So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any incentive of love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others better than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Philippians 2:1–11 (RSV)
"Have this mind among yourselves,"
It is said that one of the results of the Reformation was the rise of individualism. One cannot say that was a goal of Luther's, but a by-product of the concept of the 'priesthood of all believers.' Luther understood this to mean that each Christian can go directly to Christ for forgiveness; a priest is not needed to dole out what Jesus offers freely. Luther's main concern about forgiveness centered around the sale of indulgences. Pope Leo X wanted to build St. Peter's in Rome and need the money. Leo authorized the sale of indulgences, which promised forgiveness to the purchaser at bargain rates.
Luther's criticism of this hawking of forgiveness was correct and needed. Forgiveness was a gift of God the Father through the dying and rising of Jesus. I was not a commodity that the Church would offer for sale. The Church had been tasked with proclaiming Jesus risen from the dead by whom we now have forgiveness.
The Roman church of the sixteenth-century erred on forgiveness to make money and control the population. The twenty-first-century church is plagued with hyper-individualism where a person does not need the Church. Neither is a healthy place to be, nor is it the purpose of the Church.
The Church, the Body of Christ, is all believers bound together in mutual love and grace, serving Christ through serving each other. How do we know this to be so? We look to Jesus, who humbled Himself, becoming human, taking the form of a servant (a slave as it reads in Greek). In obedience to His Father and for the sake of all creation, Jesus suffered and died on the cross.
Our mind in Christ is that of service to the other. We set ourselves aside so that the neighbor might hear the Good News, receive the mercy and forgiveness the Father desires that they have, and become part of Christ's Body, that is the Church.
In Luther's treatise, "On the Freedom of the Christian," he wrote, "A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all."
This is our mindset. We are free, completely free in Christ. Being perfectly free in Christ, we are the humble servant of all. There can be no such creature as an 'individual Christian.' We are only truly alive and free when we are in Christ humbly serving all for Jesus' sake.