Love God With All Your Mind (2)

Following up my post of a couple of weeks ago on the vital importance of the mind in the Christian life, I thought it beneficial to share some thoughts I enjoyed in my reading expressed by my friend Jonathan Edwards relating to this foundational issue. These comments are found in his sermon “Christian Knowledge” (you can find it, along with a number of other sermons by Edwards, in the Banner of Truth publication--“Jonathan Edwards On Knowing Christ”). The sermon is based on Hebrews 5:12, where the admonishment is given that “though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food."

Edwards says:

...The heart cannot be set upon an object of which there is no idea in the understanding. The reasons which induce the soul to love, must first be understood, before they can have a reasonable influence on the heart.

God hath given us the Bible, which is a book of instructions. But this book can be of no manner of profit to us, any otherwise than as it conveys some knowledge to the mind: it can profit us no more than if it were written in the Chinese or Tartarian language, of which we know not one word... Such is the nature of man, that no object can come at the heart but through the door of the understanding: and there can be no spiritual knowledge of that of which there is not first a rational knowledge. It is impossible that any one should see the truth or excellency of any doctrine of the gospel, who knows not what that doctrine is. A man cannot see the wonderful excellency and love of Christ in doing such and such things for sinners, unless his understanding be first informed how those things were done. He cannot have a taste of the sweetness and excellency of divine truth, unless he first have a notion that there is such a thing.

God hath given to man some things in common with the brutes, as his outward senses, his bodily appetites, a capacity of bodily pleasure and pain, and other animal faculties: and some things he hath given him superior to the brutes, the chief of which is the faculty of understanding and reason. Now God never gave man these faculties to be subject to those which he hath in common with the brutes. This would be great confusion, and equivalent to making man to be a servant of the beasts. On the contrary, he has given those inferior powers to be employed in subserviency to man’s understanding; and therefore it must be a great part of man’s principal business to improve his understanding by acquiring knowledge. If so, then it will follow, that it should be a main part of his business to improve his understanding in acquiring divine knowledge, or the knowledge of the things of divinity: for the knowledge of these things is the principal end of this faculty. God gave man the faculty of understanding, chiefly, that he might understand divine things.

There seems to be no question that our mind matters greatly to God. Perhaps the question that can be raised is what we are intentionally and consciously doing, unlike animals, to discipline and strengthen our minds, so that we are using them chiefly for the purpose God intended--to grow in our understanding of the things of God, tasting of the sweetness and excellency of divine truth, and then to live coram Deo--before the holy gaze of God, under His authority, and for His glory.