Created to Become Like Christ

Week 4: The Purpose-Driven Life

  Rev. Dr. Christopher Carlson

Last October or November, I had a great thing happen to me; I had Lasik surgery. If you remember, when I first came here, I had glasses. They may have been rather thick glasses. I’ve been blind since I was about 11 years old. I remember very well, I couldn’t see the board and back then you got these big black glasses and I got teased mercilessly. My eyes got worse; I think they got up to about 20/450 and that’s where you get to the place where if you lose your glasses you can’t find them and have to have someone else help you find them. It’s so wonderful to be able to wake up and see the time clock. But I have found that I think I am picking up things a lot more, seeing things better, in many ways rather than just simply the rim of the glasses. I was thinking of this in terms of an analogy of Purpose Driven Life. You see, what we have been talking about really is Lasik for the spirit, to help you and I see the world in a bigger sort of way. You and I are near-sighted; we tend to look up close. We tend to look mostly at ourselves. So the first week, we talked about worship; not worship in terms of just simply praying or hearing a sermon or what we might like, but the fact that worship is about learning how to love a big God, a God who is bigger than we can ever imagine, but yet a God who can also be known and loved and wants to be loved. Last week we talked about fellowship or Koinonia or connection, more than simply having coffee or doughnuts, but the idea of deeply getting to know other Christians. Church is not just about taking care of ourselves and our family, but taking care of ourselves, our family, and our Family. It’s bigger. Today requires bigger sight too for what we are going to talk about. Today is about discipleship. Now a disciple is one who follows another; one who follows the teachings of another. That’s the technical definition. In the Biblical definition it is certainly that – people followed Jesus and we follow Jesus – but it’s more about becoming like Him. That’s what God is after, that we might become more like His Son Jesus Christ.

God is a big God. It’s hard for us to understand God in the sense He wants to be understood. We only live a hundred years or so and our perspective is very limited. But the Bible speaks of a God who has no beginning and no end, that eternally before we ever showed up, God was making plans for us. Part of the plan that God had for us was that we would become more like Him. He didn’t just set up an abstraction for us to learn, like book-learning, though that’s part of us. He said, “Here is what I want you to be like…like this person, none other than myself, born into the world as the person Jesus Christ. I want you to be like Jesus.”

Romans 8:29

“From the very beginning, God decided that those who came to Him and He knew who would, should become like His Son.”

God wants us to grow up like Christ. This theme is all through the New Testament, that the object of discipleship, the object of becoming mature, is to become like Christ, to grow up in Christ. I was joking with someone the other day. I am about 50 and I know that for some of you that is very young and for some of you it’s very old. I was joking that sometimes I wonder what I want to be when I grow up. I think we all feel that way. It’s funny how you get older, the less grown up you feel sometimes. To some degree, that’s what the Christian life is; it’s a continual growing up. We continually get older. As a pastor, I’ve been in many churches and I have met some very mature Christians. Some people I have met I almost felt that I was standing on the Earth and looking up at jet trails, that person was a jet trail and so far away from where I was. There are saints out there who are just really on fire for the Lord and solidly mature in Christ. And yet in many churches, I have met so many people who just seem to be staying put where they are. It’s almost as though we just like the way it always is and we don’t put a lot of effort into it. I’ve discovered that spiritual maturing isn’t necessarily a function of age. It’s more of a function of purpose and direction. That’s what we are talking about today, that our purpose and direction, our lives should be focused on following and being like Jesus Christ.

How do we do that? How do we fulfill this third purpose and become more like Christ? Well I’m going to start with two things we hear all the time, I won’t spend much time on those. I want to move on to three rather unusual ones. The first two really we ought to do but we don’t as much as we should. First is to read your Bible. I don’t know how many times I have said that as a preacher. Read, study, and know, your Bible. We were talking about that in Sunday School class today. We were talking about different cults that have broken off from the Christian church – the folks that knock on your door and know all the answers and yet have a different doctrine than the Christian church. Yet, they know it so well that often they bring people into their midst because those folks who might go to a Christian church don’t know what they are supposed to believe. They don’t know the differences. We need to know the differences. We need to know what the Bible says because the Bible is God’s way of transforming our thinking and broadening our vision.

The second way is the church. “From Him, the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work.” I said last week we live in a very individualistic culture. I see the evidence of that in the Army. For years, the Army had a slogan, “Be all that you can be.” Can you hear the individualism in there? If you join the Army, you are going to be all you can be as an individual. They went a little further a couple of years ago. Now the slogan is, “An Army of one.” Think about that for a moment, just how silly that is. If you are an Army of one out in a battle, you are going to get killed. But it seems to attract people because they think they get to be themselves in the Army. I have some news for them…individualism rolls right onto the floor in the barber shop. But it’s an advertisement. A lot of people are looking at this in terms of our faith as well. I’ve shared with you how mainline churches, and particularly the Presbyterian Church, are dropping members like flies. We are losing 40,000 members a year. Some churches are doing fine, but the denomination is not. In some of the research coming out, people aren’t just simply leaving the church and going nowhere, but what they are doing is that they are leaving the church to see whether they can grow in their faith by themselves. They are not finding what they want in the church and so they might stay home and read self-help books or whatever they can do. I want to say that just isn’t going to work. It’s like the battlefield. If you are an army or spiritual person of one, you are just not going to make it. We need each other. Every image of the New Testament is one of being a community. We need friends to grow up.

There are other ways and I want to share three this morning that maybe you haven’t thought of. Look at this verse: “In all things, God works for the good of those who love Him.” It doesn’t say that all things are good, just that God works for the good of those who’ve been called according to His purpose. The first thing that is kind of unusual for us to think about, but is one of the main ways that God calls us to become like Jesus Christ, to work on us, is that God uses trouble or the Biblical word “trials” to teach us to trust Him. The fact is that you and I don’t learn too much unless we have to struggle for it. It’s just the way we are. If things are going wonderful, we just let them continue. Some people are disciplined but most of us just sit back and click the remotes. We are happy to let things proceed as they are until hurricanes or sickness or problems or challenges come. We grow because of trials. Listen to what the Bible says: “Troubles produce patience, patience produces character, and character produces hope.” Hear that word “character.” God is out to produce the character of Christ in you and in me. Since the beginning of the world, that is what His plan has been, to produce Jesus’ character in us. Here is something I want you to hear, it’s a tough thing to hear, but I want you to hear it. God is much more concerned about your character and my character than He is about our career or happiness or comfort. God is not out to make you unhappy or uncomfortable, at least not all of the time, but in order for Jesus’ character to become built in you and me, there are often times in life that are very uncomfortable and sometimes unhappy. Sometimes there is out and out suffering. Until we get that, until we understand that that is true, we will never quite understand life. We will never be happy for sure. And we will always wonder, “Why me?” We don’t always know why us, but God uses this and it is what life is about. Jesus Himself had trials, many trials. If the Son of God was going to have trials, guess what is going to happen to you and me? But I want you to imagine this. In the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus goes there and is terribly troubled because He knows what is going to happen. Unlike you and me, He knew He was going to be tortured and crucified and spit on and that His friends would run away. Think about that for just a minute. Suppose you got captured by some dictator and the dictator said, “I’m going to take you to my jail, torture you for days, and then kill you in the most unpleasant way.” And then you prayed about it and God said that was His will for you. You would think it didn’t make any sense. God had a plan that Jesus’ death was going to count as a sacrifice for you and me. He had a big view of this suffering that this was what Jesus was going to do. But can you imagine being in the middle of it, knowing what is going to happen, and knowing that all your friends are going to run off? We would all wonder whether it was worth it and question God. That’s precisely what Jesus did. He prayed, “Please take this away.” Part of what God is trying to teach us is faith, even in the midst of times when He seems like He doesn’t know what He is doing. So, how do we get through this? I want to encourage you to keep a spiritual journal, not a diary. I encourage you to do this, maybe for the benefit of your children but certainly for the benefit of yourself. Faith is often about looking behind, looking at the Bible and seeing what God has done and how He has been faithful. But in our own lives, we can look back and see how God has gotten us through. When we are going through pain and suffering, we often don’t know what is going on, it’s hard to see it when we are in the middle of it. Only when we get past and look back we can kind of understand. If we write things down and then when we get into trouble we can look back and remember when God has been faithful. It really helps. The other thing is to remember that this life is not all there is. Remember the bigger picture. Our one hundred years, or less, whatever we get, is not that much compared to eternity. Paul says, “Our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them.” That doesn’t mean that this life is not important, it is very important. But it’s not all there is. Even when we go through suffering now, we look to a time when there will be no suffering.

The second thing that may surprise us is that God uses temptations to teach us to obey. If trials come from God, temptation comes from Satan. And yet God is in control. The Bible says things that are really hard for us to swallow sometimes or at least understand. Sometimes we do wonder if God is all powerful and wonder why He doesn’t do something about the suffering and about the evil. That’s a mystery to us. It’s a mystery why God actually sends us into temptation sometimes. The next verse says, “Jesus was led by the Spirit, into the desert, to be tempted by the devil.” God doesn’t tempt but He sent Jesus out there. Sometimes we are sent out there too. But I need to say something to you; I’d rather believe in a God that I didn’t understand all the time than one who is not all powerful, who couldn’t do anything about it. If God can’t do anything about it, who is going to win in the end? It helps me to know that God is going to win. He uses temptation to help us to obey. I liken it to trying to get back in shape. I find that when I haven’t been in the weight room for several months, when I finally get enough motivation to go and get back into shape, I can’t lift anything or when I do I am really hurting. But it gets better. The same is true; if we are never tempted, how will we deal with temptation? These things make us stronger. How do we deal with it? I want to encourage you that you can’t deal with it by yourself. We need to deal with it with God’s help, especially the scriptures. Every time Jesus was tempted, He quoted scripture. “Get out of here. The scriptures say worship only the Lord your God. Obey Him only,” Jesus said to Satan. “Fix your thoughts on what is true and good and right.” And get a spiritual partner. I need to say something very serious to you; I think sometimes in the church we do have a problem. The problem is that we tend to try to live our spiritual lives by ourselves. We are so afraid to tell other Christians about our temptations or our failures. It’s hard. I have the privilege of being a pastor and many people will come and tell me their problems; I have the privilege of being the confidant of many people. It should be that way, but on the other hand, we all should pastor one another. We must remember that we are all saved by grace. You may be tempted by one thing and another person is tempted by another thing. We shouldn’t judge someone; we don’t know their past or where they’ve been. Sometimes others are tempted by things that we would never be tempted by. We just need to love one another and give one another friendship. Even the Bible says, “You are better off to have a friend than to be all alone. If you fall, your friend can help you up.”                                            

Finally, God uses trespasses. If trials are from God and temptations are from the devil, trespasses are from one another. These may be the hardest to deal with. But trespasses teach us to forgive. Even our Lord was betrayed by friends; insults were hurled at Him, He was beaten and put to death. Yet Jesus was able to say, “Father, forgive these people because they don’t know what they are doing.” Jesus was able to forgive and we need to be able to forgive as well. I know that is easier said than done. But I want to tell you a few things that might help. I don’t believe that turning the other cheek means to stand there and get beaten up. It may mean that from time to time in certain parts of history. But turning the other cheek basically means that we are not allowed to take revenge. I don’t know about you, but if somebody hits me on the cheek, I don’t want to hit them back on just the cheek. I want to hit them back upside the head and wherever else I can think of. It’s just my sinful nature. To block somebody’s fist is not revenge. To move out of the way or to keep them from hitting you is not revenge. But to hit them multiple times is. We don’t have to stand it if somebody is abusing us. If somebody is stealing from you, we don’t have to necessarily take it. In fact, I think we are under the obligation to stop people from doing evil. It’s what makes war sometimes necessary. Forgiveness doesn’t necessarily mean that we have to like that person. Forgiveness is forgoing justice; in other words, if someone does something to you, justice would demand that they pay for it. But forgiveness is forgoing that and not having to make them pay. You can do that with anyone. I’m not really talking about this in a legal sense, but more in a personal sense. Forgiveness doesn’t mean we have to like a person but we can’t take revenge. We can forgo justice and forgive them as Jesus did. I doubt that Jesus liked everyone He forgave. But He wished them the best and He did not demand justice in some cases. We have to remember that God has forgiven us. I have a very close relative that for many years was a real pain to live with. I’m sure you have a few of those too. I remember praying to God, “Lord why am I going through this with this person?” I didn’t hear a voice, but I knew what the answer was. The answer was, “Because I’m trying to teach you to love someone who is unlovable. And oh, by the way, that’s what I am doing for you.” We will never forgive anyone any more than God has already forgiven us. “Forgive others just as God forgave you because of Christ,” Paul says. Remember God has forgiven us. And last but not least, remember that God is in control. Remember the story of Joseph. His brothers sold him into slavery and in the end when he became the ruler of Egypt and they came before him, they thought he was really going to take revenge. He simply said, “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.” God had a plan that by sending Joseph to Egypt, he would become the ruler and be able to save all his brothers and sisters. We don’t always see that, but God is in control. We go through exactly what Christ goes through; if we go through the hard times with Him, we will certainly go through the good time with Him. I will close by saying that I believe that becoming like Christ is about 10% us and about 90% like God. It’s God’s job to make you like Jesus, but I will also say that God doesn’t normally drive a parked car. We have to start it up and we have to move. You have to put in some effort. If you are just satisfied with your life and just staying where you are, you are not going to grow a whole lot. I just want to encourage you. The life in Christ is not always easy, but it is wonderful. He wants you to grow and He will grow you if you will move. Won’t you move?