In my last devotional blog I wrote about the mind of the believer and how we must cultivate our minds in order to love God and be effective in the advancement of his kingdom. In this post I want to expose the mind of the unbeliever and show how their minds are in conflict with God and antithetical to the mind of the regenerate. Understanding the mindset of the unbeliever is critical in regards to being effective witnesses to them, and in order to offer an appropriate apologetic for the Christian faith.
The unbelieving or fleshly mind is “hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed it cannot” (Rom. 8:7). Unbelievers are both intellectually and morally rebellious towards God and cannot seek after God or please him because of their sinful, unregenerate state (Rom. 3:11; 8:9). An unbeliever can never accept the things of God apart from the regenerating work of God’s Spirit. The “natural man” does not accept or understand the things of God because they are “spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2:14). When I teach courses on Islam, Mormonism, or other religious/cultic worldview systems, my students eventually ask how somebody can believe in such an absurd and illogical position. My answer is that “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ” (2 Cor. 4:4). The mind of the unbeliever is futile, darkened, and alienated from God and his truth (Eph. 4:17-18).
Comprehending the nature of the unbelieving mind is crucial in our evangelistic, apologetic, and even personal interaction with them. The mind of the believer is antithetical and in opposition to the unbeliever’s mind. And, most importantly the mind of the unbeliever is at war with God. As I said in my first post, it is time for Christians to take back the intellectual and academic world for the glory of God. Christianity stands alone as the soul source of the viable basis for rationality and logic. The unbelieving mind must be disclosed for what it really is.
