Of Two Minds
QUOTES FOR REFLECTION
“One of the things you can always depend on – this is one of the truths of the universe, and you heard it first from here – whatever we decide we want to do is what we do.”
~Morgan Freeman, actor and producer
“What the heart loves, the will chooses, and the mind justifies.”
~John Ashley Null in Thomas Cranmer’s Doctrine of Repentance: Renewing the Power to Love
“Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second…. Our moral thinking is much more like a politician searching for votes than a scientist searching for truth.”
~Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion
“The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.”
~Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), French mathematician and philosopher in Pensées
“Such is the grasping tendency of the human heart, that it must have a something to lay hold of and which, if wrested away without the substitution of another something in its place, would leave a void and a vacancy as painful to the mind, as hunger is to the natural system.”
~Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847), Scottish minister, professor, and social reformer
“I thought I found the antidote this time,
But I’m unraveled (I’m unraveled)…
Why can’t you come stitch me up? (I’m unraveled)
Why can’t it ever be enough? (I’m unraveled)…
All because my head is full of poison and my heart is full of doubt.
I got toxins in my bloodstream (I’m unraveled)…
But it don’t matter how your love feels anymore (I’m unraveled)
It’ll never be the cure.”
~Olivia Rodrigo, singer-songwriter and actress in her song “The Cure”
“How long beneath the Law I lay, In bondage and distress;
I toiled the precept to obey, But toiled without success.
“To see the law by Christ fulfilled, And hear His pardoning voice,
Changes a slave into a child, And duty into choice.”
~William Cowper (1731-1800), famed poet and hymnwriter
SERMON PASSAGE
Romans 8:1-13 (NASB95)
Romans 8
1 Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. 3 For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, 4 so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5 For those who are in accord with the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are in accord with the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. 6 For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, 7 because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, 8 and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
9 However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him. 10 If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness. 11 But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.
12 So then, brothers and sisters, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh— 13 for if you are living in accord with the flesh, you are going to die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
Colossians 3
1 Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. 3 For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.
5 Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.
1 John 3
1 See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. 2 Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is. 3 And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.
4 Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness. 5 You know that He appeared in order to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin.