According to Paul in Romans 8:27, “he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit.” So when John speaks of us “knowing that Jesus lives in us by the Spirit he gave us” in 1 John 3:24, the reason we know it is the mind of the Spirit at work in us.
And we need the Spirit’s mind at work in us, because “no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him,” 1 Corinthians 2:9. Our own human mind, left to itself, hasn’t got the capacity to grasp what “God destined for our glory before time began” (7) – “but,” verse 10, “God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.”
Which is why Paul didn’t depend on his own “wise and persuasive words” (4) to “clue you in to God’s secret plan” (1). Rather, Paul wanted everything he taught to be “a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power” (4-5). And again in verse 13, “When we speak, it’s not in words taught by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words” – because, verse 11, “no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.”
In other words, to know the thoughts of God – or to understand God’s mind – it takes a spiritual mind like his. And the Spirit is that mind. Not only does the Spirit have the ability to “search into everything about God,” verse 10, he can “delve into God’s deepest secrets” too.
That’s the amazing mind of the Spirit. There’s nothing about God and his plan for us humans that he doesn’t know, including God’s deepest secret of all, which is “what God has freely given us” (12) through “Jesus Christ and his death on the cross” (2). God’s entire plan revolves around that, but it’s only through the Spirit mind at work in our minds that we understand it (12). And that’s our proof we have the Spirit. As John writes in 1 John 4:2, “You’ll know it’s God’s Spirit, because you’ll have no trouble accepting that Jesus came to us as a human being” – and know why too – to be “the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and for everyone else’s sins too” (2:2).
So when God searches our hearts he knows it’s the mind of the Spirit at work in us too. Not only because we understand the part Jesus played in his plan, but also because of “The Spirit’s prayers for us”….(next blog)
Buck To Basics 