Twelve Ways to Cultivate an Alert and Sober Mind
Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ
1 Peter 1:13
In a previous post I made the following observation:
Peter’s audience, exiled and dispersed Christians undergoing much suffering the world and bracer for even greater afflictions to come, lived in the tension between present suffering and future glory. Like all Christians who live as pilgrims in the world, these believers could say along with the writer of Hebrews: Here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come.” The tension between present suffering and the promise of future glory is held in place by “hope.”
I also noted how in the Bible, “hope” is far from wishful thinking, like “I hope it doesn’t rain the day I plan to go to the beach.” Biblical hope is instead an actual future certainty that is just yet to be realized. This kind of hope, Hebrews say, is an anchor for the soul (Heb. 6:19).
Since that we have been “born again to a living hope” (1 Pet. 1:3), Peter now implores us to “set” or “fix” our hope on this future grace. This primary imperative is undergirded by two subordinate imperatives, each of which is instrumental to our ability to carry out the command:
1 – preparing your minds for action
2 – being sober-minded
These two subordinate imperatives are the prerequisites for fulling the main imperative: in order to “set our hope” on the grace that will be revealed to us at the revelation of Christ, we must begin with prepared and sober-minds. New Testament scholar Thomas Schreiner comments on this idea:
There is a way of living that becomes dull to the reality of God, that is anesthetized by the attractions of this world. When people are lulled into such drowsiness, they lose sight of Christ’s future revelation of himself and concentrate only on fulfilling their earthly desires.
Schreiner, T. R. (2003). 1, 2 Peter, Jude (Vol. 37, p. 79). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.
Peter is writing to believers living out their faith under the duress of social ostracism, personal affliction, and looming persecution. Under such sobering conditions, a sober-minded approach to life is demanded. There are some practical ways that we as believers can cultivate such a mental approach to the Christian life. Here I offer twelve such ways, with only brief commentary on each.
1 – Stay focused on things of consequence, not on trivialities.
In order to have an alert and sober mind, you must use your surplus mental energy on things that matter, which means you must first exert some energy discovering what those weightier matters are. The Preacher of Ecclesiastes tells us that “It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart…. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth” (Eccl. 7:2, 4). Being in the presence of the bereaved provides an intuition into what is really meaningful in life, a gift of wisdom that a frat party can never provide.
2 – Do not usurp the ultimate with what is merely good.
While the reverse is often true (“don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good”) we cannot allow the “good” to be the enemy of the “Ultimate.” Many of us are great at climbing the ladder, we’re skilled at things that are undeniably “good,” but also too many of us have leaned our ladders up against the wrong wall, or at least a wall that replaces what should be Ultimate (from a biblical perspective) with what is merely good, whether it be a vocation or an avocation. Put simply, have a biblical oriented priority list for your life.
3 – Stay grounded in biblical reality, resisting the spirit of the age.
The apostle Paul warns Christians against being swept away by “winds of doctrine” (Eph. 4:14). Anyone even vaguely familiar with the New Testament is aware of how false doctrine was undermining many of the congregations to whom the NT authors addressed their various writings. A church or a Christian getting caught up in a doctrinal fad is nothing new. For many of us who have been around a while, however, what we are seeing today in the church is unprecedented (at least in American Christianity) as the church en masse seems to have completely lost its will to stand against the unchristian ideologies of the day, or worse, in many cases leading the charge. Over just the last decade, the church has abandoned millennia old moral traditions, often publicly celebrating its “wokeness.”
We need to stay grounded in biblical reality, meaning we need to be biblically literate to begin with. We need to stand upon the infallible, inerrant, inspired word of God and defend its authority and relevance in every age, our own especially. Once we begin fudging on fundamental biblical truth, we easily fall prey to whatever winds of false doctrine are blowing through the doors at the time. There’s never been a time in American Christian history where the need for courageous fidelity to Scripture was greater.
4 – Stay grounded in reality itself, rejecting pollyannish thinking.
Have you ever seen the bumper sticker: “Visualize World Peace”? That’s what I mean by pollyannish thinking. It’s sheer nonsense, divorced from the reality of human nature and ignorant of all recorded human history, where wars and conflagrations have been nearly endless. Christians who succumb to silly and pointless platitudes like “Love is love” have abandoned sober-minded thinking. This is a completely unfitting way to think for the follower of Christ.
5 – Realize that ultimate reality is spiritual, not material.
To say this is not to commit the heresy of gnosticism and imply that “matter” doesn’t matter. God Himself created physical reality and pronounced it good. The creation is good, and material reality is good. But it is not ultimate. God is ultimate reality, not creation, and God is Spirit. So ultimate reality is spiritual, and thus that should be the ultimate focus of the sober-minded Christian (Col. 3:1-4).
6 – Realize that Ultimate Reality is a Person – a Judge to whom we are ultimately accountable for every thought, word, and deed.
Nothing is more sobering than the idea of standing before a completely impartial judge who holds in his judgment your very future. What about an infinite, holy, omnipotent, omniscient Judge with whom we are ultimately on a collision course. It is appointed unto to man to die once, and then face judgment (Heb. 9:27). We will all stand before the bar of divine justice (John 5:22-23; Acts 17:31; Rom. 14:12). There is no escape, and there is no plea save for the blood of Jesus Christ. This is a sobering thought, but one that too many Christians spend little time contemplating. Lord, teach us to number our days! (Ps. 90:12)
7 – Learn to appreciate our perpetual state of eschatological imminence.
We need to better appreciate the nature of our eschatological imminence, both individually and globally. It is inexcusable for a Christian to fail to understand this. Any of us could be called to account before God at any moment. If the owner of the house knew what time the thief was going to break in, he would be ready. But thieves don’t typically provide advance notice of their schedules. We must be alert at all times. “You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect” (Luke 12:39). This too is a sobering thought.
8 – Commune often with God in prayer.
This requires little present commentary. We just need to practice the presence of God and seek first His kingdom. We need to spend less time with the trivial and more time with the Father in prayer. A praying Christian will not fail to develop a more sober-minded approach to life.
9 – Recognize that you have an enemy who abhors you and unceasingly schemes to destroy you. Really.
Later in this epistle, Peter would warn his readers: “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (5:8). A soft-minded, careless thinking Christian is an easy target for Satan, and thus easily devoured and left useless to the work of the kingdom of God. The devil isn’t messing around; but seemingly most Christians are. It’s time for us to wake up, sober up, and stand firm in the spiritual warfare that is being waged all around us. War is sobering, especially when you know you’re in one.
10 – Do not model your life after the spiritually dead.
In other words, don’t be worldly (Rom. 12:1-2; Titus 2:11-14). There’s much we can learn from other people, including many of those who deny Christ’s lordship over their life. We can learn work skills, life skills, and even many good character traits from all kinds of people, Christian and non. But our lives should really be patterned after kingdom-minded, Christ-following believers. Paul said “imitate me, as I imitate Christ (1 Cor. 11:1). That should be our aim: imitate those who are imitating Jesus our Lord.
11 – Spend more time reading good theology, biographies, good history, apologetics, etc., and less time watching TV, on social media, etc.
Simply put: read more, watch less. And invest at least some (if not the bulk) of your reading time in good theology, apologetics, philosophy, good history, biographies of famous Christ followers, etc. Learn about the world, learn about God, learn how to defend the faith. Too much of our time is spent consuming entertainment and having our minds filled with whatever that industry wants us to think about. Rather, we should be investing more time in the things that will help us to love God with our minds (Matt. 22:37)
12 – Be more aware of the afflictions of fellow brothers in Christ.
Finally, few things are as sobering as learning what other Christians are suffering in their lives as a result of their testimony of Jesus. Life is not a game; for the Christian, it’s literal warfare, albeit spiritual. Many of our fellow brothers and sisters around the world are suffering terrible afflictions and persecutions while we too often are busily consumed with our own selfish decadence. Find out what is going on in other people’s lives, and let the suffering of others sober you up about the fleeting nature of this life and the glorious superiority of the life to come.
With minds alert and sober, set your hope fully on the grace to be revealed to you. Christians are called to a hopeful, optimistic, future-oriented life consumed with the appearing of Christ and the glory that will attend that Day. Hope is ultimately an intellectual discipline, a frame of mind. An undisciplined, worldly mind that is cluttered by trivial, self-centered, or merely pragmatic thoughts is incapable of truly fixating on the Christian hope. We must commit our minds to weightier matters as a habit of life. This admittedly incomplete list of twelve suggestions can help in that regard.