What Do You Savor? Your Mindset

The Greek verb phroneo, meaning “to think, to set the mind upon, or to have a disposition toward,” appears throughout the New Testament as one of its most defining words about the interior life of the believer. It has in view the whole orientation of the soul — what a person habitually esteems, savors, and sets his affections upon. When Paul employs phroneo in Romans 8:5 – “For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit” – he names the decisive factor between two ways of being human: either a mind governed by fallen nature or one renewed by the Spirit of God.

Paul then returns to phroneo in Philippians 2:2 with great pastoral warmth, yet commanding: “Fulfil ye my joy, that ye be likeminded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind.” The repeated forms of the same word press upon the congregation that unity of heart, not mere doctrinal agreement, is the mark of a people shaped by the gospel. This reaches its zenith three verses later: “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus” (2:5) — an imperative calling the believer to think as Christ Himself did in self-emptying humility and obedient love. In the next chapter, Paul contrasts those “who mind earthly things” (3:19) with those whose citizenship is in heaven, closing with the exhortation (4:8) to “think on” whatever is true, honest, just, pure, lovely, and of good report, binding the renewed mind to a discipline of holy attention.

In Romans 12:3, Paul cautions every man “not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly,” using phroneo four times in a single verse to drive home the urgency of a proper ambition, contained within the humble confines of a single church. One of only two usages of phroneo by Jesus of the twenty-four times it appears in the New Testament is in His evaluation of Peter in Matthew 16:23, “thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.” Peter was not having the same mind-set, focus, or attention as Jesus had.