Since most people today believe the mind and brain to be the same thing, I have decided to write this brief article to make an important distinction between the two. I will start out showing what the Bible reveals about the mind, and I will end by explaining why it is important to understand this.

In Philippians 2:5, Paul wrote "let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus". I think everyone would agree that Paul was not telling people to take Jesus' brain and put it inside their heads, so it's only logical to conclude that Paul understood the mind to be non-physical, and not the brain. And since the mind and brain are not the same thing, it is also logical to conclude that our thoughts do not originate from our brains, but from the non-physical mind. This does not mean that the brain serves no purpose, but I view the brain more like a computer which our non-physical mind uses to operate our bodies. Your mind is the real you - the non-physical thinking person inside who makes moral or immoral choices.

To reduce who we are to nothing more than a brain is to make us no different than animals who have no morals, and that is why it is so important to understand this. It is also important to understand this because it is why we are eternal beings. Our brains will one day cease to function, but our minds will live on forever. This is why Ecclesiastes 3:11 tells us that God has put eternity in our hearts. Unlike animals, man was created in God's image, and that would have to mean that man is eternal just as God is eternal.