of his holy mind and nature.

3. We do his will, and learn that obedience is the method by which we attain to a more thorough sympathy with him. Thus a growing revelation on his part brings about a growing appropriation on ours.

III. HOW CAN WE PROVE OURSELVES TO HAVE "THE MIND OF CHRIST"?

1. By our judgment concerning spiritual things; for these are spiritually discerned by the disciplined, the sympathetic, mind.

2. By our life of loving service; for "if a man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his." - T.

---

---

KJV: For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.

WEB: "For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he should instruct him?" But we have Christ's mind.