Two Minds

Lenten Season: Sunday, 6 April 2014.  

Rev. Bruce Skelton, Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Highlands Ranch, Colorado ☩ www.hclchr.org


nullEvery once in a while a Christian from outside Lutheranism will ask me why we Lutherans do not give altar calls or have a place in our worship where we people can come forward to indicate that they have accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord. Due to the influence of Billy Graham and other popular evangelists, there are many who think that if you don’t give an altar call, you have not properly preached the gospel.

Well, the short answer to that question is that there is no example of such a thing in the Bible and no command to do so. Jesus and the Apostles certainly preached the gospel, yet while they often called on people to repent and believe in Christ (as I also do), there is no indication that they ever invited them to raise their hands or get out of their seats and come forward. That method of evangelism came into vogue in the early 19th century and was later popularized by Charles Finney. Iain Murray chronicled this in his book Revival and Revivalism where he wrote the following regarding altar calls:

“Nobody, at first, claimed to regard it as a means of conversion. But very soon, and inevitably, answering the call to the altar came to be confused with being converted.”

Murray goes on to show the damaging effects of “revivalism,” the evangelistic method that emphasizes some external action that the sinner can do to be saved.  The root problem with this teaching and the reason why we do not have altar calls in the Lutheran church is the biblical understanding of the spiritual condition of unbelievers and the nature of true conversion, which St. Paul thoroughly addresses in our text this morning, particularly in verses5-8.

For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.  For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot.  Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

What the apostle is doing here is setting up a dichotomy, which is defined in the Merriam Webster’s dictionary as:  “A division into two especially mutually exclusive or contradictory groups or entities.” The two mutually exclusive and contradictory groups Paul points to are those whose minds are on the things of the flesh and those whose minds are on things of the spirit.  For this morning’s message I would like to take a longer look at these two minds.

To have “a mind on the things of of the flesh” means to live under the domination of the flesh and to obey its dictates. Another way of saying it is that such people are “in the flesh” or they live in the sphere of the flesh. While such people may believe in a god or gods and even be outwardly very religious or pious, inwardly they are ultimately selfish and live only to please themselves or as one commentator defines it, “the life of the ‘I’ for itself.”

Paul also points out that the mind set on the flesh is spiritually dead and headed toward eternal death.  To be spiritually dead means to be separated from God and the eternal life that only He can give. In Ephesians 2 Paul write that we  “all were dead in our trespasses and sins” before God graciously imparted new life to us through faith in Jesus Christ.

If that were not bad enough, Paul also writes that the mind of the flesh is hostile toward God.

John Gill nails it in his Exposition of the Bible  where he writes:

“These words contain a reason why the issue of carnal mindedness is death; because the carnal mind, the wisdom of the flesh, is not only an enemy, but enmity itself against God: against his being; it reasons against it; it wishes he was not; it forms unworthy notions of him; thinks him such an one as itself; and endeavours to bury him in forgetfulness, and erase out of its mind all memorials of him: it is at enmity against his perfections; either denying his omniscience; or arraigning his justice and faithfulness; or despising his goodness, and abusing his grace and mercy… This enmity is universal, it is in all men in unregeneracy, either direct or indirect, hidden or more open; it is undeserved; it is natural and deeply rooted in the mind, and irreconcilable without the power and grace of God. It shows itself in an estrangedness from God; in holding friendship with the world, in harbouring the professed enemies of God, in living under the government of sin and Satan; in hating what God loves, and in loving what God hates; in omitting what God commands, and committing what he forbids; it manifests itself in their language, and throughout the whole of their conversations.”

The Apostle Paul also does not just say that those who are in the flesh do not submit to God’s law. He goes a step further by saying that they are not even able to do so, adding  in verse 8, “those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” Cannot is a word of inability. It goes back to the matter of a sinner’s fallen nature in Adam, which is incapable of obeying God or pleasing Him. Suffice it to say that Paul consistently teaches complete human inability to respond to God apart from the work of God the Holy Spirit. 

It is important to point out, however, that this doctrine didn’t begin with St. Paul. Jesus also clearly taught taught that no one can come to Him unless the Father grants it and draws him, as he did in his famous “Bread of Life” sermon in John 6 which says:

Jesus answered them, “Do not grumble among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.  It is written in the Prophets, ‘And they will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me… And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”

He also pointedly asked the skeptical Jews in John 8: “Why do you not understand what I am saying?” He then answers His own question, “It is because you cannot hear My word.”  They could obviously hear what He was saying to them, but they lacked the spiritual ability to hear it and believe it.

Well, enough about the mind that is on the flesh. Now let us look at the mind that is on the Spirit.  As usual Martin Luther hits the ball out of the park in His explanation of the third article of the Apostles Creed found on page 323 in our hymnals:

I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith.

In the same way He call, gathers enlightens and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith.

In this Christian church He daily and richly forgives all my sins and the sins of all beleivers. On the last Day He will raise me and all the dead, and give eternal life to me and all beleivers in Christ. This is most certainly true.

What a clear and concise statement of what the work of the Holy Spirit is. He calls us by the Gospel and delivers us into faith in Jesus. None of us here today would believe in Him were it not for the wonderful, miraculous work of God the Holy Spirit through Word and Sacrament.  This is same Spirit with which Jesus was anointed with at His baptism, beyond all measure, which is why we call him the Christ or the Messiah, which means the anointed one.  So if we want to see the perfect mind of the Spirit, then you need look no further than Jesus Christ.

It was he who willingly and gladly shouldered the cross and took the punishment for our sins upon himself, so that we would be counted and holy in God’s sight and justified by grace through faith in Him.  And that is the beautiful gospel the same lovely truth that St. Paul boldly proclaims at the beginning of our text:

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.

As hard as that is to comprehend, it is true. The law which condemned us and declared us all guilty and sentenced us to death because we all had minds focused on the flesh, has now been taken away by the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Now there is no condemnation, for us at all. Jesus did it all perfectly for us.  He lived the perfect life for us. He died the perfect sacrificial death for us. He perfectly rose again from the dead for us. He perfectly acscended into heaven for us, where He now perfectly intercedeces at God the Father’s right hand for us.  He did it all and we would not know or believe any of this were it not for the wonderful life-giving, life-saving work of God the Holy Spirit who operates through the means of grace, that is through God’s Holy Word and Sacraments. 

The good news is that we now have been given a new mind and spirit which frees us and empowers to love and live lives filled with mercy and compassion toward others, not because we have to, not out of fear of being punished by God, but because we want to, because of what our loving Savior has done for us. And that is what it means to live by the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, the of Spirit of God, the Spirit of Jesus, who gives to us a new nature that joyfully seeks to do God’s will. We now have a different mind, a mind completely opposite of the mind of the flesh, because our hearts have been changed by the grace and mercy of God.

Now this is where we have to be careful, because even though we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, this does that mean will we always do the right thing. While we are still in these bodies of  flesh, the mind of the flesh or the Old Adam, as we Lutherans call him, is always trying to sneek in the back door. But whenever we do sin we know that God will forgive us and pick us up and dust us off and by his Spirit empower us to continue to fight the good fight of faith, knowing the whole time that it is not we who do it, but God who did it.  It is not our decision or our answering of an altar call that saves us, but rather Jesus answering the call to the call to die on the altar of the cross that saves us and all who believe.  May God the Holy Spirit ever empower our hearts and minds to believe it. In Jesus Name. Amen.