THINKING LIKE JESUS by steve johnson
WJD—what would Jesus do? is a popular motto for many Christians who strive to live by Jesus’ example in daily life. While that’s a good guide for us in some things, I suggest something even more basic than that: WWJT—what would Jesus think? The fundamental thing that separates Christians from everyone else in the world is first and foremost how we think and, only second, what we do. When we became Christians, we were given the Holy Spirit to live in us and with Him the mind of Christ. There is nothing more basic to the Christian life than this. Since the mind is where we perceive, reason, think, and understand, everything flows from this. When we have the mind of Christ we have His views, His feelings, His temperament, and we are influenced by His Spirit.
Ray Stedman puts it this way, “We have the very way of thinking about life that Jesus himself had, with that keen ability to observe what was going on around Him, that ability to evaluate the changing standards of men and to come right through to the very heart of the thing. That is the mind of Christ, the ability to know what was in man. He needed no one to tell Him because he understood men. That is the mind of Christ. The mark of it, of course, is that we will behave as Jesus did. In the midst of this present world we will be compassionate when others are severe; we will be severe when others are tolerant; we will be kind to the ugly, the poor, the obscure, the people of no ability or power...That is the mind of Christ.”1 Although we have been given the mind of Christ, we still have the capability of
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“…we have the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16)
