WE MAY get new knowledge in our heads and have new ideas, but it is not easy to keep the mind in this new state and to order our lives in harmony with it. Not in this world in which the “god of this system of things” is on the loose together with all his demons. And not now while we are in imperfect flesh with its downward inclinations toward sin, selfishness, forgetfulness and disregard for God. The apostle Paul, even though he was favored with such uplifting visions and revelations, did not find it easy to keep in the new way of living according to the knowledge he had of God’s revealed Word. He had a continual battle, and it was not all in the mind, so that we should say, “The battleground is in the mind.” He had the bodily imperfections, the passions and the groveling tendencies of his flesh, to contend with the same as we have today. And as he describes the battle he had with himself, not to speak of the battle with the Devil’s organization on the outside, we can see described our own battle with these bodies of ours which are dying because of inherited sin:
“For the good that I wish I do not do, but the bad that I do not wish is what I practice. If, now, what I do not wish is what I do, the one working it out is no longer I, but the sin dwelling in me. I find, then, this law in my case: that when I wish to do what is right, what is bad is present with me. I really delight in the law of God according to the man I am within, but I behold in my members another law warring against the law of my mind and leading me captive to sin’s law that is in my members. Miserable man that I am! Who will rescue me from the body undergoing this death? Thanks to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So, then, with my mind I myself am a slave to God’s law, but with my flesh to sin’s law.”—Rom. 7:19-25,
Take note of these apostolic expressions, “law of my mind” and “sin’s law that is in my members”. A law is a rule of action or conduct according to which a person or thing will operate or move. Jehovah God the Creator did not put sin’s law in mankind. It was our first human parent Adam under influence of the Devil that put it in human flesh and he passed it on to us as an inheritance. Unless controlled or resisted, that law of sin is bound to rule you and move you. What possible way is there of controlling or resisting it? It is by the ‘law of the mind’. Not the old mind, for this is sinful like the world, but the new mind which tends to make you an image of God the Creator of your new personality. This new mind dictates a new rule of action and conduct in your life. But since you have a new mind in an old body with an old brain, there is where the conflict arises. Due to your new process of thinking the ability to wish for better things is present with you, but the ability to do what you wish in a perfect way does not reside in you. This is because you are imperfect and the law of sin wants to have its way in and through your body and mind. Hence you find yourself often serving sin’s law with your flesh. But your comfort is that you do not find pleasure in having thus sinned, but your mind clings to God’s law and approves it and is set on doing it.
According to the inborn law in our minds, our minds desire or find it easy to gravitate to sin and selfishness. To supplant this with a better law, we have to have our minds made over with new knowledge and with what this knowledge now dictates and advises. It is not enough just to have knowledge in our heads. Many clergymen in Christendom and the members of their religious flocks have knowledge of the Bible, but they do not act according to this knowledge. It is no guiding law in their lives. But after we have gathered knowledge from God’s Word, we must work at our minds which are filled with this divine knowledge. Against the sinful inclinations within us and against the tendency to mental laziness and forgetfulness, we must cultivate proper mental habits. In this way we really develop a ‘law of the mind’, a certain mental cast or mold, a mental rule of action, and this becomes a controlling force in our lives.
With our blessed knowledge from God’s Word we must train our minds in right ways of thinking and in right processes and efforts. Otherwise, we can become persons whose minds have gone bad again, “men completely corrupted in mind, disapproved as regards the faith,” as Paul speaks of them. (1 Tim. 6:5; 2 Tim. 3:8, NW) Our everlasting existence depends upon our establishing a righteous ‘law of the mind’. Our eternal destiny depends upon what we fix our attention on. “For,” as we read at Romans 8:5-7 (NW), “those who are in accord with the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those in accord with the spirit on the things of the spirit. For the minding of the flesh means death, but the minding of the spirit means life and peace; because the minding of the flesh means enmity with God, for it is not under subjection to the law of God, nor, in fact, can it be.” If we get our minds off the truth and let them be corrupted again with the things of the Devil’s visible organization, it means the finish of us. “Their finish is destruction, and their god is their belly, and their glory consists in their shame, and they have their minds upon things on the earth.”—Phil. 3:18, 19, NW.
It is right that we fear lest our minds should be corrupted while we are in this world in which the great Serpent is slyly crawling around and misleading the people. The apostle expressed that fear when he said: “I am afraid that somehow, as the serpent seduced Eve by its craftiness, your minds might be corrupted away from the sincerity and the chastity that are due the Christ.” (2 Cor. 11:3, NW) We remember that originally Eve had a healthy mental process or law, according to God’s revelations in the garden of Eden. But the Devil, alias the Serpent, came along and tried to put unhealthful ideas into her head. Instead of repelling them, Eve entertained them and this breakdown of the righteous law of her mind led to her being tempted into sin. She thought more on the desirability of eating forbidden fruit than on the truth of God’s word and his warning against eating. Following the righteous law in her mental processes, fixing her thoughts on God’s word as being the truth even if it made the Serpent a liar, would have spared her from being tempted and being drawn into temptation and sinning.
If we, today, while the same Tempter is still about, establish the righteous ‘law of the mind’ and resolutely stick to the thinking processes of the new mind, it will keep us from entering into temptation and sinning. Enmity against God starts in the mind. The apostle tells us who have been reconciled to God: “You . . . were once alienated and enemies because your minds were on the works that were wicked.” He says that before we gave ourselves in obedience to God “we all at one time conducted ourselves in harmony with the desires of our flesh, doing the things the flesh and the thoughts willed, and we were naturally children of wrath even as the rest”.—Col. 1:21 and Eph. 2:2, 3, NW.
When we were in that ignorant mental state we did not love God with our minds. The greatest of the commandments that was ever given to men requires us to love God with all our mental powers. Jesus pointed out what this greatest commandment is when he quoted it from God’s Law and said: “You must love Jehovah your God with your whole heart and with your whole soul and with your whole mind.” (Matt. 22:37, NW; Deut. 6:5, AS; Luke 10:27) What we think on habitually greatly affects and influences us and induces us to take a certain way. To be thinking one way and yet be doing another thing outwardly is hypocrisy. We must think lovingly toward Jehovah God. That means thinking to please him by obeying him and taking faithful care of everything that honors his name and furthers the interests of his kingdom.
We cannot wholeheartedly serve God with a double mind. The psalmist rightly expressed it: “I hate them that are of a double mind; but thy law do I love.” (Ps. 119:113, AS) “I hate men who are half and half, I love thy law.” (Mo) Jesus hates them, too, and says to the many modern Laodiceans: “So, because you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I am going to vomit you out of my mouth.” (Rev. 3:16, NW) If you are of a double mind, dividing your attentions between this world and God and not making your mind over wholly to the image which God approves, it will in course of time betray itself without fail. That will mean your rejection. You will become corrupted mentally with infection from this world and you will enter into temptation. That is the very thing that has happened to Christendom. Your love of God with all your thinking processes is what you owe Him. He commands it. It is your safeguard.
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