Perfected With The Mind of Christ

I get it. It can happen to any of us. Falling into the comfort of Karma. After all, in this world, it is the accepted and often proven law of “you get what you deserve”. Don’t study for tests? You eventually fail. Break the speed limit often enough? You get a ticket. It goes against our nature to consider anything to the contrary.

But in God’s economy for our righteousness, this is one of the areas where the “foolishness of the cross” (I Cor. 1:18) comes in. Jesus was very specific about the fact that we cannot be “good enough”. In fact, He tells us “For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teacher of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt. 5:20). Andy Stanley in his short booklet “Since Nobody’s Perfect, How Good Is Good Enough” reminds us that the Pharisees were the “professional do-gooders”. Perfections is God’s standard and we cannot succeed in this pursuit.

The good news is we don’t have to “work” for this perfection. The attainment of this perfection is the free gift received by merely “confess and believe” (Rom. 10:9), and with that simple act of faith, we are a “new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17)

So today, I will focus on being led, instead of striving, remembering that it is “God who works in me to will and to act in order to fulfill His good pleasure.” (Phil. 2:13). Today, I will be who the Bible says I am….Perfected with the Mind of Christ.

— Stacy Werner