Airline, Aviation and Aerospace Christian FellowshipsTalk 2 of 4

The Links Hotel7-11 November 1990

Conference Theme: The Mind of Christ

As we take up this topic there are two points that I would like us to consider at the outset.

1.First, the image that we have of Jesus in our minds is important.This is true not only of our image of Jesus, but of any image that we might have.In many ways we become our image.

Think of the meaning of the following phrase by the poet and dramatist Oscar Wilde, “Life is the imitation of art.”Often we imagine that art is an imitation, or a copy, of life.And it is.However, the opposite is also true.Think of the meaning of Wilde’s phrase as you imagine in your mind a Paris fashion show and the ways we are encouraged to dress.Here our life is imitating art, someone else’s idea of how we ought to dress and to be.I am sure that you can imagine numerous other examples of life imitating art.In this light you may wish to consider the implications of Paul’s discussion of what we will be in his letter to the church at Corinth (II Cor. 15:48-49):

As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven.And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so we shall bear the likeness of the man from heaven.

The point of this consideration about the nature of images and how they affect what we become is to draw us back to our discussion about developing an adequate image of Jesus in our minds before we can begin to talk about the mind of Christ.Without taking this first step it is too easy for us to read into the mind of Christ our mind and our thinking about how things are or ought to be.

Questions:Think of the ways in which you have begun to picture consciously Jesus.Can you list all of the different images that come to your mind?Now, take a Bible and read about the ways in which Jesus tells us that He is to be pictured in Matthew’s account, 25:35-40.

2.Second, we might ask ourselves “why” one would wish to develop the mind of Christ?One of the other speakers in this conference gave us direction for how to think about this question and by encouraging us in the following ways.We are encouraged to do the following three things:

1) co-operate with the Holy Spirit; 2) learn to hear what is being told us, i.e., develop good patterns of communication.Here we were encouraged to remember Solomon’s request of God, that he be given a “hearing heart.”3) Finally, we have been commissioned by way of such co-operation and communication for witnessing and hearing (which also implies active doing) among those with whom we come into contact.

I want to use the kind of spiritual sensitivity fostered by this line of thinking to suggest the following three points which will encompass the rest of this talk.First, it is right, proper, and fitting that we be in relationship with Christ.This, of course, implies all that we have said about the importance of images and, pointedly, about our image of Jesus to this point.Second, it will be argued here that the most adequate image of who Jesus is expressed in the Gospel of John in the several places where Jesus is represented as using the phrase “I am”, either with or without a predicate, defining, or implying, the nature of His identity.Third, it is by way of the power of God, expressed through the agency of His Spirit, the Holy Spirit, which enables us to enter into the reality of God for us individuals pictured in the nature of Jesus.

I.Our Relationship with Jesus

We might begin by asking why it is right, proper, and fitting that we be in a relationship with Christ?

An immediate answer to this question is that we were made like Him.Or, to put it in another way, He was made like us.At the very beginning of the biblical understanding of human personhood we are told that we are made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26).If I am made in God’s image it behoves me to learn something of that one in whose image I am made.In the preceding verses we are shown a God who is one who creates.However, not only does He create, He also blesses that which He creates.Furthermore, He names His creation - and then even calls Adam and Eve to join Him in that process of naming their world.

Our God, in whose image we are made, is one who creates, blesses, and names His creation.Even so we are co-creators with God.We have been given the gift of being able to bless that which we make, to say that it is good.We have even been given the ability to name the created order and all that is within it, i.e., to understand it, to analyse, discriminate, and call things by their own name.

However, there is also another side of the story.Not only do we have this ability to create, but we can also destroy.Not only can we bless, we can also curse.Not only can we name and understand things, but we can misname, misunderstand, fall into error and even consciously lie.Such has been the nature of the human condition, the author of Genesis argues, almost since the first creation of man.The author of the book of James writes: “With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God’s likeness” (3:9).With this ability, and the Bible even argues innate propensity, to destroy, curse, and misname, it is, as it were, the image that we were meant to be has been shattered.We might look into a mirror and, instead of seeing a perfect image of God, we see one that has been shattered much as one might a plate glass window.

It is at this point that our understanding of Jesus’ nature becomes of central importance.He now is the only flawless image of God.Paul argues in this way in his second letter to the church at Corinth:

The God of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God....For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ (4:4-6).

Not only is Christ the image of God, but in his letter to the church at Colossae Paul goes on to argue for the supremacy of this one image of God.Christ, he says, is not only the image of the invisible God, He is also the firstborn of all creation.He continues in 1:15:“For by Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth....”Furthermore, if we would be like Him, like this one flawless image of the God in whose likeness we were made, then, Paul writes, we need to live like the God who made us.The rules for living that Paul lays down in Colossians 3:1-17 can be seen as little more than an elaboration on what we learn of God’s nature, and by implication ours who are made in His image.Consider Paul’s words in this regard in 3:9:

Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.

Christ is the only complete image of God.Elsewhere in Scripture we are called to leave the idols (images) that we fashion out of our imagination.All such images, which become models for our lives, are less than the perfect image of God which we find in Jesus Christ.Listen to Isaiah: “To whom, then, will you compare God?What image will you compare Him to?As for an idol, a craftsman casts it, and a goldsmith overlays it with gold and fashions silver chains for it.”If all of the images of God that we create in our minds are so impoverished and inadequate, is it any wonder that the author of Deutoronomy writes:

Cursed is the man who carves an image or casts an idol - a thing detestable to the Lord, the work of the craftsman’s hands - and sets it up in secret (27:15).

If all of what we have said about images and God, about ourselves having been made in god’s image is true, and if it is the case that our own image-bearing nature has been incapacitated, however radically, but that that of Christ remains unblemished or unshattered, is it then any wonder that we should want to be like Him?For to be like Christ is to be like God, to be like our Father, the one in whose image we were made.

Again we might say that it is right, proper, and fitting that we enter into a relationship with Jesus Christ the only one who images God for us.How important it is that we know who Jesus is, that our image of Him be an adequate image.

Questions:Take a moment and ask yourself what images guide your thinking.As you do this, think of all that passes before you every day whether it be through the media, at work or school, or in your patterns of social interaction.Write these down and think about the ways in which the images that you have thought about affect your life.Now think about your image of God.What mediates that image to you?Is it Jesus?Is it some other image or construct?How does your image of God affect your thinking of God?

II>Jesus and God the Father

The Gospel of John offers us further information about the identity of Jesus which should now be drawn into our reflection about the image that we form of Him in our minds.In a variety of places in this account of Jesus, we find Him using the pointed phrase, “I am”.This is used in as striking way in John 8:58 and 13:19.In the former instance the validity of Jesus’ ministry and testimony to Himself is challenged.Following the implication of His ability to forgive sins, the prerogative of God alone, Jesus ante-dates His work and person to before Abraham, thus claiming also to be the authority of the tradition.The text reads: “I tell you the truth,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!”At this, it is said, those hearing Him took up stones in order to kill Him, the method appropriate for blasphemy.Later, in predicting His betrayal in the hearing of His disciples (the second of our texts above), Jesus states that He is telling the disciples before the betrayal happens so that they will believe that “I am He.”

Further on we will want to come back to these cases, but first let us consider several other instances of the use of the phrase “I am” as part of a double meaning in the texts John 8:24, 28.In the first text Jesus tells His hearers that they will die in their sins “if they do not believe that I am the one I claim to be.”In the second instance Jesus is reported saying predictively, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am the one I claim to be and that I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me.”Other examples that draw attention to the phrase “I am” as used by Jesus, but now with explicit predicates, are listed below under the “Questions” section.You may want to take some time to study these in order to learn more about the image of Jesus that John is portraying.

Questions:Find the texts listed below in the Gospel of John.As you read them, ask yourself the following questions:

a) What is the apparent context for what is said?

b) What does Jesus say?

c) What does what you read tell you about the mind of Jesus?

1. Woman at the well - John 4:1-26 (4:26)

2. Disciples fear in the boat on the sea - John 6:16-24 (6:20)

3. Jesus able to forgive sins - John 8:12-30 (8:24,52)

4. Jesus shares insight about His betrayal - John 13:18-30 (13:19)

5. Jesus’ reply to the soldiers - John 18:1-11 (18:5,8)

There is something quite striking about the image of Jesus’ self-understanding which is being portrayed in the Gospel of John.The perspective of the other Gospels which pointedly pictures Jesus as the Christ, with political overtones, or as the Son of Man appear to be either too political for John, in the first case, or too future oriented in the case of the Son of Man.Instead, John appears to lift up the phrase “I am” (Ego eimi) as appropriately describing the identity of Jesus.One of the striking things about the phrase is the resonance it carries from the Hebrew Scriptures.It is this very phrase that is used by God to identify Himself to Moses in the desert of Sinai recorded in Exodus 3:14.Furthermore, the book of the prophet Isaiah draws attention to it in chapters 40-55 noting that God alone is capable of making such self-predication.It would be insolence or idolatry for any other being or person to do so.Is it any wonder, then, that those hearing Jesus make such a claim would take up stones to stone Him?

The image of Jesus portrayed by John under the phrase “I am” is the most adequate way of understanding who Jesus is.It hold in tension all of the other images that we have lifted up, yet says more.It argues for a relationship between God the Father and Jesus that is not abstract or merely intellectual.There is a deep and mysterious union here out of which emerges the most central understanding about the nature of the Christian faith.It reaches to such ideas as imply Jesus alone to be the one true prophet envisioned as coming in Israel’s history, that Jesus alone is the one destined for David’s throne and eternal rule, and that Jesus alone is the one priest, or mediating figure, who best stands between man and God and able, thereby to draw us to the presence of God the Father.It is, therefore, the most adequate way of understanding Jesus which, also leaves room for the validity of all of the other images that we have noted.The Gospel of John is telling us that it is Jesus alone who makes known the “name” of God (cf. Ex.3:14).

Questions: The perspective on Jesus’ identity that we find in John is an important illustration of early Trinitarian thinking.Take some time at this point and work through the Gospel of John, listing those places where a) the Son is said to be one with the Father (e.g. 10:30),

b) the Father is said to be at work in the Son (e.g. 5:19), and c) the Spirit is said to draw us as deeply into a relationship with the Father and Son as the Father and Son are one (e.g. 17:22)

III.The Holy Spirit Enables Us to Enter into this Reality

The Christian is to be like Christ.We are to develop the mind of Christ.If a summary of the Hebrew Scriptures can be seen in the injunction that we are to love the Lord our God with all of our strength and mind (Luke 10:27), Christ specifies and personalises what this means.It is neither abstract nor merely intellectual, but personal.Paul, after having experienced that transformation of his mind and attitudes on the Damascus road (Acts 9) later wrote from a prison cell, “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form (image) of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men....” (Phil. 2:5-7).This “renewing of the mind,” as it is referred to by Paul in Romans 12:2, is that which enables us to put off the “old self,” the image of God in ourselves that has been shattered and “which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires.”By means of the truth we see in Christ we are, “made new in the attitude of your (our) minds...to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:22-24).

In Jesus Christ we see the image that we were meant to be, by developing the mind of Christ we are given the means to become whole, to become restored images of God.It is by virtue of the work of the Holy Spirit, God’s Spirit, that this is achieved as we saw above, outlined in the Gospel of John 16-17.So, we may conclude, is it right, proper and fitting that we be in relationship with Christ?It is in this Spirit that Paul writes in II Corinthians 3:17-18:

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into His likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.