"What are the things of the Spirit", continued

Matthew Henry’s interpretation worries me, because I don’t know that my thoughts move most often with pleasure to the welfare of my soul and the concerns of eternity. When I was in high school and liked very much to read plays, it was really a terrible difficulty to me, the thought that to really give my heart and mind entirely to Christ I would need to give up thinking about and liking Tom Stoppard, because I would just need to think about God all the time. When I am at work with a lot of manual labor to do in which my mind is left to its own devices for a couple hours, I could pray or listen to sermons or sing worship, but to be honest I don’t usually want to do any of those things, and would rather listen to novels. Does this mean that I am not setting my mind on the things of the Spirit? Is it evidence that my flesh is not being conformed to the life of God, that the graft is not taking?

It might, but I think that here we run back into question 2, about whether “walking according to the Spirit” consisted of discrete thoughts and actions. And I concluded that it does but it doesn’t… the actions and thoughts are the outward signs of the inward life..essentially, the only importance of a thought or action is in its motivation, from or against God. And so, if I read Tom Stoppard because I love God and want to further appreciate the depth of His creation and the beauty of His order, I am still setting my mind on the things of the Spirit. As Matthew Henry says, “Which way go our plans and contrivances?” It’s the direction of the action that matters, not the action itself.

But this doesn’t bring us any closer to answering the question of “what are the things of the Spirit?” I don’t know if it can be answered, because the Spirit is a Person. I think I can only know what they are by knowing Him and asking Him all the time. This makes sense with the interesting phrase, “walk according to the Spirit,” and with the beautiful image in Psalm 119 of the law as a path. When you walk “according to a path” you “set your mind on the things of the path” in that you don’t just start at the beginning, have in your head an idea of the end, and think about it. You pay attention to where the path is going during the whole journey. To “set your mind on the things of the Spirit” is to know the Spirit, and ask Him, where do I go and what do I do?

But this is kind of simplistic, because we all know that we can’t usually just ask him, Spirit, what’s the direction, and we hear a voice in our ears saying, go left. And it’s way better than that too! Because I really do believe that as he works in us, we are transformed. I think if I study and obey the word, and as I ask him where we should go and do it, by his mercy I really am a little bit changed into the sort of person whose will is in line with his and who wants what he wants… that is, my mind becomes a little more set on “the things of the Spirit.”

So here we are again, just like on question 2! I started out with works, but ended up with grace! Yes, to set our minds on the things of the Spirit is something that we do and needs conscious action and intention on our part, but its source and direction is this abstract and incomprehensible gift, the gift of life through the Spirit.