“See how great a love[1] the Father has bestowed on
us, that we would be called children of God; and we such we are. For this
reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. Beloved, now we
are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know
that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He
is. And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is
pure.”
It sounds simple, and perhaps
because it sounds simple we ignore it and substitute the complex in its place;
it is about an Other and not ourselves, and because of that we ignore it and
substitute other things, especially ourselves, in its place. John writes in a time of falling away from the
Gospel by professing Christians, he writes in a time of false teaching (which
sadly all times seem to have), he writes, at least in part, to counter
heresies. His first letter is a simplistic letter to many contemporary readers,
it has redundancies, emphases and reemphases – and yet read as a whole, the
point-counterpoint, the ebb and flow, the call and response, the weaving of
primary-colored threads strengthens and reaffirms our fellowship with the
Trinity and with one another (see 1 John 1:1-4) and exclaims to us, “Little
children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen,” (1 John 5:21).
We all have a primary idol
within us, a deity central to our lives, and one which must be dethroned and
put to death by the Cross of Christ, and that idol is “self” – it is an idol
that does not go away without a fight, it is an idol that knows how to wage guerrilla
warfare, it is an idol that seeks any and every opportunity to reassert itself.
This idol craves attention, it want us to pay attention to it, and we in turn
what others to pay attention to it. Oh if we could only orient the universe
around ourselves all would be better!
When our sin is revealed to us
we rightly recoil, when our selfishness in manifested to our hearts and minds
we repent, and we often ask ourselves, “How can this not happen again? How can
I change?” A church may ask, “How can we change? How can we grow?”
To be sure there are many
dynamics to transformation, and perhaps nowhere in the Bible are these dynamics
as systematically portrayed as in Romans; we are justified and reconciled, we
were once one thing in Adam but we are now another thing in Christ, and now we
work this new thing out in community in Christ. Central to all Biblically-based
change is Jesus Christ – He is the Alpha and the Omega of change, of our lives,
the Beginning and the End – the Foundation and the Capstone. It is into His image that we are being changed
and when we lose sight of this, when we lose sight of Him, the idol within us
rears its head, for we invariably substitute ourselves and our own
self-improvement for Jesus Christ.
This is insidious to the point
of often being virtually indiscernible. We are seduced into embarking on
self-improvement projects that divert us from Jesus Christ, and the insidiousness
lies in these projects looking so very good – how could anything so good be so
bad? The Bible has one solution for the old self, and that is death on the
Cross in Christ (Romans Chapter 6). God is not interested in renovating the old
self, but He does desire us to live in intimacy with Him in Christ in and through
the Cross and Resurrection.
Our passage tells us that when
Jesus appears that we will be like Him because we will see Him as He is –
transformation occurs when we behold Jesus Christ. Here again we have the “already
– not yet”; for while Jesus will certainly appear in His fullness in the
future, He is also most certainly appearing today to us, the question is “are
we looking for Him?” When we see Jesus He transforms us into His image – we become
more and more like Jesus in our life on earth.
Paul writes (2 Cor. 3:17 – 18),
“Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is
liberty. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of
the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just
as by the Spirit of the Lord.” Our life in Jesus Christ is to be transformationally
spiritually dynamic; we are to be presenting (as a way of life) ourselves to
God as living sacrifices so that we will be transformed and renewed and live in
the perfect will of God (Rom. 12:1-2).
There is a vast difference
between seeking my own self-improvement to make my life better and seeking the
appearing of Jesus Christ that will result in His glory as I am transformed
into His image. The very reason we are told that “all things work together for
good” is so that we might be conformed to the image of Jesus (Romans 8:28 – 29)
– rather than have our lives made better. Bluntly speaking, God is not
interested in our lives being made “better” as we normally think of these
things – He is interested in us knowing Jesus and becoming like Him so that we,
in turn, can lay down our lives for others so that they can be like Him. This
is a far cry from the heresy rampant in the contemporary church that God is passing
out cotton candy and wanting us to have our “best lives now”.
At the risk of being
misunderstood, if we understood and taught Romans 5:12 – 8:39 we would have a
lot less self-improvement and self-help programs in the professing church and a
lot more people experiencing the freedom we have in Jesus Christ. (Yes, we need
to believe the finality of justification by faith as found in Romans 1:1 – 5:11
in order to enter into Romans 5:12 – 8:39, but we seem to fight that just as we
fight Romans 5:12 – 8:39).
Colossians 3:1 – 4 encourages
us to have our minds fixed on Christ above, and reminds us that that have died
and that our lives are hidden with Christ in God. I cannot go to a graveyard
and enroll its occupants in a self-help program. Paul gives us the same dynamic
that John does, “When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear
with Him in glory.” This is another “already – not yet” and ties into 2 Cor.
3:17 – 18, for as we see Jesus we are changed from glory to glory, yes, a greater
glory awaits us (Romans 8:18 – 21) but we are (hopefully) experiencing a
measure of that glory today – and if we are not experiencing it today it is not
because it is not here for us, it is here in Jesus Christ and our Father deeply
desires us to know Him and His Son in their glory.
Not to know and experience the
glory of Jesus Christ today is akin to the child of a billionaire living in a
dumpster and living off refuse – never tasting what is on the earthly father’s
dinner table.
The desire of every child of
God ought to be seeing Jesus more clearly and intimately today than yesterday,
and ultimately beholding Him as He is in all of His glory and grace and love.
Why should we desire this? Because of His great love for us. Oh, if we would
only realize the passionate love of Jesus for us…for me…for you. Paul writes
(Gal. 2:20), “He loved me, and gave Himself for me”! Well He loved YOU too and
gave Himself for YOU too! Can you believe it? Do you believe it? It is true.
How true? It is the story of the ages, of the cosmos; the story that will be
told and retold when all other stories have run their course. It is a story
sung by angels and the redeemed, the story written in the heavens, the
narrative that stretches from before time to after the second hand has made its
final movement.
You are deeply loved, and your
Lover, Jesus Christ, says, “Behold Me, come to Me, let Me love you, let My
presence transform you, let my glory envelop you, let My Word renew you.” Our
Father says, “Come to Jesus and be like Him.”
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