By Glen R. Jackman

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12 ESV)

God understands our thoughts and discerns the motives of our mind, which is clear from the above verse: “discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart”. The NLT version uses the word “exposes” for discerning while the NIV uses the word “judges”. The reality is that God knows our thoughts and as our creator assesses the construction of our attitudes framing all our thinking which is the cause and effect of our actions – our deeds. This is a truth that the great prophet Jeremiah pointed out when the majority of the Israelite’s due to wayward leadership, had wandered away from God, and would soon go into captivity under His judgement: “I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve.” (Jeremiah 17:10 NIV) The link between Yahweh assessing the mind is directly related to our outward actions towards God and man: “according to…their deeds”.

God Searches our hearts
As we seek to follow the Lord in holiness, we need to comprehend that He is indeed aware of our every thought. Jesus while on earth, indicated that he knew the thoughts of men before they even spoke: “Jesus knowing their thoughts said, ‘Why are you thinking evil in your hearts?’” (Matthew 9:4 NAS) He reiterated this ability as our Lord in heaven – he searches our hearts in relation to our deeds: “I am He who searches the minds and hearts; and I will give to each one of you according to your deeds.” (Revelation 2:23 NASV)

This revelation of God’s unity with us in mind as our creator who has set guidelines for our thinking, was expanded by our Lord in His Sermon on the Mount: “but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart”. (Matthew 5:28 NASV) Jesus was expanding the principles of the New Covenant based on the axiom of love. He would further pray that His disciples live out this maximal importance of unity of thinking based on the Law of Love with the effect that others would believe in the Gospel mission of redemption. He prayed: “that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me”. (John 17:21 ESV)

Paul would echo this in his writing. He advocated that we would have our minds lined up with God’s mind to reflect His views on life and His Sovereign governance: “Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus” and that God would give us “the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had”, with the primary intention “that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Philippians 2:5; Romans 15:5-6 NASV )

Understanding God’s Mind as a Master Database
With our ability to search rapidly for any theory or information that man has ever developed or philosophies conceived, it is easy for us to fathom a God who can know what we are thinking and/or search our minds which He made. Moreover He wants to bring our mind into harmony with His will via our unity of mind with Him to the extent that the Spirit Himself prays for us to achieve this. “He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (Romans 8:27 NASV) King David contemplated this unity of mind when he wrote his beautiful Psalm about God’s all-knowing watch care: “You have searched me, LORD, and you know me” (Psalm 139:1 NIV) This ability to knowingly search our mind is prophesied also by Jeremiah. God said to him: “I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind” (Jeremiah 17:10 NIV)

Some may think that they can side-step God’s two royal laws as His mandate to live according to love by both loving the Lord first and your neighbour as yourself (cf. Matthew 22:39) without saying “Lord who is my neighbour?” Of the Pharisees He said, “You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of others, but God knows your hearts. ‘What people value highly is detestable in God’s sight’” (Luke 15:15 NIV). His all-knowingness was confessed to the Lord when the disciples prayed for mission guidance “Lord, you know everyone’s heart. Show us which of these two you have chosen” (Acts 1:24 NIV)

Michelangelo, The Last Judgement, Sistine Chapel Ceiling

Benedict Spinoza was a Jewish philosopher who understood the reason why and how God knows our every thought. When you study his Ethics he evidently viewed our lesser mind as inset in God’s Sovereign Mind which governs our thoughts by inspiring or by judiciously knowing them. He points out that our thoughts are inadequate compared to His own, which any Christian will admit is true. What he developed was the truth that our minds are operative and functional as tandem to and housed in God’s primary Mind: “whatsoever takes place in the object constituting the idea of the human mind, the knowledge thereof is necessarily in God, in so far as he constitutes the essence of the human mind.” This does not mean that God condones sinful thinking. He rather patiently allows it until the second advent of Jesus Christ.

When we contemplate the importance of thinking holy thoughts as we are resident minds within His overseeing mind, as One with Him, we are deeply humbled as we also realize that our thoughts, if not monitored, self-controlled and carefully submitted to the Holy Spirit’s leading, can be corrupted by this world’s influence in which we live, even as little as having a judgemental attitude toward an erring brother. As Christians, we must understand Christ’s priestly prayer to His Father on our behalf, to be united in mind with Him as He is united in Mind with the Father.

Spinoza though not a professing Christian gets this right: “whatsoever takes place in the object constituting the idea of the human mind, the knowledge thereof is necessarily in God, in so far as he constitutes the essence of the human mind”. Considering that we are made in His image, his deduction about man’s thinking is profound: “the essence of man is constituted by certain modifications of the attributes of God”.

We can also fathom why God is vindicated when we abuse our rights and misuse our minds to think ungodly thoughts. Many today are tempted by think of the lusts of the flesh as this is rampant in our culture. Spinoza using careful deductive reasoning comes to the realization that we are, in my own words, hosted minds within God’s Mind. To abuse this honour would be dangerously parasitic. We have looked at scripture which supports this view that God with responsibility only to His own glory must finally judge men and women who live wildly without concern for His allowance of our operative mind as secondary to His Mind, and concomitant life within and secondary to His source of life – via the Spirit, and connected to His being as the great I am:

Everyone must surely admit, that nothing can be or be conceived without God. All men agree that God is the one and only cause of all things, both of their essence and of their existence; that is, God is not only the cause of things in respect to their being made (secundum fieri), but also in respect to their being (secundum esse).

God will vindicate His holiness and magnify His glory at the final judgement ushered in when Christ comes in the clouds in His full glory with all His holy angels to separate the godly from the ungodly: “Let the evildoer still do evil, and the filthy still be filthy, and the righteous still do right, and the holy still be holy.” (Revelation 22:11 KJV)