Three Minutes with Newman
The Spiritual Mind: A Sermon on True Christian Obedience
January 31, 2026
The Spiritual Mind: A Sermon on True Christian Obedience
The Spiritual Mind, a sermon preached by John Henry Newman at St. Mary the Virgin Church, Oxford on December 25, 1831, is a beautiful invitation to true Christian obedience to God.
Although deeply personal, it marks Newman’s growing awareness and emphasis—evident since a few years before—on the reality and importance of the Church and the sacraments. This new understanding is clear in the opening words of the sermon:
“HOW are we the better for being members of the Christian Church? This is a question which has ever claims on our attention; but it is right from time to time to examine our hearts with more than usual care, to try them by the standard of that divinely enlightened temper in the Church, and in the Saints, the work of the Holy Ghost, called by St. Paul ‘the spirit.'”
The person who examines himself sincerely recognizes that much of his action arises “from mere obedience to the world and its fashions.” The Christian “must own that his outward conduct shapes itself unconsciously by the manners of those with whom he lives, being acted upon by external impulses, apart from any right influence proceeding from the heart.”
Newman was also concerned with the development of good habits as a necessary element in the sanctification that should follow baptismal regeneration. He describes this process and explains how it leads to the union of one’s will with God’s:
“When we have mastered our hearts in any matter (it is true) we no more think of the duty while we obey, than we think how to walk when we walk, or by what rules to exercise any art which we have thoroughly acquired. Separate acts of faith aid us only while we are unstable. As we get strength, but one extended act of faith (so to call it) influences us all through the day, and our whole day is but one act of obedience also. Then there is no minute distribution of our faith among our particular deeds. Our will runs parallel to God’s will.”
We no longer calculate whether acting in one way or another puts us at risk of losing our salvation. With this noble way of serving God, we do things from love of the good and hatred of evil. If we were asked why we act in one way or another, Newman comments, we could only reply “because it is our way,” or “because Christ so acted.” To act thus with calmness and freedom is “to have a great mind, to have within us that ‘princely heart of innocence’ of which David speaks.” Newman was inspired here by a passage from John Keble’s The Christian Year. A Christian acts in this manner moved by God’s Spirit dwelling within him through a life of prayer and watchfulness. An external or merely passive obedience is not true obedience. It is one that comes to us by word only, not in the power of God the Holy Spirit.
Newman acknowledges that a person who fears God can do good acts: “Doubtless it is. St. Peter says, that in every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted with Him [Acts x. 3]. Now are such persons, therefore, Christians? Certainly not.” The natural conscience prompts men to act justly with others. Their actions may be praiseworthy, but they are not yet Christian.
To receive the Gospel in power—in the Holy Spirit—means more than being just, honest, temperate, and religious. This is good, but it is not enough. The Christian is called to a perfect obedience. Only when we receive the kingdom of God in power, not in word alone, do we become spiritual men. The Christian is called and empowered to be a new creation in Christ. As St. Paul, we wish to say: “The life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.” We must put on Christ, living the virtues and above all charity.
Newman states: “Now it is plain that this is a very different mode of obedience from any which natural reason and conscience tell us of;—different, not in its nature, but in its excellence and peculiarity. It is much more than honesty, justice, and temperance; and this is to be a Christian.” It is the result of faith, not simply in God, but in God as revealed in Christ, and of prayer and the practice of the commandments. Aided by the Holy Spirit, the Christian denies himself and imitates Christ. To be a Christian is to strive for this holiness of life with fear and trembling, to become a new creation in Christ (Gal. 6:15), living with humility, thankfulness, purity, patience, and love.
Newman closes by recognizing that we may have some real Christian principle in our hearts, but that it is little. He encourages his listeners to pray to God “earnestly to teach us more of our duty, and to impress the love of it on our hearts, to enable us to obey both in that free spirit, which can act right without reasoning and calculation.” He also adds that there may be many who have not heard “Christ’s voice fully” and whose virtues, even though short of evangelical, will be accepted by God. We cannot know their hearts or how they have responded to God. But for our part, we dwell in the full light of the Gospel, live in the full grace of the sacraments, and should aspire to the holiness of the Apostles.
