We are now at a sufficient size as a congregation and an elder board, and we have now been in existence as a church long enough to start developing different perspectives or opinions on any number of things. There is a form of this that is simply the way God made the world – seeing things out of our own eyes is a creational thing.
But sin infects everything, including this. It infects both our different perspectives and how we think about the differences. It affects how we develop these perspectives and how we evaluate them. So part of sanctification is constantly checking ourselves and our perspectives.
We’ve been drowning in the mantra of “diversity” for a few decades now, but it’s becoming increasingly obvious that this was always incoherent. You cannot have any kind of healthy diversity without meaningful unity. The human body really is a diverse factory of cells and functions, but it is fundamentally a unified project. Everything works well because there is one mind working well. Cancer is a kind of diversity, but that only lasts temporarily and then everything returns to the monotony of death.
Humanism has to constantly make peace with sin and evil. Since humanism has no solution to evil, it must call evil good and good attempts to overcome evil, it calls evil. This is why it is “good” for children to explore deviant sexuality, but it is “evil” for children to be told they have sexual assignments from God embedded in their biology. But since humanism has no solution to evil desires, it must make peace with them and identify attempts to stop them as the problem. “It’s not the cancer; it’s all your attempts to treat the cancer.”
This goes back to the Freudian lie that if you try to repress desires, that will cause dysfunction, but if you release desires when they are small, people will function somewhat more normally. But it turns out that there are no breaks, and the sinful heart conjures increasingly deviant desires. Even Freud would probably be horrified with how far it has gone.
But the gospel has the audacity to say that sin can and must stop, including the foundational sins of pride, self-seeking, arrogance, rebellion, complaining, factions, and bitterness. And therefore, the gospel includes the call to true likemindedness. The world will accuse us of being a cult, and we must not care.
“Now the God of patience and consolation grant you to be likeminded one toward another according to Christ Jesus: That ye may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom 15:5-6).
Literally, the word for “likeminded” is “wise in one another.” We are to study one another, seeking to understand one another. A husband is to study his wife and be wise in her, parents need to study their children, and so too the church as the body of Christ is to practice unity and like-mindedness by being wise in one another. The word for “one mind” is literally “one passion or fierceness.” The word apparently literally means something like “breathing hard” or “out of breath” – so you might think of some kind of team sport like crew where each man is breathing hard with one passion – they call that moment “swing” – that magical moment when the entire crew moves as one—every catch, drive, and recovery perfectly timed. Rowers describe it as an almost transcendent feeling where the boat seems to surge forward effortlessly, the individual efforts disappear into the collective rhythm, and everything just clicks. Different actors/athletes are acting freely, playing their unique part, but as one.
Paul develops this theme in greatest detail in Philippians 2: “Fulfil ye my joy, that ye be likeminded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind” (Phil. 2:2)
It was Paul’s great joy to see his people being likeminded. As shepherds, we ought to make this our joy and tell our people when they do. The words he uses are “same thinking” and “one spirit/soul” and “one mind.” Some churches accomplish this by watering down the mission – talk about fewer things, try to do fewer things (e.g. keep it only about “the gospel” — don’t apply God’s Word to culture or politics). This is like deciding that your crew team will just sit in a boat and paddle very slowly, maybe just avoid water altogether – but now you’re not doing what you’re supposed to do.
Sometimes this is what is happening when all the focus in a church is on “community,” but community ought to be thought of as more akin to “swing” – that synchronization that occurs when everyone is pulling toward the goal with intensity. The church really is a body with many different parts, or to change the image, a great army with many different assignments. The cooks and doctors must not resent the mess that comes with feeding and healing the soldiers. When pastors attack sin and folly, sometimes the cries go up that it’s destroying the unity and community, but they are fulfilling an essential function.
“Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves. Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others” (Phil. 2:3-4).
Strife can mean contention or factions. Vainglory means empty glory, so literally making a big deal about things that are worthless or empty. And in context, the implication seems to be self-glory. Lowliness of mind means exactly that. To “esteem” is actually the Greek word “hegoumenoi,” which is where we get the word “hegemony,” which means rule or govern. Here the verb is in the middle voice, which means it’s not quite active or passive (which is interesting). How are we to govern/rule in relation to others? It’s exactly active, but it isn’t passive either. It’s both. There is give and take. We really ought to meditate on that more. And this is to be done such that others are ranked above ourselves. Not everyone focusing the most attention on their own concerns, but everyone focusing on the needs of others.
“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men…” (Phil. 2:5-7)
So the exhortation is to pursue true biblical likemindedness. Do not believe the humanistic lie that says it’s impossible. Don’t believe the liberal lie that says it’s only possible if we water down what we think and do. What we’re aiming for is a kind of “swing” that is only possible when everyone is pursuing Christ with all their might, out of breath, chasing the mission of Christ, the glory of Christ.
Amen.
Photo by Matteo Vistocco on Unsplash
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