What’s Your Mental Disposition? Christ or Self?
You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.
Phil 2:5 NLT
Our attitude is a mental disposition, or frame of mind, that affects our thoughts and behavior. A good attitude is an inward disposition of thankfulness indwelt by Christ: a thankful attitude sees the world through God’s eyes, good yet fallen. As we respond to our circumstances from God’s perspective, we make right responses. These Holy Spirit inspired responses produce right behavior enabling us to perform righteous deeds. These deeds exalt Christ and produce righteous praise to our Heavenly Father.
In other words, enjoying Christ creates a good attitude and that attitude produces holiness to the praise and glory of God. Scripture calls us to have the same mental disposition of Christ who laid aside all heavenly splendor for the goal of laying down his life for us. His attitude was one of unselfish delight in his Father’s will.
The one attitude of the life is Jesus Christ first, second, and third, and nothing apart from Him. The thing that hinders God’s work is not sin, but other claims which are right, but which at a certain point of their rightness conflict with the claims of Jesus Christ. If the conflict should come, remember it is to be Jesus first (see Luke 14:26).
Oswald Chambers, Approved Unto God (Hants UK: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1946), 33.