Understanding The Psychology of Christ: Being God-Inside Minded

Understanding The Psychology of Christ: Being God-Inside Minded

Years ago, the Lord instructed me to study what he called the “psychology of Christ.” What might that be? The psychology of Christ would be what can be learned of His understanding of Himself, specifically Jesus’ sense of “self-referral.” Here is an example:

Mark 14:34 And saith unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death: tarry ye here, and watch.

Notice how Jesus refers to His soul in the third person in this verse. It is as though He saw His soul as something external to Himself. He was looking out of His soul as we tend to look out of our bodies. If you stub your toe on a piece of furniture, you don’t say, “I stubbed myself,” or “I am stubbed!” Instead, you say, “I stubbed my toe.” In other words, you inherently know that you are more than your toe; therefore, you rightly perceive your body as an appendage to your true self.

On the other hand, when referring to the soul part of yourself (mind, will, emotions), you will make statements such as “I think,” or “I feel,” or “I will.” In studying the words of Jesus, you will not find statements such as these where Jesus is referring to His own thoughts, feelings, or decisions. In His sense of self-referral, He experienced His soul as something external to Himself just as we experience our body parts as something external to ourselves. So what? What is the big deal? It couldn’t be more important to understand this as an indicator of spiritual growth that the Holy Spirit wants to bring about in our lives.

In the gospel of John, Jesus makes some telling statements:

[Jhn 10:30 KJV] 30 I and [my] Father are one.

[Jhn 4:23 KJV] 23 But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him.

Where did the Father live on this inside of Jesus? Where might we find that part of Jesus that made Him God on earth? The Father indeed resided in Jesus as a whole, so we aren’t trying to split hairs here but notice that Jesus says that He is one with the Father and that He desires that we worship Him in the spirit. What does that mean? Is He merely saying that when we worship Him, he wants us to take on an esoteric or mystical frame of mind called “being in the spirit?” No. If I invite you to my house for dinner, you don’t say, “I’m going to Russ and Kitty’s back yard.” Because we aren’t going to visit with you in the back yard, we are going to visit with you inside our house. Likewise, the Father worships us in the spirit because your human spirit is God’s house.

When he says that He and the Father are one, He says something about the “I” that is in Him, or His sense of self-awareness as being one with the Father. He was more God-conscious than He was self-conscious. Adam was initially created that way, which tells us why he didn’t know he was naked till after the fall. He was so God-conscious that he wasn’t aware of his unclothed state. In salvation, God wants and desires to return us to that overarching state of God-consciousness, being so full of God and so attuned with Him that His glory eclipses self-consciousness and sin. What is his glory? We call it many things but looking more in-depth at the glory it is understood to be the effulgence or “out raying” of His presence or divinity.

Too much for you? Too early to think that deeply? Have a second cup of coffee and think about being God-inside minded. Think about being so one with God that you, as Jesus can say, “The Father and I are one.” Think about the sense of self-awareness in you moving from your soul to your spirit, causing something in you, how you relate to and understand yourself to change fundamentally. It is available. It’s what Paul aspired to and what you and I can experience on this side of eternity as the fulness of Christ in our lives.