𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗥𝗲𝗱𝗲𝗺𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻, 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝟮

𝗚𝗼𝗱 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀
Many of us carry a quiet suspicion that reasoning is the opposite of faith. That the spiritual man feels and the carnal man thinks. So we switch the brain off to be holy and switch it back on to go to work.
I carried it too. Let's look at it together in Scripture, because I think the Word says something gentler and far more exciting.
𝗚𝗼𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀.
"My thoughts are not your thoughts." Isaiah 55:8. Not "I have no thoughts." Higher thoughts. "I know the thoughts that I think toward you." Jeremiah 29:11. "O Lord, how great are thy works! and thy thoughts are very deep." Psalm 92:5. "How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them!" Psalm 139:17
The God who made the brain is a thinking God. Thought is not a human invention He tolerates. It is a divine attribute He shared.
𝗚𝗼𝗱 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗼𝗻𝘀.
"Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord." Isaiah 1:18. The Hebrew is a legal term: let us argue the case. God invites a sinful nation into a conversation. He does not say, feel your way back. He says, think it through with Me.
He does it again in Isaiah 41:21: "Produce your cause, saith the Lord; bring forth your strong reasons." He invites the idols to make their case. In Micah 6 He takes Israel to court and calls the mountains as witnesses. The Almighty makes arguments.
If God reasons, reasoning cannot be unspiritual. What can be unspiritual is the source the reasoning draws from.
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻, 𝘁𝘄𝗼 𝘀𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗲𝘀.
Watch Peter in Matthew 16. Jesus asks, "whom say ye that I am?" Peter answers, "Thou art the Christ." Jesus says, "flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father." A thought entered Peter's brain from heaven.
Minutes later Jesus speaks of the cross and Peter rebukes Him. Jesus turns: "thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men." The Greek is phroneis: you are thinking. Same man. Same skull. One thought sourced from the Father, the next from the flesh, within the same conversation.
I think that one scene teaches us most of what we need to know about the brain. The organ is not the problem. The feed is.
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗽𝗶𝗿𝗶𝘁 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗳𝗲𝘀𝘁𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗼𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴.
Look at how the Spirit actually shows up in the New Testament. Not only in tongues and fire. In arguments nobody could answer.
Stephen: "they were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit by which he spake." Acts 6:10. Wisdom and spirit, one phrase. The Spirit produced reasoning the Sanhedrin could not meet.
Jesus promised exactly this: "I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist." Luke 21:15. A Spirit-given mouth produces logic that holds.
Paul "reasoned with them out of the scriptures." Acts 17:2. He "disputed daily in the school of one Tyrannus" for two years. Acts 19:9. Apollos "mightily convinced the Jews… shewing by the scriptures." Acts 18:28. The apostolic method was not emotional pressure. It was Spirit-fuelled reasoning.
And Jesus Himself. When the Sadducees denied resurrection, He answered from a verb tense. "I AM the God of Abraham." Not I was. "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living." Matthew 22:32. The crowd was astonished at His doctrine. The Son of God settled a theological question with grammar. That is the redeemed brain at full power.
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗽𝗶𝗿𝗶𝘁 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻'𝘀 𝗼𝘄𝗻 𝗳𝘂𝗻𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀.
"He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance." John 14:26. Teaching and memory. Those are cognitive operations. The Holy Spirit works in recall. "The Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God." 1 Corinthians 2:10. He is a searcher, and He shares the results with a human mind: "that we might know the things that are freely given to us." Knowing is the brain's work. He feeds it.
Paul's prayer for the Ephesians is a prayer for minds: "the spirit of wisdom and revelation… the eyes of your understanding being enlightened." Ephesians 1:17-18. Understanding, dianoia, the thinking faculty. Enlightened. Lit from the inside.
And when Jesus quoted the greatest commandment, He added a word Deuteronomy did not have. Love the Lord "with all thy mind." Mark 12:30. He gently drafted the intellect into worship.
𝗦𝗼 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗱𝗼𝗲𝘀 𝗿𝗲𝗱𝗲𝗺𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝗽𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗲?
Not less thinking. Better-sourced thinking. Daniel had "knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom" and "understanding in all visions and dreams" in the same verse. Daniel 1:17. Solomon's Spirit-given wisdom produced three thousand proverbs and lectures on plants and animals. 1 Kings 4:32-33. Bezalel's filling produced craftsmanship.
The redeemed brain reasons from revelation. It takes what the Spirit reveals as its premise and builds from there with full rigour. Carnal reasoning is not reasoning that is too sharp. It is reasoning from the wrong starting point. "Vain in their imaginations," Romans 1:21, is dialogismois: internal logic running on a corrupt first premise.
Change the premise and the same brain that once argued against God becomes the brain that cannot be gainsaid.
"Be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you." 1 Peter 3:15. A reason. God expects His people to be able to explain their hope, and He supplies the Spirit to do it.
The two men on the Emmaus road said, "did not our heart burn within us, while he opened to us the scriptures?" Luke 24:32. Notice the order. He reasoned. They burned. The fire came through the explanation. The Spirit set the heart alight by way of the mind.
That is what a redeemed brain is for.
God thinks. God reasons. God invites you to the table. Bring your whole mind. He made it to meet Him there.
#Faith #RenewedMind #Reason #Logos