Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - The Battle for the Mind

Episode Date: February 18, 2026

Many Western people today think that Christianity is for people who don’t want to use their minds, that if you’re educated and thoughtful you wouldn’t believe. They think that to be Christian you’d have to jettison your thoughts and surrender to a realm of feeling, to a leap of faith. But the Bible tells us the opposite. In 1 Peter, when it calls us to holiness, it says we must prepare our minds. Holiness includes the whole person—including the mind. In fact what Peter says and what it says all through the Bible is not only “May Christians think,” but “Christians must think.” It’s fundamental. Let’s look at how 1 Peter shows us that 1) Christianity requires you to use your mind, to be thinking and rational, and 2) Christianity is the only thing that really encourages thinking and gives a basis for it. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on October 24, 1993. Series: Splendor in the Furnace: 1 Peter, Part 1. Scripture: 1 Peter 1:13-16. Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Each year, Gospel in Life offers a daily devotional during the season of Lent, the 40 days from Ash Wednesday through Good Friday. You can sign up to receive these daily devotionals by email at gospelandlife.com slash lent. That's gospelonlife.com slash Lent. Now here's Dr. Keller with today's teaching. We're spending a couple of weeks on the passage that you've got written out for you in the bulletin. 1. Peter chapter 1, verses 13 to 21. And I'm going to read again, like I did last week, just the first part, 13 to 16. Therefore, prepare your minds for action. Be self-controlled. Set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. As obedient children,

do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do. For it is written, be holy because I am holy. Excuse me, this is God's word. What we looked at last week was just a definition of holiness. That's all. We didn't have much time. And this week and next week and next week and the following week,

we're going to look at how that plays out because this is all about holiness. and what it means to be holy. And we said that Peter, when he quotes this verse, Be holy for I am holy, he's pulling something out of the book of Leviticus. There's a number of places where Leviticus says, where God says in Leviticus, be holy for I am holy. And the word used there, the Hebrew word used there,

Kadoosh, means to be separated, to be set apart. And therefore, this word holy, when it refers to God and refers to human beings, it's both the same and yet it's obviously different. When we talk about God being holy, we mean he's set apart. He's set above us. He's off the scale. He's transcendently above us. He's not like us. He's infinitely exalted above us. But when we talk about human beings being holy, the word set apart has a different aspect to it. We mean that we are set apart for God's use. To be holy means to be holy his.

So let me give you an example. Here you are reading the newspaper and you read it and it's all for your information. You read 20 articles, 30 articles, and you get through it and it's all helpful to you. But suddenly you come upon one particular article that you want to use. It's an article that really has something in it. You want to use it in a, you want to use it. Because you're writing something, you're writing some copy, you're writing a paper for a class, you're preparing a talk, you're doing a sales pitch or something. So you say, I need that.

Now, when you need something, what do you do with it out of the newspaper? You cut it out. You separate it from the newspaper so that it's yours. It won't be of use to you if you don't separate it from the rest of the paper, so it's with you, and it's for your use. When the Bible talks about holiness, it's saying the very same thing. thing. What it means to be holy is to be cut out. It means to be separated. It means to be set apart for God's exclusive use. And that's why last week we said holiness is a lot, lot, lot more than just simply obeying a set of rules. It's to be in mind and in will and in heart. And in every way, it means

to be holy gods. It means to belong to God is exactly what it means. Just like, you know, here's your newspaper and you cut something out, so it's yours and you set it apart. That's what it means to be holy. It means to be completely at the disposal of God. It means to put yourself completely in his hands. It means to want that, to want to be used. You know, I mentioned this at the end of the 4 o'clock service, but I didn't mention it this morning. There was a, the last hymn that we sang in the morning service, we rest on thee, our shield and our defender. interesting historical note is that the six missionaries in the early 1950s who sought to go to Ecuador and they sought to contact a very primitive tribe. They wanted to meet the tribe. They wanted to learn

their language. They wanted to give them the written language. This was an illiterate tribe and they wanted to put the language down on paper so that they could teach them to read and write and to translate the Bible into their language. And the night before these six missionaries went to contact the Indians, they sang this hymn altogether. We rest on thee, our shield and our defender. We go not forth alone against the foe. Strong in thy strength, safe in thy keeping tender. We rest on thee, and in thy name we go. Strong in thy strength and safe in thy keeping tender. And the next day they were all spirit of death by the Indians. So, I guess the hymn didn't work. I guess the Christian faith didn't work. Well, we know the wife of one of those missionaries, Elizabeth Elliott, she's been here to speak,

and she often refers to the fact that this particular hymn was sung by them the night before. We rest on thee. We want to put ourselves in your hands. So they were all spirit to death. Does that mean it didn't work? No, because you see, one of the first of you see, one of us. We want to put ourselves in your hands. So they were all spirit to death. Is that means? It was in What does it mean to be holy? It means to say to God, use me. Boy, now I know I'm going, I know we're on a collision course with modern culture. I know that. We're on a collision course. We can handle the idea of knowing God sometimes, can't we? Oh, yeah, we want to know God. That's great. We want to experience his love. That's great. Even the idea of obeying God. Well, you can sort of get into that. There's design. There's rules. Okay, I can, I can do that.

But this is beyond the rules. What it means to be holy means to be cut out to be with God so that God can use you. To be holy means to say, use me, Lord, use even me in any way. And of course, they were used. They were mightily used. They were martyrs. Not exactly the way you had in mind, right, when you sing that hymn. But, you know, we rest on thee.

Jesus, our righteousness, our sure foundation, our prince of glory, our king of love. Yes, in thy name, O captain of salvation, in thy dear name, all other names above. That's what it means to be holy. It means to finally say, I'm not mine anymore. I'm bought with a price. All right. Now, having said that, somebody says, who needs this? you need this because believe it or not we're built for this now once you get that down you begin to

realize that holiness is not easy at all it's not like obeying the rules it's not like obeying the regulations holiness is getting yourself mind will and emotions to be to belong to god that's the reason why the english word holy the english word holy doesn't mean separate separated cut out the way the hebber word means. I think the English word holy, of course, is also helpful because it comes from the word to be whole, to be completely gods. So to be holy means to make yourself holy gods. What does that mean? It means to take every part of you, the whole person. And that's why tonight, next week, and the next week I want to talk about the different aspects of our lives. What it means to be holy is not just to obey the rules, but to give him your mind holy, to give him your will holy,

and to give him your heart holy. Now, tonight, let's just take a look, and we'll see that as soon as Peter says, I want you to be holy, he starts the section out by saying, gird up the loins of your mind. Now, I know that's not what it says in your translation. It says, therefore, prepare your minds for action and be self-controlled. But these first two phrases is what we're going to look at tonight. Because these first two phrases tell us that you can't be holy unless you prepare your mind. for action, unless you let your minds belong to God. What does this term mean? I mentioned this last

week, but now we'll get into it a little bit more. The actual Greek, if it was translated literally, it would be almost incomprehensible to modern people, because literally it says, gird up the loins of your mind. Now, what that means, as I think I alluded to last week, is in those days, people, in the Greek or Roman world, men and women wore long robes, and if you wanted to do something that was strenuous, if you had a run or if you had to do some evasive action or something very hard, you would gird up the loins, which means your gird, the girder, the girdle was this belt. There was a belt around your waist, and what you would do is you'd pick up your flowing robes and you'd stick them in the girder around your loins. So that, based, you were the belt, you were

Basically, your legs were free, and many cases your arms were free, and so you're ready for action. The closest thing we'd have in a modern idiom would be roll up your sleeves, you know, get ready. But it doesn't just say gird up the loins. It says gird up the loins of your mind. And the word that's used here is Dianoya. Dia is a Greek word for through. It's, you know, the word diameter, the meter that goes through the center of the circle. Dia means through.

Annoia has to do with noose, means it has to do with the mind. And so it literally means to think through rationally. There's a couple places in the Bible where it means to debate. So, for example, the same word shows up in Hebrews 12 where it says, let the word of God de annoy you, let it debate with you. It's a very, very interesting word. It literally means to think things, something through, to summons up all of your rational powers, all of your capacities for thought and reflection and consistent. all of the logic that you can master. It's a word that's used, it would include both induction and deduction. You see, if you ever watch these great murder mysteries that BBC puts out, Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie mysteries, you have all the facts, but you can never, if it's a good plot, you can't figure it out.

Why? Because the good murder mystery writers give you solutions to the murder mystery, which are rational but counterintuitive. In other words, a really good murder mystery, you have all the clues yourself. In a good murder mystery, you're baffled until the end, even though you have all the clues yourself, but you just weren't able to think through the clues.

You were following your hunches. You were following your prejudices. You were following your intuition. Ah, but the great sleuth, whoever, thinks through. And when it's all done, you read the end of the book and you say, why didn't I see that? Of course I could have seen that. I didn't think through.

I didn't summons up all of my rational faculties. That's the word that Peter uses. And what it means is that you can't be a Christian, you can't be holy unless you use your mind. It's critical that you be able to think. You know, there's a place in Romans, Romans chapter 10, verse 2, and where Paul says about some Christians, he says, I bear witness to them that they have zeal, but without them. knowledge. Isn't that interesting? They have zeal, but without knowledge. What he's saying is they have a lot of enthusiasm for the Lord, a lot of enthusiasm. They don't think. And that's

a criticism, you see? Heat without light. No good. enthusiasm, but not rational, not thinking. There's one, John Mackay once said, commitment without reflection is fanaticism. Reflection. Reflection. without commitment is paralysis. Zeal without knowledge, knowledge without zeal, no good. You've got to use the mind. Now, I know this doesn't seem like something that many people believe. In fact, I go so far as to say that the average person in Manhattan is shocked. If they hear you a believing Christian, reflective and thoughtful, they're amazed. The average person in Manhattan believes that if you're educated, if you're thoughtful, if you're rational, and so on, you wouldn't believe. Most people in Manhattan think that Christianity is for people who don't want to use their mind.

It's not for thinkers. In fact, if you're going to be a Christian, you've got to jettison your thought. You have to jettison your rationality. You have to jettison your capacities for thought and reflection. You have to get rid of them. And you sort of surrender yourself into the realm of feeling, and you take this leap of faith. If you say to somebody here, and you sound like you've reasoned it out and you sound thoughtful and rational about it, and you say, I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God, pre-existent

son of God, who was, who came to earth and was born of a virgin and lived a perfect life and died to pay the debt for us. And he was physically raised from the dead. And now he sits at the right hand of the father. And when we believe in him, he pardons our sins and he puts the Holy Spirit in us so that we experience the new birth. And someday he's going to come back and we will all see him and he will bring about a judgment of all human beings and he will inaugurate the new heavens and new earth. And they look at you and they can't believe it. Because the typical person in New York says, look, I know there's still people that believe that. Members of the proletariat, you know, the oppressed working classes and the poor people. And they've

been kept away from knowledge and enlightenment, you see. And it's not their fault. If they want to yell hallelujah, that's fine. But you've gone to college. You should know better. And this attitude, this utterly paternalistic attitude is a complete misconception of Christianity. I want to show you what Peter says here and what it says all the way through the Bible is not only may Christians think and use their mind, but Christians must think. Christianity, let me just tell you two things this evening.

And this is the first one which I've already gotten into. The first thing is, Christianity. requires you to use your mind. It requires you to think. It requires you to be, it requires you to summons up all of your rational capacities. It requires and demands and encourages it and stimulates it. Not just here. Not just here. For example, thinking is fundamental to becoming a Christian. If you look further on in the chapter, chapter, chapter 1, verse 22, it says, you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth. Verse 23, it says you're born again, not by imperishable seed, but by the living, enduring word of God.

There's another passage like it. It's in Romans 617. It says, But though you were servants of sin, you obeyed from the heart, the form of teaching which was delivered to you. Now, all of those texts say this. Being a Christian, becoming a Christian, being born again, is more than just thinking, but not less. You have to grasp the form of teaching. You have to understand the gospel. It has to be something that you grasp and you see, you have to think with it. You're born again through what? Through receiving the word, a form of teaching, a system of doctrine. Oh, of course. It says, obeyed from the heart the form of teaching. That's how you became a Christian. Well, that's the, there's the whole person. You obeyed, that's the will from the heart, you see, the form of teaching.

But, but how wrong it is for people to think that Christianity is basically emotional or volitional. Oh, no. It's rational as well. It's fundamentally rational. There are all kinds of churches. Friends, fundamentalist churches. What does that mean? Churches that are legalistic, that are authoritarian, they put all the stress on the will.

They say, just don't think. Just do whatever I tell. you to do. Don't think. Here are the rules. Do them. Don't think. Just obey whatever I tell you. Don't think. Don't work it out. Don't think it out. Just do what I say. There's a lot of churches like that. But on the other hand, the liberal churches are just as anti-intellectual. There's a Unitarian church down in Murray Hill. I went by and there was an interesting plaque up and said, we are a group of people who all work hard to love people and be compassionate and to work for a better city. And it doesn't matter what you believe. We don't care what you believe. We don't care

believe, we don't care what you think as long as you do good deeds. That's what it says on the plaque. Now, besides the fact that that's absolutely contradictory, I mean, why would you do good deeds unless you believe that human beings had dignity and were worth doing good deeds for? I mean, that's silly, and science isn't going to tell you that. Science is going to tell you you're a bag of chemicals. I mean, that's a religious belief. And so it sounds really nice to say, we don't care what you believe. That's ridiculous. They do care what you believe. But you see what they're saying? It doesn't matter what you believe. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. what you think just what you do. That's as anti-intellectual as the fundamentalist.

Doctrine doesn't matter. Studying the Bible doesn't matter. Figuring out what it teaches, doesn't matter. On the other hand, you have a lot of high churches, churches that put all the emphasis on ritual. And they, too, they say, well, you know, you believe this, you believe that. It doesn't matter. The point is the ritual. And so you get caught up in this aesthetic experience, and all the people love it because of the music and because of the architecture and because of of the, in some ways, the glamour of it, the aestheticness of it. It's all the emphasis is on the emotion. The sermon is five to seven minutes long and everybody sleeps through it. We don't care about thinking. It's the feeling. And then there's a lot of other evangelical churches that put all

the emphasis on the feeling, all the emphasis on the catharsis, all the emphasis on the emotion that you feel it. My dear friends, the Bible says to become a Christian engages the emotions and engages the will, but it also engages the mind just as fundamentally. You can't be a Christian unless you think. You can't grow as a Christian unless you think. You can't grow in holiness unless you gird up the loins of your mind. See, fundamental. Let me give you another example of how. So the first thing is, I said Christianity demands that you think even to become a Christian. But secondly, faith is really an exercise in thinking as well. lot of people say, well, you have faith, but I'm a rational person. Let me tell you. C.S. Lewis gives

you a great example of how faith really operates. C.S. Lewis says, let's just say you have to go to a doctor. So you study everything you can to find out about that doctor. You talk to people who've been to the doctor. So you say, hey, here's a doctor, and she is a good doctor, but I want to find out about her. So what you do is you go and you talk to a number of people. and they're all say, oh, she's great. I've been to her, and I, you know, I ached and I pained and everything, and now I'm all better. And then you talk to other doctors, and you find out she is the leader in the field. And then you study the charts or you study the history, and you're able, you probably have to break into, illegally into files to find this out, and she's never lost a patient. So what have you done? You've thought it through. You rationally have come to see that the evidence is that she's a very good doctor.

But on the day that you have to get there, on the day you have to go, on the day you have to report to the hospital and the day she has to cut you open. At the last minute, you panic and you run and you decide I'm not going to go through it. What happened? You lost faith. Well, does this mean? You lost faith because you started to reason. You started to think. Huh? Is faith the opposite of reason in thinking? Absolutely not. You lost faith because you stopped thinking, because you stopped reasoning, because you stopped looking at the evidence and you listen to your emotions and you listen to your fears. It's silly to think that faith is the opposite of reason. Why is there so much pain and suffering in the world? And how do we handle it in a way that won't destroy us, but could actually

make us stronger, wiser, and more hopeful? All month long on gospel and life, Tim Keller is teaching from the book of First Peter and looking at how Peter encouraged early believers who were facing intense suffering and pain. In his book, Walking with God through pain and suffering, Dr. Keller takes a deeper look at how with God's help we can face life's most intense challenges and confront the hard questions on suffering. Through deep pastoral insight and real life stories, Dr. Keller explores how we can face pain and suffering in our own lives. This month, walking with God through pain and suffering is our thank you for your gift

to help Gospel and Life share the message of Christ's love and compassion with people all over the world. So request your copy today at gospelandlife.com slash give. That's gospelonlife.com slash give. Now here's Dr. Keller with the remainder of today's teaching. Here's a good quote. You know, the famous passage we used it in the confession of sin this morning, Matthew 6, where Jesus says, if you're worried, have no anxiety but think about the lilies of the field. God takes care of them.

Think, have no anxiety, but think about the birds of the air. God takes care of them. oh ye of little faith he says if god takes care of the birds and the grass and you're more valuable than they won't he take care of you what is jesus doing he says oh ye of little faith you're not thinking he doesn't say if you want to have faith stop thinking and just believe that's not faith that's not what the bible calls faith look david martin lloyd jones in his great sermon on this passage here's a quote from him he says jesus christ insists that the whole trouble with people of little faith is they do not think. They don't gird up the loins of their minds, see. They allow circumstances

to bludgeon them. Think about this. They allow their feelings to collar them. Now the Bible is full of reasoning. We must never think of faith as something purely mystical. Faith progresses through thinking, Jesus tells us. Jesus says, look at the birds. Think about them. Draw your deductions. Look at the flowers. Do the same. That is the essence of worry. Instead of letting reason control your thoughts, other things have controlled them and you go round and round in circles. That is not thinking. Worry is the absence of thinking. Unbelief is the absence of thinking. And for a Christian, a lack of faith is a failure to think. Gird up the loins of your mind. Not only that, the Bible tells you that you can't grow in holiness unless you're willing to let God take over

your thinking. Now, it says in Ephesians 4, 22 to 24, be renewed through the renewal of your mind. That's the place where it says, put off the old self, put on the new, and be renewed in the renewal of your mind. Now, please listen carefully to this. You can't bifurcate this. Jesus Christ demands all of you. And what this means is many of us come to Christianity wanting something emotional, wanting something personal, and we've already got ideas made up about things. We have cultural ideas, ideological ideas, ideas about how things ought to be. And we're desperately afraid that if we come to Christianity, it might change our minds. And we wouldn't want any of that thing to happen. We want the happiness, we want the joy,

but we don't want anybody to change our minds. What kind of religion are you thinking about? Not Christianity. Christianity is not a religion strictly of the feelings. You have to gird up the loins of your mind. You have to submit intellectually. Jesus Christ has a thought. of you intellectually, not just personally, not just spiritually in some kind of way. Look at it this way. I'll put it this way. To renew your mind, to have a holy mind means that you must read ideology and culture and opinion through a biblical grid rather than read the Bible through a cultural and ideological grid. So let me just give you a couple of examples. and just throw them out.

One of the things that I found interesting about working when I did as a teacher at Westminster Seminary was that it was a very multi-ethnic body, and about 15 to 20 percent of the students were Korean. Now, one of the things we found, especially with a couple of my Korean students and Korean friends, was, and most of the Korean students that I had were from Korea. They had flown from Seoul to America, and so they were immersed in their own Korean culture. we found out that when a Korean reads the words, obey your parents, and when an American reads the words in the Bible, obey your parents, we can come away with two completely different understandings. Why? Because though I'm a Christian, I'm an American, and I am steeped in Western individualism. I am steeped in secular individualism. And so I read, obey your parents, and I think I know what it means, but I'm immediately reading it through my grid. And here's a Korean, and even though my Korean friend might be a Christian, just like I'm a Christian, I'm steeped in Western individualism. He or she might, though a Christian, might be steeped in the collectivist Confucian culture of Korea.

And one of the things that we slowly came to understand, when you, this is one of the great advantages of doing multicultural Bible studies. You know, you study the thing and you get totally different things out of the text, and you say, what? And you begin to realize what you're doing. After a while, you begin to realize that if you really, really will be able to do it. the Bible says. The Bible is not really a very Eastern or a very Western book. And the biblical understanding of parental authority really is not as authoritarian as the Korean, nor is it as wimpy

as the American. You know, you have the American wimpy parental model where you sort of sit with the children and say, oh, you hit me. Did that feel good? How did that make you feel? Should we talk about it, you know? That's right. And then you have the Korean parental model oh, you hit me, off with his head, you know, upstairs, you know, okay? Now listen, come to realize, after a while, how hard it is to immerse yourself so much in the scripture that you start to let the scripture become a grid in your mind by which you can read your own culture. It takes a long time, but it mainly takes it to start with an act of the will and a willingness to submit your reason and submit your thinking to the Word of God.

and immerse your mind in it. And that's the, one person says, a renewed mind is a trained, informed, equipped mind, equipped to sift the data through a framework of reference in your mind made up of biblical truths about the value and the nature of God, of human nature, of good and evil, of truth, authority, and so on. Do you know what it's like to do that?

Real quickly, I hate to criticize this article. I read an editorial last Sunday, I think it was, in the New York Times, and it was really a good article, so I hate to pick one bone with it, but it's an awfully good example of what I'm trying to say now. Anna Quinlan wrote an op-ed piece, and in it she quotes from Stephen Carter's new book, The Culture of Disbelief. And in that book, what she was saying is that there's a yawning spiritual vacuum

in the lives of American people. And she says, we liberals have been fighting for individual rights for years, and now we're realizing, she says, that people need to feel that they're connected. to something bigger than themselves. And this is what she, here's two quotes from the article. One is she says, we err when we presume that religious motives

and religious sentiments are likely to be unliberal. And then she says, we liberals must acknowledge this, that while the rights of the individual are precious, at some deep level, individualism alone does not suffice. The discussion must continue

of what morality means of how to fill the spiritual vacuum. Now, here's the only thing I'm going to pick. I'm really happy. It was a great article. I was really glad she wrote it. But you see what she's saying? She's trying to say to all of her liberal friends.

She says, you know, maybe it's good for us to get more religious. Not that it'll change your mind on any of your positions. You see, don't think that just because you become a Christian, you won't be a liberal. Now, I'm not here to tell you what becoming a Christian makes you on the political spectrum. Because, frankly, it's very hard, I think, to put Christians on the spectrums. But I'll tell you this. What kind of religion does she want? A religion totally of feeling?

A religion totally of sentiment? She says, you know, you can get spiritual and it not really changed your mind on the things you've already made up your mind about. There's a lot of religions like that. Just don't come to Christianity. Christianity says, you've got to be holy. You have to be holy his. You have to be willing to submit your mind.

You have to be willing to say, boy, that's going to be uncomfortable for me to change my view on that. But is that what God actually teaches? And if you think that God is going to deal with you emotionally and spiritually and volitionally, if you withhold yourself from him intellectually, does it make any sense? You've got to all come in or not come in. I had an old teacher used to say, you know, if you come to the door and knock on it and I say, Tim, come on in, but Keller stay out. What are you going to do?

It's pretty confusing. And if you say, Lord Jesus, I want you to come in and have this part of me, what you're really saying is come in, Savior, stay out Lord. Oh, he never does that. One more thing. And last thing, but it's important. Not only would I like to show you. This is the last point.

The last point is not only does the Bible insist that to be a Christian you've got to think, to be a Christian, you've got, Christianity requires thinking, requires rationality, requires that. But not only that, this will stimulate you, I hope. I'd like to go so far so that it's the only thing in the world today that really does encourage thinking and reason. It's the only thing that encourages is the only thing that gives a basis for it. Let me do this quick. This is worth the end here. There's only three basic worldviews you can have right now today.

There's been other worldviews, but there's only three basic philosophies of life that are out there. You've got scientific materialism. which says that there is no soul, there is no supernatural, there is no God, there is no heaven and hell, and therefore everything is an accident, and everything has a natural cause. Now, these people will tell you, ultimately that means that your mind's an accident. And the thoughts you're having right now are just the chance, you know, the chance reaction of molecules under your skull. They're just bouncing off of each other.

And you believe what you believe strictly because of biological and chemical determinants. And therefore, on the basis of that, there's really no reason for you to trust you thinking. There's no reason for you to reason. Everything is relative. You know, for the last 30 years, people have been saying, because there is no truth, we're free, our minds are free to think. In the old days, we thought that there was a God and there was the Bible, and we thought that there was this and that. so we couldn't be free thinkers. Ah, but now we know everything is relative. There probably is no God. There certainly is no Bible and revelation. So we are free. But you know what that leads to?

For about 30 or 40 years, people were saying, because all things are relative, therefore, because all morals are relative, therefore we shouldn't impose our values on each other. But that doesn't make sense. If all morality is relative, why not impose your values on other people? people. It's just your value that says you shouldn't impose your value on other people. You see, if there is no truth, don't you see that? There is no basis for freedom of thought at all. I'll control your thought if I want to. I'll do whatever I want. The postmodern deconstructionists say, because all values are socially constructed, there is no right and wrong. The purpose of life is not to try to find out what is truth and what is justice and conform to it.

Absolutely not. You do whatever the heck you want, which means that there is no search for truth. There's no reason to reason. There's no reason to think. It's all power struggle. Whoever has the power. Whoever comes out on top is the one who rules. We don't find out what is right. We don't find out what is wrong. There is no right and wrong. Don't you see, scientific materialism leads to the death of thinking. You don't need to think. You can't trust your thinking. That's the first basic philosophy you've got. The second basic philosophy is Eastern monism, Eastern pantheism, Eastern religions. You know what they believe about rationality? They believe. And anyone will tell you that so understands the New Age and understands the Eastern religion,

is that they believe that what's wrong with us is that we think, that we're rational, that we reason. Eastern meditation is after what they call, quote, pure awareness without thought, unquote. Pure awareness without thought. Eastern meditation says what you need to see is that it's all one. You're one with a tree. You're one with nature. There is no individuality. And Eastern thought tries to frustrate the reason, tries to frustrate your analysis. It says that eventually we're all going to go back into the all soul and there won't be individualism and there won't be individuals. There won't be personality. There won't be rationality. We'll all be one.

Eastern religion gives you no basis for rationality, but Christianity or I should say the religion of the Bible, Judaism and Christianity and even Islam, which is based very much on the Bible. they believe the religion of the Bible teaches that there was a God who created the world who was rational. And if there is a God who was rational, my reason is not an accident of molecules, and my reason is not an illusion. My reason is a reflection of his person. And it means that if a rational and orderly God created the world, then when I use my reason, I'm going to find out what's really out there.

I can't go into this any further, but I want you to know that philosophically, at the end of the 20th century, Christianity is the only thing in the world, the only thing in the world tonight that really encourages you to use your mind. It's the only thing in the world tonight that gives you a basis for doing it. And it's the only thing in the world that really liberates the thinking. Ah, somebody says, what are you talking about? I got out of Christianity because I felt I couldn't be liberated. Now I can think of whatever. I want to think about. Let me tell you something. The Bible says that you're not free unless you know the truth. The truth will set you free. And you know why? Look at all the people who really understood the truth and said, the Bible is the truth. That's freedom. You know why? No matter what your friends tell you, no matter what your political party tells you, no matter what the ideology tells you, no matter what the dictator or the king who's ready to cut your head off tells you, you know what's the truth.

because you see, if you have the Bible, if you know there is an absolute truth, you could be the only person in the whole world, it could be you against the entire world, and you can know, you're right. Go take a look, look at Elijah standing before Ahab. Look at Moses standing before Pharaoh. Look at Herod, look at Herod Agrippa. Look at Polycarp, you know, in 80 AD, the old man standing in the Coliseum, and they were about to throw him to the lions, and he says, away with you all. And he, he needs. And he, he needs. dies. Look at Lattermer and Ridley being burned at the stake. Look at Martin Luther's standing before the whole world. These were free thinkers because they knew, because they had submitted to the truth,

and now they had a standard by which they could judge any ideology. They had a standard by which they could judge any philosophy. They weren't the victims of their culture anymore. They weren't the victims of their party. They were always able to judge their own culture and their own party and their own philosophy and their own school. I tell you, Christianity tonight is the only basis for being a free thinker. It's the only basis and encouragement for actually using your mind. And to conclude, if you don't believe it, let me tell you why. If you let me tell you why Christianity stimulates the use of the mind.

I can prove it to you historically. Wherever there's been revivals, great awakenings in the history of the world, you will see that the common people always receive the gospel. You go back to the New Testament, and it says, the common people heard Jesus gladly. Well, all the religious leaders thought that that proves that he couldn't be a great teacher. Look, at the common people like you. The common people are following you.

And, of course, all through the early church, they were all the common people. They were the slaves. They were the illiterates. And what happened? Their minds woke up. The gospel always arouses the thinking. And throughout the history of the church, Throughout the history of the world, whenever the gospel has spread amongst people, their minds wake up and they want schools.

Look at Dartmouth, look at Princeton. You know where they came from. There was a great awakening in this country, the 1730s, 40s, and 50s. And the people who never cared about reading and writing. When they became Christians, they said, I want to think. I'm a human being now. I'm not an animal anymore. I thought I was. I want to think. I want to read. I want to write. And those were schools started out of the revival. the gospel always makes you gird up your mind and you know why because the gospel's not a teaching the gospel's not a philosophy that says here live in this way just live in this way that doesn't make you think the gospel says god has broken into the world in the form of jesus christ and jesus christ is the son of god and he died for us and he was raised from the dead don't you see you can't even listen to that teaching without it electrifying the mind it challenges the mind it shocks the mind. It's not at all like a philosophy of how to live. That doesn't stir up the mind. The gospel

stirs up the mind. You can't even reject the gospel without using your mind because the claims are so incredible. God has broken into history. When the time had fully come, God sent his son, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive the full rights as sons of God. That claim is so incredible that you can't even reject the gospel without thinking, because you've got to say, well, what's the evidence for the resurrection? And how do I know these things? It's so stunning. It's so challenging because the gospel makes you think it wakes you up. The gospel always makes you gird up the loins of your mind. Have you done that? Have you submitted your mind to him? There's only two kinds of people here tonight. The one kind are the people who think that Christianity is something maybe that might help them privately spiritually, but they really are afraid to actually let it challenge their mind. If Jesus is who he said he is, you must belong to him wholly, intellectually, emotionally, and volitionally. If he is the son of God, as he said, if he rose from the dead as it was claimed, you have to look at that evidence. You can't just say, well, I don't know what I think about all I think.

I just want to have a kind of personal, mystical experience. I just want to have peace. You can't do it. The Bible says, I will not, God says, I will not come into your life unless. I come in through your mind. You have to receive the form of teaching. You have to look at the evidence. You have to believe it. You have to check it out. Don't you dare try to do an end run around the mind. Listen to the gospel. Let it argue with you. And lastly, friends, some of you are Christians, but you're not very consistent Christians because really you're, so many people come out of fundamentalist or come out of liberal or come out all these different churches I told you, And they all really do a buy, they bypass the mind.

Don't you dare? You need to study the word of God. You have to let the word of God sink in. You've got to let your mind be completely bathed in the authority of God. Girt up the loins of your mind. Let's pray. Father, we ask that you would just enable us to do the very thing we've been looking at. To submit to you intellectually, to submit to you rationally,

to submit every area of our lives to you that we might be wholly yours. Enable us to do that now. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Thanks for listening to today's teaching from Tim Keller here at Gospel and Life. For the 40 days from Ash Wednesday through Good Friday, Gospel and Life would like to email you a daily Lent devotional. You can sign up to receive these daily emails at gospelandlife.com slash lent.

That's gospelonlife.com slash lent. Today's sermon was recorded in 1993. The sermons and talks to you here on the Gospel and Life podcast were recorded between in 1989 and 2017, while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.