BECOMING WHO YOU WERE CREATED TO BE - PART 5

“And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.  For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.  Moreover whom He predestined, these he also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified” (Romans 8:28-30 NKJV).

As disciples of Jesus our desire and goal (and the predestined will of God) is to become like Jesus.  However, it is difficult to define what it means to “be like Jesus.”  Most of the definitions I have seen have to do with different characteristics that Jesus had (love, forgiveness, peace, power, etc.)  As I have studied the life of Jesus, I found that there are two characteristics that defined who Jesus was and, therefore, are what we should strive for.  All other attributes flow from these two. 

The first attribute, which we have been talking about, is that Jesus has a pure heart.  He is sinless.  1 John 1:9, tells us that “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (emphasis mine).  In other words, when we choose to admit our sin and admit our need for Jesus to save us, He not only bestows forgiveness upon us, but He also purifies our hearts just as His is pure.

The second attribute, we find that shapes who Jesus is and enabled Him to live as He did, is that He is Spirit-filled.  In this I mean that Jesus was completely saturated with the Holy Spirit and was totally dependent upon the Holy Spirit to accomplish all that He did.  I would even go so far as to say that Jesus, though He is God, did not do the things He did as God, but instead did them as a man filled with God.

Let me explain.  When we think about the attributes of God, we usually focus on three main ones: omnipresent (all places at once), omniscient (all-knowing), and omnipotent (all-powerful).  As we look at the life of Jesus, we find that Jesus did not depend on these Godly qualities to enable Him to live as He did.  Instead, Jesus, “Who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness” (Philippians 2:6-7, NIV).  In other words, Jesus set aside His Godly qualities in order to become like us.  Setting aside everything that separated Him, or gave Him an advantage, except for His pure heart (which we talked about earlier).

The easiest one to show is that Jesus was not omnipresent (all places at once).  Jesus was confined to a physical body, which meant that he could only be in one place at a time and he had to either walk or ride on a donkey to get somewhere else.  He could not be all places at the same time.  Now we know that His post-resurrection body was different, but it was an example of a heavenly body.  Does this mean that, since Jesus was not omnipresent He wasn’t God?  No.  It is just an example of how Jesus was willing to humble himself when He came to earth.  He was willing to become completely human so that He could provide us with everything we need to become who we were created to be.  Now we must choose whether or not we will let Him recreate us to be who we were created to be.