God's Goal for Us - To Be Christlike

God's Goal for Us - To Be Christlike

Zac Poonen | 5 February 2023

 God's goal is to make us like Jesus. Here are three important verses in that connection:

“God works steadfastly towards the goal of making us like Jesus, when we are serious about the same goal ourselves."

(a) Romans 8:28, 29: Our Father makes all things work together outwardly to enable us to reach this goal.

(b) 2 Corinthians 3:18: The Holy Spirit fills us inwardly to lead us towards this goal.

(c) 1 John 3:2,3: All who have the hope of Christ's coming will work towards this goal.

If we die with Jesus we will certainly live with Him. If we have faith in God, we will consent to this "dying of Jesus" - dying to our self-will (that seeks our own pleasure, our honour, our prestige etc.) in the situations that God arranges for us, fully believing that the Divine life that God will give us in exchange will be far superior to the rotten Adamic life that we consign to death.

The resurrection life of Jesus is certainly far superior to the life that we have all inherited from our parents. But we must be willing to give up that Adamic life to death, before God will give us the life of Jesus (2 Tim.2:11; 2 Cor.4:10). To use an illustration, it is like exchanging the few coins in our beggar's tin-can for a million rupees offered by God. Only a fool will reject such an exchange. But the world is full of such fools. So they end their lives still clinging to their few coins (the rotten Adamic life), when they could have used the temptations they faced on earth to become spiritually wealthy (with the Divine nature), before they ended their earthly lives. No wonder the Bible calls our lusts deceitful (Eph.4:22), because they fool us that they are going to make us happy!

Two marks of God's love for us is that He rebukes us and chastens us when we go wrong, even if it be in just a small matter (Heb.12:5-8; Rev.3:19). That proves that He is treating us as His sons. And God works steadfastly towards the goal of making us like Jesus, when we are serious about the same goal ourselves.

God has a plan for our lives that can be fulfilled only if we seek Him with all our hearts - not otherwise (Read Jeremiah 29:11-13 in this connection). God is a rewarder of those who seek Him diligently (Heb.11:6 - KJV). So you should seek him diligently from this moment on.