Be Like Jesus

So we're in this series called Disciple.

And we're looking at if we're if we are sent on mission to make disciples and plant churches, we have to understand what is a disciple of Jesus because we want to make, we want to reproduce this identity of disciple in the lives of others.

And we've already looked at the call that Jesus makes to his people to be disciples of him, right?

We looked at what that means.

It means to uh be with Jesus, right?

And now this morning we're gonna look at to be like Jesus.

So we are with Jesus in relationship to him, and we are in that for the purpose of becoming like him.

This is the next kind of progression of our understanding of this identity of being a disciple.

Now, in his book, The Weight of Glory, C.S.

Lewis claimed that all of us are on a trajectory toward either life or death.

And the farther we follow that trajectory, the more pronounced its effects on us become.

He said this: we are either becoming immortal whores or everlasting splendors.

We are either becoming immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.

The reality of our lives is that we are all, every single person in this room is on a path, on a trajectory.

And that path is making us into a certain people.

We can't escape this reality.

In some way, it's the very essence of our existence that we are becoming through some strange, invisible series of cause and effect, our habits, our mindsets, our chosen attitudes, our life circumstances, our sufferings, our successes, failures, and providential events all are working in this strange synergy to make us the people that we are.

You see, becoming is not optional.

To be human is to change constantly.

What we must focus our attention on is that our direction determines our person.

Our direction determines our person.

Put another way, the path we follow shapes the person that we're formed to.

Since change and becoming is inescapable, the question then becomes for us this morning that we're going to wrestle with: who or what are you being formed into?

Who or what are you being formed into?

You see, for Jesus, the point of discipleship was to be with him for the purpose of becoming like him.

The call to follow me always carried this expectation to be formed into his very image.

And one of the places that we actually see this most clearly is not in the public ministry and teaching of Jesus himself, but it's in Paul's exposition and understanding of what Jesus was doing in the life of those who he called to follow after him.

In the Apostle Paul's letter to the disciples in Rome, we see in chapter 8 this clear picture and understanding of our aim and trajectory in Christ.

In this passage, Paul talks about the way in which our soul groans to have something that seems distant from us, to have the fullness of what God promises to us in Jesus.

That we actually desire to obtain all that it means to be sons and daughters who have been adopted through the blood of Jesus.

But often in our longing, in our weakness, we don't know how to pray.

We don't know how to petition God to this end when we when our souls long for what's been promised to us, but it seems so distant.

And what Paul says is that we need the Spirit's help.

He says in verse 26, likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness.

For we do not know what to pray, for as we ought.

But the Spirit Himself, he intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words, and he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

That's good news.

That the Holy Spirit prays on our behalf in the midst of our weakness, according to the perfect will of God.

You see, when the path of our life causes us to feel weak, in absent of the words to pray, the Spirit prays for us.

The Spirit prays for us and he prays the perfect will of God for our lives.

Because here's the reality: often the journey of discipleship, it makes us feel weary.

It makes us feel fatigued and tired.

It can be paved with trials and difficulties that can fill us with doubt of God's goodness and love for us.

If we're honest with ourselves, we we have wrestled with that thought.

Look at my life, look how it's going, look at these things that I'm experiencing, these trials that I'm facing.

God, do you love me?

Are you really good?

Are you truly kind?

Do you actually see me where I am?

This is why Paul does something here in the passage.

He assures us of what we know, what we know in our souls to be true, even though life tempts us to doubt it.

Verse 28.

And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good.

For those who are called according to his purpose.

You see how Paul inserts that promise, that awareness and knowledge that we know to be true, even though it seems so difficult to trust it.

In the midst of your weakness, when you need the Spirit to pray, because you can't even find the words to lift up to Him, we got to know this.

God works all things for good according to His purpose for those who love Him.

You see, for us who are in Jesus, every aspect of the direction that we are going, every difficulty we face, every heartache we suffer, every loss and gain, triumph and trial, blessing and affliction, is the hand of God working to form us into the person of our ultimate good.

This is God's kindness, goodness, and love for you.

Everything you face in this life, if you are in Christ, is God's hand forming you into the person of your ultimate good.

This is the purpose of his calling us.

That by his working in us, through the strength of his spirit, we would be formed into the image of his son.

Our ultimate good.

Look at this in verse 29.

For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son in order that he might be the firstmore born among many brothers.

Now, let's work to unpack this very weighty statement that Paul makes here in Romans 8.

Paul talks about God's foreknowledge of us.

Our foreknowledge, it communicates an intimacy of our personhood that was before our life ever began.

It is actually established in eternity past, outside of time and space.

God knew us.

There was a foreknowledge of our personhood.

Listen to how King David the Psalmist writes about this foreknowledge out of Psalm 139.

He says, For you, Lord, formed my inward parts.

You knitted me together in my mother's womb.

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works.

My soul knows it very well.

My frame was not hidden from you when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw my unformed substance.

In your book were written every one of them the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.

Look at the intimacy David writes about in God's knowledge of us.

God has a deep intimacy of our personhood and the path of our life.

This isn't simply just some generic knowledge of us, like, oh yeah, I know that dude, right?

This is a relational knowledge.

It's a knowledge of sonship.

And in that relational intimacy, God calls his sons and daughters to an ultimate purposed end.

This is where Paul goes next, right?

He's going to take us from the foreknowledge of our being to God predestining us to a purposed end.

And Paul tells us what that end is: to be conformed to the image of his son.

To be conformed to the image of his son.

Taking the weight of what the scriptures are revealing to us this morning.

We have been intimately known and sovereignly predestined to be like Jesus.

If you want to know what this thing called Christianity is about, it is to become like him.

And it is so much the end, the purpose aim of our trajectory in this life, that God has foreknown us from before the foundations of the earth and predestined us to accomplish that end.

That we might be like Jesus.

And our conformity to his image is for the glory of his name.

Look, in order that he, Jesus, might be the firstborn among many brothers.

This is all for his glory.

This is all for his glory because in his glory is our ultimate good.

Why is our purpose end to be conformed to the image of the Son?

It is for the glory of the Son.

That he might be preeminent in God's redemptive work of salvation.

The apostle then goes on to unfold for us what is known as the Ordo Salutis or the order of salvation.

He says in verse 30, and those whom he predestined, he also called, and those whom he called, he also justified, and those whom he justified, he also glorified.

Without laboring too much in each aspect of this divine order, what we see clearly is God's sovereign hand in each step of the path of our life carrying out to completion the work of conformity to Jesus that he's called us to.

In Jesus, God has determined our path to determine our person for his glory and our ultimate good.

If to be like Jesus is our ultimate purpose end, and God's sovereign hand is working to accomplish it in us, then we have to ask the question: what part do we play in seeing the image of Jesus made real in our person?

What part and role do we play in our becoming?

A vital one, a necessary one.

You see, God's sovereignty, church, one thing we have to understand in this theological premise of sovereignty is that God's sovereignty is never absent of man's responsibility.

Never.

That's why, even though he is ultimately sovereign over every atom and molecule in creation, he is able to hold men guilty for the sins they commit.

You see, God calls us to partner with him in the work that he's doing in the world and importantly in the work that he is doing in us.

So we must partner with God in the work to see Jesus formed in our lives to be conformed to his image to be like Jesus.

And I want to put forward a way this morning in which we partner with God to this glorious end.

You see, I believe that the more we see of Jesus, the more we become like Jesus.

The more you see of Jesus, the more you become like Jesus.

Let's look at another letter from the Apostle Paul to the church in Corinth to help us understand this more practically.

We're going to try to apply this this morning.

2 Corinthians 3, 17 through 18 says this.

Now the Lord is the Spirit.

So he's referencing, he's bringing us back to the acknowledgement of the Spirit once again.

And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

And we all with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.

For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

Remember Paul's words in Romans 8.

On this path of discipleship, we will need to be dependent upon the Spirit for strength, dependent on Him to pray when we don't have the words, dependent on Him to be like Jesus.

And here Paul brings us back to the need of the Spirit's presence in our life.

We have to grasp this.

Even as a reformed church who prides ourselves on theological precision, your theology doesn't make you into the image of Christ.

It is the Spirit actively working in your life that conforms you to the image of Jesus.

Now these things work in harmony with one another.

We don't want to reject one for the other, but that's been our pattern in historical precedence.

We've rejected the presence and active working of the Spirit in our life for the sake of theology precision.

We become one-third atheists in some way.

We've got to reclaim the reality that we got to be dependent upon the Holy Spirit in our life.

You see, the Holy Spirit is working to show us, to reveal in our hearts the glory of Jesus so we live for Him and are made to be like Him.

You see, in this power of the Spirit, we're brought into this secret of transformation.

It's growing a bigger vision of Jesus.

It's growing a bigger vision of Jesus.

You see, the way we become more like Jesus is by grasping more of his glory in the power of the Holy Spirit.

And Paul says that the way that we grasp this, more of his glory is in beholding him.

In beholding him.

You see, the Greek word for beholding here is kataptrizo, and it means to gaze or to contemplate, to contemplate the Lord's glory.

The King James Version, it actually uses this phrase, to behold as in a mirror.

You see, when we look at ourselves in a mirror, we're indirectly looking at how we appear.

We're able to see our flaws, we're able to see our imperfections.

And I love the essence of what the King James Version was trying to capture here.

It's really the same word that you would get for looking into a mirror in the morning as you shave or as you fix your hair or as you put on your makeup.

It is to see and contemplate, to evaluate what is before you.

You see, the Holy Spirit helps us indirectly see Jesus through his power, even when he is not physically present before us.

And as we see Jesus, we become like him.

This is how Paul says we become transformed to his image.

What does he say?

Beholding.

To behold as in a mirror, to contemplate the glory of the Lord, and we are being transformed into that same image.

Notice how what the Holy Spirit enables for us is not just knowing about Jesus, not just mentally ascribing to information of the person and work of Jesus, but it is that we might gaze at him to become like him.

To the degree we do so, to the degree of which we behold Jesus, is the degree of which we are transformed into his image, meaning this, that we become like what we gaze at.

Jesus.

So how does the Holy Spirit help us see Jesus?

How do we put this into practice in our life to behold him?

How do we work with the Spirit's presence in our life to see more of Jesus?

Paul goes on to help us and he explains it.

See, since God is so sovereignly at work in his ministry through the Spirit, there is one thing Paul simply does.

He preaches the gospel.

This is what he goes on into chapter 4 of 2 Corinthians.

He makes plain the mystery of Christ.

He presents to them the pure, undefiled gospel of the Son of God.

He continues in the letter talking about his responsibility to not distort the word of God, but instead setting it forth in truth plainly.

And when he preaches the gospel plainly and purely, it is the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

Pay attention to what he's saying here.

This is vital for us in this life that we're trying to be like Christ.

The gospel of Jesus is the light in which we see the face of Jesus.

If you want to behold him, then it is to contemplate the beauty of the radiant light of his gospel.

That's what Paul's saying.

When the gospel is preached, somehow, in some mysterious way, it shines a light in which we see Jesus.

So Paul does one thing simply: he preaches Jesus as Lord.

And through that, the Holy Spirit, when the gospel is preached, turns it into a light through which we see the glory and face of Jesus.

So the power of transformation, the way in which we're conformed into his image through the Spirit is in beholding the glory of Jesus as the gospel shines a brilliant light on him, that we should see him clearly.

Through contemplation of the beauty of the gospel, we'll be able to behold the beauty of Jesus.

And by the Spirit, we'll be made to be like him from one degree to another.

The more you see of Jesus, the more you become like Jesus.

And we see him most clearly in the light of the gospel.

Remember, church, you're becoming a person.

If we are in Jesus, God is working by his spirit to make us become like his son.

This is our ultimate end, to be conformed to the image of Jesus.

Yet for many of us, even in this room this morning, if we are to hold up a mirror, if we're to contemplate and behold the image before us of the person that we are becoming, we may discover that the image before us looks little to nothing like Jesus at all.

For many of us, the sad truth is, is we aren't being conformed, we are being malformed.

We aren't being conformed, we are being malformed.

Remember what C.S.

Lewis said.

We're either being Transformed into the love and beauty of Jesus, or we're being malformed by the decay of sin and death.

Those are our only two options.

We're either being transformed into the beauty and love of Jesus, or we're being malformed by the decay of sin and death.

You see, the work of the gospel is to restore the image of God that we are created in, but that our sin and death has corrupted and perverted.

You see, we no longer reflect the image of our Creator.

Instead, apart from Jesus, we reflect the image of our sinful self.

It's a perverted, marred image of which we reflect.

This is the reality that we must face.

And we have to wrestle with in our hearts.

We don't just do sin.

It's not just something that we express through our members.

We are sin.

It is a part of our identity in essence.

We are sin.

Just not that we do terrible things.

Here's the scary thing about it.

It's not like it's some kind of mistake or accident that we do terrible things.

The grievous and most scary part of it all is that we actually want to do terrible things.

Your heart desires to sin.

It wants to do it.

And even though we don't want to be known in this identity, even though we long to have some sense of transformation in our life toward the good that we know resides within us, we still get pulled into doing these horrible, terrible things.

It's like an addict who's caught in a self-defeating loop.

We just can't seem to help it.

You see, the New Testament writer speaks of sin as not just an action, but primarily as a condition of being in sin, not just doing sin.

We sin fundamentally because we are sinful.

Callistos Ware, a late bishop of the Eastern Orthodox Church, put it like this The doctrine of original sin means that we are born into an environment where it is easy to do evil and hard to do good, easy to hurt others and hard to heal their wounds, easy to arouse men's suspicions and hard to win their trust.

It means that we are each of us conditioned by the solidarity of the human race and its accumulated wrongdoing and wrong thinking, and hence wrong being.

And to this accumulation of wrong, we have ourselves added by our own deliberate acts of sin, the gulf grows wider and wider.

You see, the Bible speaks of this reality for us: that there's another mirror in which we gaze into.

And it's the mirror of the law of God.

You see, the thing about a mirror that is so dreadful is that the mirror reveals to us our blemishes, it reveals to us the stains and imperfections that can be observed in our life.

And if we want to see an accurate reflection of who we are as a person, we must gaze into the mirror of God's law.

Because God's law is the reflection of his perfect righteousness.

But the dreadful thing is that once we look into that mirror, once we examine the law of God, we're devastated.

Because we see the darkness of our sin when we see ourselves against the standard of God's perfect righteousness.

You know the thoughts that run through your mind that you don't let come out of your mouth.

You know the desires in your heart that you have to meditate on when you lay your head down on the pillow at night.

You know them.

And you know that if you look into that mirror of God's perfect righteousness, you come nowhere close to measuring up.

You see the irony of our culture that wants to scream this anthem throughout all of the land.

Be true to yourself.

If you can just be true to you and who you are and live your truth, right, then everything's going to be great.

Culture is screaming that.

But the problem of this anthem is that everyone simply just looks the same in the end.

As it turns out, sin is incredibly boring.

And it's incredibly common and mainstream.

To be true to yourself somehow ends in this identity of replication throughout our society.

Sinful.

You see, we devolve into our sinful natures of self-preservation and pleasure, greed, gluttony, immorality, lies, lust.

It's the same story on repeat, on repeat, from the Garden of Eden to today's social media reels.

It's the same story.

There's nothing new.

And here's what we must be working to grasp this morning.

You're either being conformed to the image of Jesus or you're being malformed to the image of your sinful self.

That's it.

God commonly shows us ourselves in the mirror of his law before ever pointing us to the gospel of his grace.

Only in the gospel are we able to see both ourselves and see the glory of his love and grace in the face of his beloved son Jesus.

You see, only the gospel can we rightly behold ourselves, but also gaze upon his beauty.

And in doing so, we see ourselves for who we are being made into.

Jesus.

Because the more you see of Jesus, the more you become like Jesus.

You see, church, Jesus is the image of God whose image we are made in.

Jesus is the image of God whose image we are made in.

For those of us who are called according to his purpose, we have a sovereign, predestined, purposed end to be conformed to the image of Jesus.

This is because the work of the gospel is recreation and restoration.

We were created in the image of God, but our sin has perverted and marred that image.

And so in Christ, who lived perfectly in obedience to the Father's will, is now restoring and recreating by his Spirit to see that image be conformed to him.

It is to restore us, to recreate us, that our sinfulness has perverted.

We are conformed to the image of Jesus because he is the perfect image of God.

That's why.

As Colossians 1:15 states, he being Jesus, is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

Colossians 1:15

You see, Jesus Himself declares this to his disciples.

He spoke to them, whoever has seen me has seen the Father.

When Thomas questioned him, saying, Will you show us the Father now?

Will you actually reveal the Father to us now?

And Jesus simply looks at him in love, in grace, and says, If you've seen me, brother, you've seen the Father.

You see, to be like Jesus is the glorious pursuit, the glorious pursuit of seeing the fullness of the image of God restored in our person.

It is the height of becoming, to become like who we were always made to be.

And it is the gospel, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus that shines a brilliant light for us to behold his beauty and the beauty that he is making us into.

So here's my prayer for us this morning.

Simple one is always that we would be conformed to be like Jesus.

That we would be conformed to be like Jesus.

You see, church, the reality is we are not like him yet.

Even Paul, in that passage in 2 Corinthians, says that when we behold him in his glory, we're being transformed in one degree to another.

It is this progression of restoration and recreation in Christ by his spirit.

We are not like him yet, but the rugged and weary path of discipleship is carrying us along a road to one day reflect him perfectly.

Because those of whom he called, he also predestined, and those of whom he predestined, he has sanctified, and those of whom he sanctified, he will glorify.

Only the Spirit can help us make this journey.

Only He can pray for us when we have no words to offer.

Only He can strengthen us when we feel too weak to carry on.

Only He can cause us to see Jesus when our eyes have grown dim.

And one day, because of the sovereign hand of God, of those whom he called, he will glorify, and we will truly and gloriously be like him.

Let me leave you with this passage from the Apostle John, the beloved.

He says this in 1 John 3 2.

Beloved, we are God's children now.

And what we will be has not yet appeared, but we know this that when he does appear, we shall be like him.

Because we will behold him as he is.

Amen.