Mind

Loving God “with all your mind,” is not nearly as hard a concept to grasp as the previous two sections from Mark 12:30 I have discussed.  Of course, as is so often the case in life, it is perhaps easier said than done.  It is my belief that this kind of mental devotion to God can be boiled down to three basic areas; thought-life, attitude, and intellect.

As fallen beings our thoughts often betray us.  Paul wrote that he had to consciously make his every thought captive to Christ.  He also wrote that he had to renew his mind daily.  In this sense loving God with your entire mind would mean that you seek purity in your thoughts.  With obedience we can control the things we allow our minds to dwell on, however it takes a measure of steadfastness, devotion, and discipline.

Our attitudes are another area where we all-too-often fail to love God with our whole mind.  This point was made so very real to me during my trip to Ecuador this past summer.  In a part of the country that was extremely poor and by all our culture’s indicators should have been depressing and destitute, I met some of the most jovial and upbeat personalities I’ve ever crossed paths with.  Why?  Because their attitudes are rooted in a righteous perspective of who God is, what He has done for them, and a healthy faith in His power and willingness to be sovereign in their day-to-day lives.  In stark contrast I’ve known many people within our borders who would claim Christian status and yet do not at all display the upbeat contentment that I found among my Ecuadorian brethren.

Intellect is the last part of our mind that I believe we should turn over fully to the King.  To be blunt, many Christians are dumb.  There are probably numerous reasons for this but the most glaring reasons I have encountered for this are laziness and apathy.  Many believers today have an extremely poor knowledge of the basic principles of their faith and many more are just too apathetic to think that they should honor God by furthering their intellect.

In loving God with our entire mind I believe that we will develop a better sense of how to serve Him through a healthy thought-life, a contagious attitude, and a robust intellect.  This is perhaps one of the most neglected aspects of the Christian faith.

Soul

“With all your soul,” could probably be one of the most confusing phrases ever spoken and if not for the great wealth of insight Scripture gives us concerning the personhood of Christ it would be hard to grasp the nature of what He meant.

We can look to John 4:24 for further illumination on this phrase as during his discourse with the woman at the well Jesus uses another phrase, “worship in spirit and in truth.”  You’ll need to (and should) visit that passage for the full context of what is being discussed there.  Essentially Jesus is speaking to the theological principal that your inner self is the true self.  If you could peal back the physiological composition that contrives your physical essence and see the soul inside, you would be able to look on the real you.

Loving God “with all your soul” means that you love Him with a deep authenticity that is rooted in the very nature of who/what you are as His created being.  Authentic-soul-level-love surpasses the wishy-washy nature of a cultural religious phenomenon or ritual and surpasses even a lifestyle to alter the fabric of one’s very identity itself.