HAVING THE SAME MIND AND OPINION
AND SPEAKING THE SAME THING
In 1:10 Paul said, "Now I beseech you, brothers, through the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be attuned in the same mind and in the same opinion." It is possible to have the same mind and opinion and speak the same thing only when we are in the spirit. When we are in the soul, we can never have the same mind. The only way is for us to be transformed by remaining in the spirit.
In verse 13 Paul said, "Is Christ divided?" Paul said this because Christ is in you, in me, and in all the saints. This implies that we have to forget about ourselves and simply take Christ. Then we are one. If we do not take Christ practically in our daily life, how can we be one with one another? It is impossible. We are many individuals, but Christ is one. When we are in ourselves, we are many, but when we have Christ and are in Christ, we are one.
OUR NEED TO BE SPIRITUAL MEN
FOR THE CHURCH LIFE
In chapter two Paul reveals that to have Christ, to realize Christ, to experience Christ, and to partake of Christ, we need to be spiritual not soulish. The soulish man, the man in the soul, can never realize the things of Christ (v. 14). This is like trying to realize sound with your eyes. Sound can be realized only by our hearing organ. Christ is the life-giving Spirit and He can be realized only by our spiritual organ, that is, our spirit. Only the spiritual man can discern the depths of God, which is Christ Himself (vv. 10-11, 15).
This is not just a doctrine. We have to be in the spirit so that the Spirit can saturate our soul and take over our whole being. Then we can say, as Paul said in 2:16, that we have the mind of Christ. We in this verse does not refer to the fleshly or soulish believers at Corinth but to the ones in verse 6 who preach God’s wisdom and minister the spiritual things to the spiritual persons (v. 13). These are the apostles and all those who walk in the spirit. The fleshly and soulish believers cannot say that they have the mind of Christ.
Romans 12:2 tells us to be transformed by the renewing of the mind. Only the regenerated and transformed Christians can say that they have the mind of Christ. A person like Paul is qualified to say that he has the mind of Christ because he is spiritual and he has been transformed by having his mind renewed with the saturation of the Holy Spirit. Such a person can express his opinion because he has the mind of Christ. His opinion has something of Christ.
A soulish man is a natural man, one who allows his soul (including the mind, the emotion, and the will) to dominate his entire being and who lives by his soul, ignoring his spirit, not using his spirit, and even behaving as if he did not have a spirit (Jude 19). Soulish Christians like to argue and debate over doctrinal matters.
(The Experience of Christ as Life for the Building Up of the Church, Chapter 5, by Witness Lee)
