AN UNPREACHED SERMON (210)
For the last few weeks, if not couple of months, the question has been asked in many households “What do you want for Christmas?” Most parents’ nightmare is being confronted with a last-minute request at 8pm on Christmas Eve. It’s a legitimate question to ask our children and increasingly it makes sense, and saves wasting money, to make the same enquiry of adult relatives and friends. By Boxing Day the question will become redundant for another year. On the threshold of 2025, the question is worth tweaking and asking of ourselves: “What do we want for the New Year?”
Thinking about it for myself has taken me to John’s First Letter, well known among New Testament scholars for spelling out the practical implications and purpose for Christ coming among us at that first Christmas. Yet again, as we stand at the gate of the year, looking back to the achievements and failures of the past and forward to the hopes and fears for the future, John gives us something solid to hold on to. “Beloved, we are God’s children now; it does not appear what we shall be, but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is” (1 John 3:2). That’s much better than any New Year resolution; it’s a vital truth to hold on to through the next twelve months.
When God the Father first called us to faith He had a very clear purpose in mind. Nothing short of full conformity to His own Son was His intention. All through the past year, God has been working away in our lives in accordance with that aim. His intention in the New Year will be no different. Because we already share in the family life, He will not rest content until He sees reproduced within us the family likeness.
Not that we must imagine a mechanically mass-produced likeness. Being conformed to the image of His Son does not entail losing our own personality. Just as the trees of the field are all different, each with their own distinctiveness, so it is with God’s children. The Father’s year-in-year-out working in our lives by His Spirit allows room for our individuality, but the overall family likeness ought to be more and more in evidence.
THE DIVINE PATTERN.
When God the Father sees us, He looks upon us now as we will ultimately be in Christ. “What we shall be” is His estimate of our value and worth. Even though we may see ourselves as unpromising raw material, that is to view ourselves apart from His transforming grace. The truth is we are His workmanship. We need to get beyond seeing ourselves only as sinners, albeit redeemed ones. From the human point of view, He could not have chosen worse material, but He is both willing and able to work with it. The Father loves and sees us the same way as He views His only begotten Son. It was Billy Graham who once said, “God is so pleased with His own Son He wants millions more to be like Him”.
THE FINISHED PRODUCT.
If that is how the Father sees us now, we should set our minds on the finished product God sees. When a sculptor sets out to fashion a perfect figure of the Christ, he begins with a piece of rock or marble which looks quite unpromising to the untrained eye. But the artist’s imagination has the ability to see in advance and to bring about that which has not yet come to pass. He is able to release the figure from the raw material.
It’s an imperfect illustration, but there is a sense in which God already sees what He is going to make us, and we need to see it too with the eye of faith. God’s eternal work in believers is the production of the new self of His own Son that He is making us into. Jesus says the same to us as He did to His first followers: “Come after Me and I will make you...”.
THE ONGOING PROCESS.
Even before we were consciously aware of being Christians, God has been at work in our lives and He has never stopped. We accept ourselves only because we know He has accepted us in Christ. The more we have a glimpse of the finished product He has in mind, the more likely we will allow His Spirit to chisel away at us. That means we stop using Romans 8:28 about God working all things well as a sentimental slogan and begin to take to heart what it actually says and means. God is working all things well for our good. This is why we were called. All our circumstances are brought within the orbit of His plan and intention for our lives. He works equally through the more unpleasant things as well as the good.
As we move further and further into the coming year, let’s see ourselves not as others see us but as God does.
Right now we are His children
One day we will be fully like Jesus
Until then, the Spirit is working, shaping and molding us
A PRAYER FOR 2025
All through this coming year,
Help me to know Christ better
And to make Him better known.
Amen.
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