Let This Mind That Was in Christ Be in You

To let this mind that was in Christ be in you is the greatest challenge that any human being can ever undertake. This may seem surprising, because anyone who calls themselves a Christian would naturally say that they follow the Master as he instructed. Yet to let the mind that was in Christ Jesus be in you means that, like him, you must take up your cross and follow him into the experience that is death into LIFE.

This is where the difficulty quietly appears. It is far easier to believe that the Master accomplished something for us than to recognise that he revealed a path that must also be walked within us. Many are content to revere what he did, while hesitating to enter the same surrender through which that LIFE was revealed.

If you are to explore the invitation, “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus,” then the key word in that instruction is the word let. Hidden within that simple word is the whole mystery of surrender. To let this mind be in you means that nothing in the separate personal self can remain in control. The sense of identity that gathers itself around “I, me, and mine” cannot direct this movement, because the mind of Christ does not arise from the personal self. It appears only where that self loosens its grip and yields its authority.

This is why the teaching of the Master returns again and again to the impossibility of serving two masters. The personal self seeks its own preservation, its own story, and its own advantage, while the dynamic revealed in Christ invites the surrender of that very centre of identity. These two movements cannot occupy the same throne. The invitation is not to improve the personal self, but to see through it, to dis-identify from it, so that another centre of LIFE may become visible.

When this surrender becomes real, the words of the Apostle Paul cease to be theology and become direct experience: “I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” The Christ of which Paul speaks cannot be limited to the historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth. Rather, it is the same living dynamic from which the Master himself lived and through which his life was expressed. What appeared in Jesus as the Christ was not meant to remain confined to one life, but to be revealed wherever this same surrender allows that LIFE to awaken.

Deny Thyself: The Crossing of the Carnal Mind

So the challenge truly begins when you become willing to explore the invitation that is “putting on the mind of Christ.” This is not a symbolic gesture or a statement of belief. It means entering the path that the Master himself described: to deny yourself, to take up your cross, and to follow. The instruction is simple in its wording yet immense in its implication, because the one who must be denied is the very self you have spent your life protecting and defending.

This is why the teaching of the Master always points inward. Spiritual authority may guide, encourage, and illuminate, yet the actual crossing cannot be done for you. The invitation must be received within your own experience as you become willing to follow the living instruction of the Master rather than relying solely on second-hand interpretations of his words.

The key phrase in this instruction is “deny thyself.” This does not mean rejecting your humanity, but releasing the assumption that the separate personal self is the centre from which LIFE must be lived. It is the quiet practice often expressed as “letting go and letting God.” It is the same movement behind the radical instruction, “take no thought.” It is the return to the simplicity of the little child who knows how to enter the Kingdom because the child has not yet constructed the elaborate identity that must later be surrendered.

The mind shaped by the sense of separation lives by division, comparison, and opposition. It interprets reality through pairs of opposites and assumes that this fragmented perception is normal. The mind that was in Christ does not see in this way. Where the ordinary mind perceives division, that mind perceives unity. Where the ordinary mind defends the separate self, that mind lives from the indivisible LIFE of the Father.

The Mind of Christ Is Not Added — It Is Unveiled

While the statement “put on the mind of Christ” may appear to suggest that this is something you must do, the deeper discovery reveals that this is not quite the case. The mind of Christ is not something added to you as though it were an external quality to be acquired. Rather, it is the unveiling of the truth of who you are.

You are made in the image of God, yet that image cannot be reduced to words, definitions, or concepts. It can only be known through direct experience. This is the experience to which the Master pointed when he declared, “I am in the Father, and the Father is in me.” Notice that within this declaration there are not two realities but one living unity.

This oneness is not something that must be achieved. It is something that must be unveiled.

As you take up your cross — which is your identification with the separate sense of the personal “me” — and gradually deny that identity the oxygen that sustains it, something remarkable begins to occur. You begin to relinquish the life you think you are for the LIFE that is the Christ within you.

What follows is what the tradition has always called resurrection. You awaken into a LIFE more abundant, not because something new has been added to you, but because what has always been true is finally able to live itself through you. The Divine no longer appears as something distant that you are trying to reach across a divide. Instead, the Divine lives through you and as you, revealing that the separation you once struggled to overcome never truly existed.

The invitation to “let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus” therefore brings the entire question of the carnal mind into sharp focus. The mind that you ordinarily experience as “yourself” is a mind that lives through division. It sees the world in opposites, defends a separate identity, and constantly seeks to preserve the life it believes it possesses. This is the mind that Scripture calls the carnal mind. It is not evil in the moral sense; it is simply a mode of perception built upon the assumption of separation.

The mind that was in Christ is of a completely different order. It does not arise from the effort of the personal self, nor is it something that can be manufactured through belief, discipline, or religious performance. It is revealed only as the structures of the separate self begin to loosen their hold. As the identification with “I, me, and mine” is gradually surrendered, the deeper truth of your Being begins to unveil itself.

This is why the path described by the Master always passes through the cross. The cross is not primarily a historical symbol but an inner event. It is the place where the false centre of identity is relinquished so that the LIFE that comes from the Father may be known directly. When this surrender becomes real, the words of the Apostle Paul cease to be a theological statement and become a living reality: “I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.”

What is revealed in that moment is not the arrival of something new, but the unveiling of what has always been true. The mind of Christ is the mind of unity, the direct KNOWING of the indivisible LIFE of the Father. When this mind becomes visible within you, the struggle to bridge the imagined distance between yourself and the Divine quietly falls away. The Divine is no longer something you seek outside yourself, but the very LIFE that is expressing itself through you and as you.

To let this mind be in you is therefore the great turning point. It is the moment when the life of the separate self begins to give way to the LIFE that the Master revealed. What follows is what the tradition has always called resurrection: the awakening into a life more abundant, where the Presence of the Divine is no longer believed in from a distance but known directly as the truth of your own Being.