Change: God's Part and Your Pa

                       From Sermons by

                      Pastor Rick Benjamin
 

Be like Jesus.

One might ask, ``What is the form, and what is the mold?
What is it that God wants to conform me to? What will I finally
be when I have finally changed?''

The Bible says that God has predestined that his people will
be conformed to ``the likeness of his Son'' (Rom 8:29). That's
the goal, the mold, the pattern, the standard. That is what every
person needs to be converted into.

This `likeness' is not how a person looks on the outside. It
means that a person becomes like Jesus on the inside. It
describes character and personality.

All people were made by God to be like God. The Bible says
God made man ``in our image, in our likeness'' (Gen. 1:26). That
image is still in every person, but something has happened to
corrupt it, to wreck and pollute and distort and destroy it,
changing it into something wicked, ugly, and awful. These are the
results of sin, which came into the world through the first man
and woman. No longer are men like the holy God.

So God has set up another pattern, another image, another
standard. He sent his Son to take on flesh and become a man. He
lived out a perfect life which became the model for all the
world. Whatever men say about Jesus, even if they do not
acknowledge that he was God the Son, they have to say he was a
good man. People never call Jesus a criminal or a sinner. Most
will agree he lived a holy, loving, selfless life.

The way Romans 8 describes Jesus is as ``the firstborn among
many brothers.'' He is the first of many, the prototype, the new
image for God's people, who will be many. Once Jesus said, `` `A
student is not above his teacher, but everyone who is fully
trained will be like his teacher' '' (Luke 6:40). The Bible also
speaks of a time when Christians will ``all reach unity in the
faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature,
attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ'' (Eph.
4:13).

So Christ is the new pattern. The change necessary to make
any person like Jesus is enormous. Consider how much any human is
unlike Jesus. Yet his goal has always been to conform men to the
image of Jesus, the perfect man.


Here's how God does it.

Part of the way God changes a person is described in Romans
as well. It says, ``In all things God works for the good of those
who love him, who have been called according to his purpose''
(Rom. 8:28). A person's conformity to the image of Jesus Christ
is precisely that `good' that God is working out in one's life.
He uses what happens to a person to help make the change he
desires.

Those changes especially happen when the things that are
coming upon the person are not comfortable or pleasant or
convenient. Some of the things God uses to change a soul are
painful. It includes suffering, hardship, and humiliation. Nobody
likes any of those things. But there is no other way to change.

The hard times that God works in one's life are essential.
God doesn't always create these situations. Any person can get
himself into enough predicaments by his own choices. But God can
work with those things to bring his desired changes. He can use
the difficult times to melt and mold the person into his new
image so that the man will look like Jesus on the inside.
``Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the
Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all
reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness
with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the
Spirit'' (2 Cor. 3:17-18).

This puts a picture in mind of looking in a mirror, seeing
not self, but the reflection of the Lord Jesus, the Lord's glory,
the Lord's likeness. I see the Son of God. And as I watch, I
myself am being transformed into that same image.

I want to be a transformer~to borrow a term from the
American toy industry. I want to be transformed. I want to change
the form that I am in now.

The Greek word behind transformer is metamorphoo. In

preparing this message, I studied the biological function known
as metamorphosis. I found out how it works. It says a lot about
the spiritual changes that God puts people through to make them
like Jesus.

Metamorphosis means for an animal a change in body form.
Complete metamorphosis means changing until there is maturity or
adulthood, or even the ability to reproduce. Those are all
significant spiritual terms.

Metamorphosis describes very abrupt, striking changes in
appearance and structure. It is not a smooth, even process. This
also relates to the spiritual process God brings in people's
lives. Many mature Christians can remember some abrupt changes,
when God was conforming them~and it wasn't necessarily easy or
painless.
    

Metamorphosis involves four stages. A butterfly, passing
from one stage to another, looks completely different at each
stage. So it is with a person being transformed by God. Through
his whole life, he is going through change. At each stage, he
looks completely different than before.

Some animals, such as grasshoppers, go through incomplete
metamorphosis many times. Some never reach maturity. Sadly, that,
too, is like some Christians. Others, which go through incomplete
metamorphosis repeatedly, get larger each time until they finally
do reach adulthood.

That is a good picture of the Christian's spiritual
metamorphosis. It really is incomplete. A Christian goes through
one process of change and then another and then another. Some
never reach maturity, giving up prematurely, not allowing God to
work in their lives. Others do reach a great measure of maturity.

But the process really never ends for any Christian.
I learned something else about metamorphosis which has an
important spiritual truth connected to it. I learned that
metamorphosis is caused by hormones which are located in the
animal's head. If these hormones are restricted from the rest of
the body, then maturity will never come.

One way to apply this spiritually is that the church is a
many-membered living body of people whose head is the Lord Jesus.
What changes the church comes from Jesus. If the church is cut
off from Jesus, then it will not change and grow. The Bible
speaks of maintaining ``connection with the Head, from whom the
whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and
sinews, grows as God causes it to grow'' (Col. 2:19).

Another way to apply this is that change comes to an
individual through ``the renewing of your mind'' (Rom 12:2). A
person's mind~his head~is most important to him ever changing.
What has to change first is the way the person thinks and
believes and understands and the way he remembers his life. He
has to change the way he puts together his thoughts about
reality, about God, and about relationships. The man changes when
God renews his mind so that he believes the truth.

Often this realization of the truth about himself is a
powerful experience for a person. He remarks about it: ``Oh!
That's how it is!'' It can be a wonderful experience. For a
person who finally realizes he has been wrong about something all
his life it can even be a very difficult and desperate emotional
episode. Yet that is how real change comes. That is how spiritual
maturity is reached.

So the Bible says, ``We, who with unveiled faces all reflect
the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with
ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the
Spirit'' (2 Cor. 3:18). God's people are to reflect the image of
Jesus Christ in his love and purity, in his servitude, wisdom,
and power, in his relationship with God and his people, in his
ministry, in his maturity.
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