Thinking in Christ — Issue 18: The Mind That Was in Christ

Have this in your mind, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, existing in the form of God, didn't consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, yes, the death of the cross. (Phil 2:5-8)

Humility does not begin with the thinker. It begins with Christ. The mind commanded here is not a posture the thinker invents. It is a mind already present in another. The command is to have what Christ has. Therefore humility is not first a technique for thinking better. It is conformity to a Person.

This matters, because the mind left to itself will turn even humility into a performance. A thinker can learn to say, "I might be wrong," and still sit as judge over every claim brought to him. He can collect other perspectives, listen attentively, and revise his opinions, and still remain the court before which truth must plead its case. That is not humility. That is pride wearing a softer voice. The self remains at the center, only now it is praised for its openness.

Scripture names the root before it prescribes the remedy. The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is exceedingly corrupt. Who can know it? (Jer 17:9). The thinker who trusts his own openness has trusted the very instrument that deceives him. No mind is neutral (Rom 12:2). The mind is either being renewed by the Word or conformed to the pattern of a world apart from God. Openness to everything is not the same as submission to truth. A mind open to every voice and closed to none has no court at all, and a mind with no court will be ruled by whichever voice speaks loudest, latest, or most flatteringly.

Therefore true humility starts lower than self-assessment. It starts under a hand. Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time (1 Pet 5:6). Humility is not the thinker lowering himself in his own eyes so that others will raise him. It is the creature taking his place under God, and staying there. The exalting, if it comes, comes in due time, and it comes from God. It is not extracted by a display of modesty. The hand that humbles is the hand that exalts, and the timing belongs to Him.

For this reason, God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble (1 Pet 5:5). The proud are not merely people with strong opinions. The proud are those who stand apart from God and judge His Word by their own measure. God does not overlook that posture. He resists it. And grace is not given to the humble as a reward for their technique. Grace is given because humility is the place where a creature stops resisting and receives. The humble mind is an open hand, not a clever method. It receives what God gives, in the way God gives it, rather than demanding that God submit His truth to its review.

Consider what this does to listening. Scripture commands attention to others, but it does not command surrender to every voice. Doing nothing through rivalry or through conceit, but in humility, each counting others better than himself (Phil 2:3). Counting another better than oneself is not agreeing with him. It is refusing to use the conversation as a contest. Rivalry asks, "How do I win?" Conceit asks, "How do I look?" Humility asks, "What is true, and what does the Word say?" The other person is heard fully, not because every opinion carries equal weight, but because the listener is not his own court. He listens under the Word, and he lets the Word judge both voices, his own first.

This is where correction finds its proper place. A thinker apart from Christ treats correction as data: new evidence arrives, beliefs are updated, the model improves. The process never ends, because the standard never settles. But a thinker in Christ treats correction as submission. When the Word exposes an error, the error is not merely revised. It is repented of. The difference is the difference between editing a draft and bowing to a Judge. The first leaves the editor in charge. The second confesses that the editor was wrong, and that the wrongness ran deeper than a mistaken premise. It ran to the heart that chose its own measure.

That is why humility can receive a hard word without either collapsing or counterattacking. The mind that is being renewed does not need to defend itself at every point, because its standing does not rest on being right. It rests on Christ, who was right in its place and who humbled Himself to death on its behalf. Therefore a correction does not threaten the foundation. It confirms it. The believer can say, "I was wrong," without making that confession into a new boast, and without using it to purchase credibility for the next claim.

Yet humility does not mean surrendering conviction. The same Christ who emptied Himself also spoke with authority that no scribe could match. The same apostle who commanded humility also commanded testing, and the same Scriptures that expose the deceitful heart also give the mind its renewal (Rom 12:2). Humility and firmness are not opposites here. They stand together, because both are rooted in submission to the same Word. The humble mind is firm where God has spoken, and it is open where God has not finished teaching it — open to being taught by the Word, not open to being ruled by every passing voice.

This also guards against the counterfeit that calls itself humility while despising truth. False humility performs lowliness to gain praise for lowliness. It says, "I know nothing," and means, "Admire how little I claim." It refuses to judge anything, and calls that refusal virtue. But a mind that will not judge what God has already judged is not humble. It is evasive. It has traded submission to God for submission to the fear of being wrong in public. True humility judges, because God has judged, and it judges by His Word rather than by its own reputation.

So the humble thinker is not the one who holds his beliefs most loosely. He is the one who holds them most tightly to Christ, and most loosely to himself. He does not cling to his own conclusions as his identity. He clings to Christ as his identity, and therefore he can let a conclusion go when the Word overturns it. He does not need his thinking to be impressive. He needs it to be captive. Every thought is taken captive to the obedience of Christ (2 Cor 10:5). That captivity is not the death of thinking. It is its freedom. A thought taken captive stops serving pride, and starts serving truth.

Apart from Christ, humility is a strategy for managing ignorance. The thinker admits limits because limits are obvious, and he hopes that admitting them will make him wiser. In Christ, humility is the shape of a life already given. The Son did not merely teach humility. He performed it, from the form of God to the form of a servant, from the likeness of men to obedience unto death. Therefore the believer does not manufacture humility by effort. He receives the mind of Christ, and he walks in it by grace.

Have this in your mind, which was also in Christ Jesus (Phil 2:5). The mind is not earned by technique. It is given by the One who humbled Himself, and it grows wherever the thinker stops judging the Word and lets the Word judge him. That is humility: not openness as a virtue, not uncertainty as a pose, but a mind under the mighty hand of God, counting others better than itself, ready to be corrected, firm where God has spoken, and quiet before the cross where the proud are resisted and the humble receive grace.

The mind that was in Christ is the only humble mind. Every other humility, in the end, still bows to itself.