Looking Like Jesus….

Looking Like Jesus….

I was thinking about some of the things that prevent me from being the masterpiece that God created or recreated me to be… I understand that Jesus Christ is the standard of God… So being like Jesus has to be the goal of my life… When I say that I should be like Jesus my mind almost explodes…. Everything in me says that I can’t do it…. I look at me and see imperfection… Jesus is perfect…. He is God and I am not…. My old sin nature wants to put myself in the place of God…. I don’t say that out loud because I know better… But my actions show that to be the case… The sad thing is that even at my sin-nature’s best I don’t come close to looking like Christ….

I know that my old sin-nature is the problem… However, when Jesus Christ died on the cross, He removed the power of my sin-nature… Not only that, God has given us everything pertaining to life and godliness… So when I say that “I’m not perfect” God says “Jesus Christ’s death has made you perfect”… You look at me and you know I’m not perfect… You would tell me that but you are too polite, or not and you might tell me… So here is the question: Who’s right? Is it you and me who don’t see and feel perfection or is it God who says that I am clean and holy?…  I’m going with God…

It is not my sin and my sin-nature that are the real problem… It is my lack of faith… I believe God with all of my heart… But that is not enough… When I believed in Jesus Christ death on the cross, His burial and His resurrection, I was saved… But in reality I had to surrender all of those things that I used to trust in before that… If I was trusting my good works or anything else to get me to God, I had to turn away from that.. The awesome thing about the forgiveness of my sin is that God Himself moved into my innermost being… The Holy Spirit of God (Christ in me) is the thing that gives me everything that pertains to life and godliness…

The love of God for me was the thing that compelled me to become a Believer and Follower of Jesus Christ… When I understood God’s love for me my desire to live for Him and love Him took over my life… God moved into my life and changed me…. For God’s part the change was complete… For my part and your part I still had a ways to go …. The only reason that I kept doing and thinking sinful stuff is because I didn’t completely understand that my sinful sin-nature was powerless… I kept giving my sin-nature credibility when I “sinned” and tried to somehow make it right….

When I gave my dead sin-nature credibility, my sin-nature did what it does best, sin…. When I give the death of Jesus Christ on the cross the credibility that Almighty God deserves, I no longer have the desire to sin…  I love the Lord Jesus Christ with everything He has given me…. He says that when I love Him I will keep His commands… When I keep Christ’s command to love, I will look more like Him to you and me….

Ephesians 2:1-10 Once you were dead because of your disobedience and your many sins. You used to live in sin, just like the rest of the world, obeying the devil—the commander of the powers in the unseen world. He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God. All of us used to live that way, following the passionate desires and inclinations of our sinful nature. By our very nature we were subject to God’s anger, just like everyone else.

But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so much, that even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead. (It is only by God’s grace that you have been saved!) For he raised us from the dead along with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ Jesus. So God can point to us in all future ages as examples of the incredible wealth of his grace and kindness toward us, as shown in all he has done for us who are united with Christ Jesus.

God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.

2 Peter 1:3-4    ³ By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence. ⁴ And because of his glory and excellence, he has given us great and precious promises. These are the promises that enable you to share his divine nature and escape the world’s corruption caused by human desires.

1 John 2:2 ² He himself is the sacrifice that atones for our sins—and not only our sins but the sins of all the world.

Colossians 1:19-22 ¹⁹ For God in all his fullness

was pleased to live in Christ,

²⁰ and through him God reconciled

everything to himself.

He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth

by means of Christ’s blood on the cross.

²¹ This includes you who were once far away from God. You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions. ²² Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault.

Romans 12:1-2 And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him ² Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.