More of Him, Less of Me.

I have often heard both of these verses quoted, but rarely together. Verse 28 is quoted as a highly-generalized promise from God that all the difficult, awful things we endure will be turned in the end to some good, divine purpose, to some ultimate goal that will thoroughly compensate us for the evil we suffer in the present moment. What that "good" is, exactly, is usually left mysterious, unknowable; we must simply trust that something good is coming, or will eventually come, out of our suffering. Believing this, the Christian is supposed to be comforted in their trouble.

Verse 29 is trotted out in sermons and Bible studies as a bird's-eye, 30,000-foot-view of the Christian life. In the broad strokes of living, everything we do is to be aimed at being conformed to Christ. How this happens, however, and when is a matter for the distant future, a murky, perhaps ultimately unachievable, goal. In my experience, this over-arching purpose of Christian living gets rapidly obscured by a myriad of theological, doctrinal and apologetic rabbit-trails. Believers settle down on natural theology, or eschatology, or soteriology, or denominational wrangling, or what-have-you and, as they do, frequently lose the bird's-eye view of Romans 8:29.

In any event, I almost never hear verse 29 directly connected to verse 28 (or vice versa). Which is very odd since they are supposed to go together, clarifying and qualifying each other. For example, the "good" of verse 28 is not an unknowable mystery but is plainly defined in verse 29: "conformed to the image of His Son." The good that God intends to work out of all things is our conformation to Jesus Christ; everything we face in life God is working to this enormously good end.

How does God work out our conformation to Jesus Christ? Well, verse 28 says, God works all things to this good end. Whatever we face, pleasant or terrible, mundane or miraculous, God will use as an opportunity to make us more like our Saviour - if we'll let Him. And it is God, not us, who accomplishes this work. We are not, in the midst of sorrow and pain, supposed to "dig deep" and find within ourselves the wherewithal to be conformed to the Person of Christ. No, it is God "who works in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure." (Philippians 2:13)

We have, then, always a goal upon which to orient ourselves in every circumstance of life. Instead of asking, "Why is God allowing this to happen?" our question should be, "How can I be more like Jesus in this situation?" We tend, though, to want to make only the most difficult, the most painful and tragic circumstances, pregnant with divine purpose, and meaning, and teaching - I suspect because, if we didn't, we'd go mad with the hurt of them. We search for profundity in our pain to mitigate our pain, to help us endure its agony. But God is as eager to form the character of Christ in me as I mow the lawn, or wash the dishes, or sit idly in the sunshine chatting with friends as in a dark season of grief and suffering.

There are many Christians, however, who have lived a long time as children of God, experiencing a wide spectrum of things, good and bad, who are essentially no more like Jesus after decades of being Christians than when they were first converted. What has happened? If God is using everything to make us more like Christ, why are these believers unaltered? Well, a couple of things come to mind:

1.) God never forces change upon us.

We are only conformed to Christ as we submit to being so. God acts in response to our surrender to His will and way, changing us as we live yielded to Him. The moment, though, we turn from a place of surrender to Him, He halts His work and waits for us to recognize we've "taken the wheel" from Him and are steering our own course. His Spirit convicts us this is so, but never in a coercive way, never driving us to God in guilt and shame, but inviting us to return to a place of surrender before God and fellowship with Him that He might resume His transforming work.

Those believers, then, who have never been transformed by God are believers who have never persistently, consistently, and fully placed themselves under God's control, by faith waiting on Him to make them more like Christ, which God would do in all things if only they'd let Him.

2.) We are not what is important.

The Great Battle between God and humanity is over who is in charge and what is important. The human being assumes they are what is most important and so they work all things into service to themselves, as much as possible. God approaches us and says that we are, compared to Him, utterly insignificant. As insignificant as we are, though, He is still willing to fellowship with us, having created us so to do. But our lives are not our own to shape and direct as we like, but His. When God gets His hands on us, it isn't in order to make more of us, to enlarge our self-interest, skills, desires and personality, but to use us as vessels through whom He communicates Jesus Christ. (2 Timothy 2:20-21)

The Christian life isn't about me becoming a better version of me, but of me dying, replaced by the life and Person of Jesus.

Matthew 16:24-25
24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.
25 "For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.

Galatians 2:20
20 "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.

Colossians 3:1-3
1 Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.
2 Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth.
3 For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

1 Corinthians 6:19-20
19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?
20 For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.

Whoa! That's not modern Christianity, though, is it? I'm supposed to be a leader; I'm supposed to polish my skills and beef up my knowledge; I'm supposed to know myself, and love myself, and push myself to be more.

John 3:30
30 "He must increase, but I must decrease.

In the hyper-relativistic, post-modern, morally-subjective culture in which we live, the individual is paramount. Influenced by this notion, Christians urge one another to individuate, to tribalize, to divide into ever-more-narrow interest groups - all in service to the idea that the individual is the supreme object of existence. We must be laser-focused on ourselves and making the most of who we are.

Nothing, though, could be more opposite to the truth. As Romans 8:29 indicates, God is working all things in the life of His children toward the goal of spiritual homogeneity, toward all of them serving as the hands and heart of Jesus, all of them reflections, not of themselves, but of him.

2 Corinthians 3:18
18 But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.