You Were Created to Become Like Christ

Everybody needs a purpose. What’s more, everybody has a purpose. That’s why we’re spending 40 Days of Purpose, looking at God’s purposes for our lives. So let’s do a quick review. In the first week we asked the question, “What on Earth am I here for?” and we discovered that God does indeed have a purpose for our existence. In week two we talked about your how you were planned for God’s pleasure, about how our first purpose is to be known and loved by God and to know Him and love Him back—that’s called what? . . . right—Worship. Then last week we talked about how you were formed for God’s family. Remember what the Biblical word for that was? Right—Fellowship. In Christ we are made part of God’s family, and we learn to love one another. We learn to get along.
This week we jump into another misunderstood purpose of living life. The word for the week is discipleship, and in many ways I think it summarizes all of the five purposes. In general, to be a disciple means to be a follower, it means that we follow Christ. But there is a special way in which we want to apply the word today. In God’s 3rd purpose for our lives, discipleship means to become like Christ.
Now, notice very carefully what I just said. We are to become like Christ: we are not called to be Christ. For instance, every time I hear the letters WWJD mentioned I kind of wince. For those of you who don’t know what WWJD means, it’s an acronym for What Would Jesus Do? And it’s suppose to make us stop and think about what our actions should be. But the first thing I always think of when I hear that is: WWJD? Well . . . He’d die on the cross for the sins of the world. See, God doesn’t want me to do that—Jesus Christ already did that for me. Discipleship isn’t merely aping the actions of Jesus, it isn’t trying to be “Jesus with skin on” for other people—they’ve already got a Savior, and we’re not it! But discipleship is becoming like Christ—it is having His mindset, His worldview . . . His attitude.
That’s what our memory verse for the week teaches us. Let’s read that together: Philippians 2:5, “5 Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus.” What is the attitude of Christ? The Apostle Paul says in today’s epistle reading that although Christ was—and is—truly God, possessing all of God’s power and authority, He still chose to humble Himself, to serve others, to be subject to common, everyday laws such as gravity, hunger, and death. Though He was Himself God, Christ chose to live a life on Earth in which He, too, was entirely dependent upon the Father.
Therefore, if we are to become like Christ, we need to learn how to take on His attitude towards life, towards Himself, and towards others. How do we do that? How does God accomplish discipleship in our lives?
Well, He doesn’t just give it to us. One of the things that we understand from the Scriptures is that God always works through means, He chooses to work through channels. For instance, He chooses to work through the means of grace—the Word and Sacraments—to give to us the gifts of faith and life so that we can worship. He often chooses to work through other people—sometimes quite difficult people—to teach us to love one another in fellowship.
For learning to be like Christ, we’d expect to see God working through nice, good things. Maybe you’re thinking that God uses prayer, or good, Scriptural teaching to make us like Christ. Christ loved a good party . . . maybe God uses that to make us more like Him?
Yeah, I’m sure that God uses all those things—even the parties—in His effort to make us more like Christ. But as He shapes us into the image of His Son He chooses some unexpected tools. Today we’re going to look at three things that you may have not thought God uses, but He does.
Let’s look at this next verse, Romans 8:28. “And we know that in most things, God works for the good.” Oh . . . did I read that wrong? “28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.”
Now, what is His purpose? Well we read it. What did we just say? God works all things for good to make us like Jesus. And still you might say, “Oh, what does that include?” Yeah, it does include “all”. Does that include bad things? Painful things? Does it even include mistakes we make from sinning? Yes, it does. And still I hear you out there, “No . . . no . . . God couldn’t be using this to make me more like Christ. Not this.” He’s working it all out for your good, to make you more like Christ. “But what about my financial problems?” Yes, all things. “But what the death in my family?” All things. “But what about” . . . ALL things.
No matter what you may have gone through, no matter what you may be going through now, God says that in all things He works for the good of those who love Him. It doesn’t say all things are good because there’s a lot of bad in the world, but what He says is that God uses all things for His purposes, to make me like Christ. Everything. He can redeem everything and make it turn out for your good.
In one of those strange twists that life in Christ often involves, God often chooses to invert the world’s system, to turn things upside down in order to accomplish His purpose. And so, just as Christ suffered as He walked upon the Earth, so we too must learn to suffer. I’m not talking about being a martyr or anything, I’m not talking about walking around saying, “Woe is me!” I’m simply saying that Christ’s character, His voluntary dependence upon God, was formed by and through suffering. In order for us to become more like Him, God must take us through the same purifying crucible of suffering. He uses three unexpected tools to fashion us into the image of His Son, to make us more like Christ.
Now when I say that, right away I know we’re going to get a few volunteers to help other people become more like Christ. I can hear it now . . . “Oh, yeah . . . it involves suffering? I’ve got a few people that I’d like to help out with that!” But that’s not the way it works. In fact, those few people who you’re thinking about? Did they cause trouble in your life? Well, that trouble was one of the tools God uses.
God uses trouble to teach us to trust Him. Ever thought about that? Maybe not in the midst of your trouble, but on the other end of it, when it was all over . . . did you feel that you had learned to trust God more? If you approached your trouble with the right attitude, then I would say that you did.
Take this, for example: Other than the cross, what was Christ’s single greatest trouble? What was His most agonizing emotional moment? I think we could safely say that it was in the Garden of Gethsemane. On the night before He was crucified, our Lord wrestled with God’s will for Him, He struggled between His desire to escape the pain that He knew was to come and the Lord’s will to offer Him as a sacrifice for all of mankind. He pleaded with God, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me!”
You need to know that’s okay. You need to know that your troubles really do hurt, that your pain matters to God. No matter what it is you are going through, you have my permission—and what’s more, you have God’s permission—to tell Him you don’t like it, that you’d prefer He took it away. Be honest with God.
But to be more like Christ, we also need to be able to trust God in the midst of that trouble. Christ didn’t end there, He also went on to say, “But not my will . . . but Yours be done.” In other words, Christ trusted the Father with the final outcome. He trusted that God’s will was good, even if it wasn’t what He would have preferred for Himself.
God uses trouble to teach us to trust Him. It’s easy to trust God when everything is going great in your life. The real test of your faith is, how do you hang out with God when you don’t feel good? When everything is going wrong? The next time you get into some troubles and you ask, “Why is this happening?”, remember that in the midst of your troubles God is teaching you to trust Him. He’s giving you the opportunity to trust Him.
Rick Warren makes a good suggestion for getting through those times of trouble. He suggests—quite rightly I think—that during those times of trouble you keep a spiritual journal. Nothing elaborate, just a record of your dealings with God and the world. Anyone ever done this? Kept a spiritual journal? There’s been times that I’ve done things like this, and in the process I realized that I can look back over them and see how God’s hand moved through my life. One of the benefits of a journal is . . . well there lots of them, actually. But here are two. One: that you can vent on a piece of paper, get that stuff out of your system. And two: you get to see how God used those troubles to make you more like Christ, how those trials—when used as God’s tool—have made you more spiritually mature.
God uses troubles to teach us to trust Him, but He uses temptations to teach us to obey Him. Now James, the brother of Jesus, reminds us in James 1:13-15 13 When tempted, no one should say, "God is tempting me." For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; 14 but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.” God Himself does not tempt us, but what He does is utilize that temptation to teach us to become more like Christ.
Jesus faced temptations. Hebrews 4:14-15 says, “14 Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are-- yet was without sin.”
Jesus faced every kind of temptation that we face, but was still without sin. So it’s important to remember that it is not a sin to be tempted. Temptation becomes sin, however, when we linger over it, when we toy with it and stay in the midst of it. There’s a saying, “You can’t keep the birds from flying over your head, but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair,” It’s not a sin to be tempted, but don’t linger in the temptation lest it gives birth to sin.
This is never something you’ll outgrow, either. Martin Luther once wrote, “Young fellows are tempted by girls, men who are thirty years old are tempted by gold, when they are forty years old they are tempted by honor and glory, and those who are sixty years old say to themselves, ‘What a pious man I have become!’” You never get to a point in your life where you become so spiritual or so old that you’re not tempted anymore.
But it’s important to remember that each time we are tempted is an opportunity for God to make us more like Christ. As we lean on Him and obey His word, He trains us to reject that temptation to turn away from Him. And when we fail? He is also right there, ready to hear our confession, to hear us say to Him, “I’ve disobeyed You” and forgive us in Christ. Whether we stand or fall, Christ is there, ready to teach us what it means to obey Him.
God uses trouble to teach us to trust, and God uses temptation to teach us to obey, and He uses trespasses to teach us to forgive.
Now, if you’re going to grow up spiritually and if you’re going to become like Jesus Christ, you’re going to have to learn this. The truth is in life you’re going to be hurt. This is not heaven. This is a fallen world. Everybody sins. You hurt other people. Other people hurt you. And whether it’s intentional or unintentional, you’re going to be hurt a lot in life. And frankly, you’re going to hurt a lot of other people.
Now let me be real clear. This is not a good thing. This is evil, it’s called sin, and God is not the author of sin or evil. God is not the cause of these things, but He does use them to teach us, and He does redeem us from them.
How does God teach us forgiveness through this? Ephesians 4:32 says, “32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” The very first place He teaches us forgiveness is from Himself. God forgives you completely—that’s 100% forgiveness, no grudges, no reminders of what we did last week or the month or year before, no constant harping—He forgives us completely in Christ. Just like everything else in our lives in Christ, forgiveness begins with God. And when we stand forgiven before Him for the enormous debt of sin that we owe Him, we get a picture of what it means to forgive others for the comparatively small debt of sin we have against them.
Now, notice something: We’ve got troubles, we’ve got temptations, and we’ve got trespasses . . . How many of those are something we bring on ourselves? At times it’s all three of them, isn’t it? That’s the fact of the matter, that because of our bad choices, because of our sin, we often bring these harsh consequences upon ourselves. That’s not Christ-like . . . He didn’t do anything to bring those types of things upon Himself. So again, it’s not the fact that we have these problems in our lives that makes us more like Christ, but how He teaches us to relate to them, to grow through them.
And in every single instance—whether self-inflicted or brought about by some other way—it is the power of Christ that propels us forward, that gives us the strength to push through, to grow, that carries us on, causing us to rely upon Him even more and so become more like Him. If you put a chameleon on the side of a tree his color will change slowly, bit by bit, until you can hardly distinguish him from the tree. It’s the same way with us—the more we lean on Christ, the less you can see of us and the more we start to look like Christ. We become invisible, with Christ showing through in our weaknesses and in our strengths. And in all things and in all ways we can then truly say that “we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”