I am often told how much my daughter looks like me. She, however, is a third of my height and a sixth of my weight. She has long hair; I have short hair. She doesn’t have a beard, and I do. She is a girl, and I am a man. Yet, though we are very different, people still say that we look alike. Some people even say that she is my spitting image.
It is no secret that mankind was made in the Image of God, but sometimes we don’t look much like God. However, that is not God’s design. He wants us to grow and mature and when we do, we are supposed to look more like him. If Christ has saved you from your sin and made you alive in him, he has also given you a new nature. This nature is supposed to gain control of the old man who didn’t know Christ and change him overtime to look more and more like God every day.
In fact, this is one of the mains goals of becoming a Christian. The very name implies a follower of Christ, one who adheres to his teachings and acts like him. A little Christ. We must be growing every day to look and act more like Jesus.
Paul wrote in Romans 8:29:
Don’t let that word predestinate scare you. It simply means to determine beforehand. What was determined beforehand? That those who God new would be saved, should become more like his son Jesus. basically it just says that the people God knew would be saved, it was his desire and will for them to bare the image of Jesus, and to conform – in the continual sense – to the image of Jesus every day.
There is another verse that illustrates this point. Paul states in Ephisians 2:10
That word workmanship has a connotation that He is the one doing the work, and we are the object on which he is working. But what are we being built up to do? walk in good works. That term before ordained has the same meaning as predestinated. God desires it to be done this way since before our salvation. He is working on us and in us to walk in good works. Notice, we are walking in the works, since he has already done the work we are just following after him. It is our duty to be molded into the image of Jesus by following the path he has already marked with his precious blood.
The Christian should be like a canvas and God the painter. We yield our life to him at salvation. Are canvas has been colored on by our sins and it is hard to see the image of God in our life. The canvas looks as if a three year old has done their worst to replace all the white with colorful lines and blobs of black. But the first thing that Jesus does to the Christian is washes them with his own blood and wipes the slate clean. He then makes a stick figure on the clothe, now the Christian can identify the image of God on there own life.
But this is just the start; he longs to do more. He wants us to look more like himself, so he allows the holy spirit to come into the picture and start telling us to remove sins out of our life. The music we listened to before does not help us look like Christ so it must go. The shows we watched before do not help us emulate Christ, so he prods us to shut them off. the friends we use to hang around do not help us grow in Christ so they must decrease the Word of God must wash the slate clean of everything that is in our life that does not reflect his nature and therefore we must spend time in it, allowing him to have his way with us. The goal, to be conformed to his image. We must not only look like Christ but act like him.
John 3:30 tells us that:
He must increase, but I must decrease.
Phillipians 2:5 says :
Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:
What is the point, the point is that God wants us to be like Jesus! He has predestined that those that are saved should look like Him, talk like Him, walk with Him, and think like Him. He wants to get all of us out of us and fill us with Him. So every stroke of Gods brush on your life, is to make you more like Christ. He may allow you to get into a car wreck and be crippled so that you can be more like Christ. He may allow someone to steal from you so that you can be more like Christ. He may allow someone you love to hurt you so that you will be more like Christ. That is his goal, to make a Christian out of us.
Romans 12:1-2 says:
This is what God wants from us, to be like him. it is our job to present our bodies and living sacrifices to him, so that he can put us on the work bench and turn us into little Christs, for his glory, and our good.
S. T.
Acts 20:24
"But none of these things move me..."
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