Like Jesus | In His Word
About this series:
Jesus calls each of us to become more like him - by being with him, learning from him and imitating him. This is sometimes known as the process of spiritual formation or the process of sanctification, where we progressively leave a self-focussed life and adopt a Jesus-focussed lifestyle. That’s because, just as he called his first disciples, he calls us to “Come, follow me” (Matthew 4:19), a journey John Mark Comer describes as being with Jesus, becoming like him and doing as he did (see Practicing The Way).
And deep within every true Christian is a desire, put there by God, to change in a Christ-like direction. In the new covenant we are transformed into people who want to be with him and want to become like him - “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts” (Jeremiah 31:33); “I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws” (Ezekiel 36:27).
But this process of transformation is not only the work of the Holy Spirit within us. In partnership with God, it is the fruit of us aligning ourselves with his plan to transform us to be like Jesus. How this all works and how we are changed to become more like Jesus will be explored through this series.
About this talk:
The instruction Jesus gave his disciples was to make disciples by “baptising them...and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20). Being people who are following Jesus means being those who hang onto his every word and who are intent on putting into practice everything he said. And so, his words, as recorded in the New Testament, are the basis of discipleship and the wise man is the one “who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice” (“and does them,” ESV) (Matthew 7:24). This is far more than a daily time for Bible reading, but a complete orientation of life around the truth of Jesus as expressed in his words and in the Bible’s words about him. Paul encourages Timothy to “continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of.” Those he learned it from (from infancy) are presumably those referred to in 1:5, “your grandmother Lois and...your mother Eunice.” Three things are particularly notable:
1. The Scriptures Paul refers to are what we call the Old Testament. He says these are “able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus,” indicating that, as other parts of the New Testament make clear, Jesus is pointed to and promised throughout the Old Testament. If all we had was the Old Testament, it would be sufficient, with illumination from the Holy Spirit, to make God’s way of salvation through Jesus clear, especially given that he has been revealed to us in his life and through the early church’s testimony about him.
2. Those Scriptures are “God-breathed” (“breathed out by God,” ESV). God’s words to us, recorded in the Scriptures in the words of men, were inspired by God such that what we have is what God himself wanted to be said. Hence we are able to talk of ‘God’s word(s) to us.’ God’s word to us is supremely manifest in the person of Jesus, the word, about whom the words of God give testimony.
3. Those words are “useful” (“profitable,” ESV). They are more than information, but will equip us for every good work (everything God requires of us and calls us to) as we allow those words to teach us, rebuke us, correct us and train us in righteousness. This word is “alive and active” (Hebrews 4:12) in that it was given by the Holy Spirit and continues to be effective through the Holy Spirit.
If all that is true of the Old Testament, how much more should we anticipate the New Testament, as God’s breathed out word, to lead us to Jesus and to equip us for every good work? On his experience of translating the New Testament, J. B. Phillips wrote, ‘[I] felt rather like an electrician rewiring an ancient house without being able to turn the mains off.’ Psalm 1, which possibly is written as an opening to the whole book, sets out two ways of life: that of the wicked and that of the righteous. The Psalms famously extol the virtues of the Scriptures that David and others trusted in and meditated on. Blessedness is not a product of heritage, of life circumstances or of one’s own wise choices, but of walking a certain way in accordance with God’s revealed words.
Hebrew parallelism is evident in v 1 where walking, standing and sitting are expressing the same (or very similar) ideas, as are the terms wicked, sinners and mockers. In contrast is the person who delights in and meditates on God’s words, the fruit of which is seen in the vitality of the image in v 2 where being blessed is to be planted by streams of water (ie. planted in God’s word). The outcomes for the two sets of people are starkly set against each other in vs 4-6, which recalls the difference in destiny for people as they do or don’t put Jesus’ words into practice in the parable of the wise and foolish builders (Matthew 7:24-27).
Jesus was, of course, the supreme example of living by God’s words (John 5:19; John 14:24; John 14:36). So how can we be more like Jesus - allowing God’s word to teach, rebuke, correct and train us in righteousness? How can we put ourselves in the best position to receive his words “so that [we] may be thoroughly equipped for every good work”? And what does it look like to follow Jesus who was the perfect blessed person described in Psalm 1, “whose delight [was] in the law of the Lord, and who meditate[d] on his law day and night”?
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