Chapter 33: Becoming Like Him

In the last part of this book we saw the great mystery of Christ dwelling in us. Now we turn to look at the same wonder from the other side: how we dwell in Him. These are not two separate truths but two halves of one glorious reality. He is in us, and we are in Him—and this mutual indwelling creates a oneness so deep that it begins to make us like Him. As we go on having fellowship with Him, we are steadily transformed into His likeness, conformed to His image; so that, as the apostle John dares to say, “as he is, so are we in this world.”

This little phrase—“in Christ,” “in Him,” “in the Lord”—is one of the most important in all the New Testament. Paul uses it well over a hundred times. It is his favorite way of describing what a Christian is: not merely someone who admires Jesus, or follows His teaching, or benefits from His death at a distance, but someone who is in Him—joined to Him as a branch to a vine, as a member to a body, as a bride to a husband. Every blessing we have—our election, our redemption, our justification, our sanctification, our future glory—comes to us because we are “in Christ.” It is the hub from which all the spokes of our salvation are drawn.³³²

As He Is, So Are We

Listen to how John binds together our confession, God’s indwelling, love, and our growing likeness to Christ:

Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world (1 John 4:15–17).

“As he is, so are we in this world.” What an astonishing statement. It does not say we shall be like Him only in heaven (though that is gloriously true as well); it says that now, in this present world, our standing before God is bound up with Christ’s own. Because we are in Him, the Father looks on us as He looks on His Son. This is why we may have “boldness in the day of judgment”—not because of anything in ourselves, but because our life is hidden in Christ, and as He is accepted and loved, so are we.

A New Creation

To be in Christ is to be made new from the inside out. The old life is gone; a new life has begun:

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:17–18).

A new creature—not merely an improved version of the old self, but a genuinely new creation, brought into being by God. And notice: “all things are of God.” We did not make ourselves new; God did it, through Jesus Christ. And He did not stop at reconciling us; He handed us “the ministry of reconciliation,” commissioning us to carry the same good news to others. The new creation is also a new commission.

How do we know this indwelling is real? John gives us the mark: “And he that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him, and he in him. And hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us” (1 John 3:24). The proof of our union with Christ is twofold—a life that keeps His commandments, and the witness of the Spirit He has placed within us.

Transformed From Glory to Glory

This becoming-like-Him is not instant; it is a journey, a steady transformation that goes on all our lives:

But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord (2 Corinthians 3:18).

Consider the beautiful logic of this verse. Under the old covenant, Moses had to veil his face after meeting with God, because the Israelites could not bear the fading glory. But we, with “open”—unveiled—face, gaze on the glory of the Lord; and as we gaze, we are changed into the very image we behold. This is a spiritual law: we become like what we worship. As we look on Christ—in His Word, in prayer, in fellowship—the Spirit works within us, and little by little we are transformed “from glory to glory,” from one degree of Christlikeness to the next, until the likeness is complete. And it is not our achievement but the Spirit’s work: “even as by the Spirit of the Lord.”³³⁵

This transformation is no accident; it is the very purpose for which God chose us:

For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren (Romans 8:29).

God’s eternal goal for you is to make you like Jesus. He is “the firstborn among many brethren”—the eldest of a vast family, every one of whom is being shaped into the family likeness, the likeness of the Son. When you struggle and grow and are pruned and stretched, remember what God is doing: He is conforming you to the image of Christ, so that His Son might be surrounded by a great family who look like Him.

Be Imitators of God

If God is at work making us like Christ, then we, for our part, are called to lean into that work—to imitate the One into whose image we are being formed:

Be ye therefore followers [imitators] of God, as dear children; and walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour (Ephesians 5:1–2).

“Be imitators of God, as dear children.” Children naturally imitate their parents; and we, as God’s beloved children, are to imitate our heavenly Father—above all in love, the love that gives itself away for others, as Christ gave Himself for us. And there is a day coming when this likeness will be perfect and complete:

Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is (1 John 3:2).

Now we are God’s children; then we shall be fully like Him. The transformation that begins the moment we are born again will be finished the moment we see Him face to face—for “we shall see him as he is,” and the sight of Him will complete in us the likeness we have been growing into all our lives. “For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Galatians 3:27): we have put Him on as a garment, and one day that garment will be seen to have become our very selves.

Abide in the Vine

But how are we to grow into this likeness? Jesus gave us the answer in one of His most beautiful pictures—the vine and the branches:

I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit… Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing (John 15:1–5).

Here is the whole secret of the Christian life in a single image. A branch does not produce fruit by straining and struggling; it produces fruit simply by staying joined to the vine, letting the life of the vine flow through it. So it is with us. We do not become like Christ by gritting our teeth and trying harder in our own strength; we become like Him by abiding in Him—staying joined to Him, drawing our life from Him, remaining in fellowship with Him day by day. “Without me,” He says plainly, “ye can do nothing.” But joined to Him, we bear “much fruit.”³³⁸

Notice, too, the Father’s pruning. Even fruitful branches He “purges”—prunes—that they may bear still more. The cutting is not punishment but care; the Vinedresser trims away what hinders, so that more of the life of Christ may flow and more fruit may come. When God’s pruning knife touches your life, do not despair; He is making you more fruitful, not less.

And so, once we are born again, we are called to be renewed in the spirit of our minds—to put off the old and put on the new—and to abide in Him:

That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; and be renewed in the spirit of your mind; and that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness (Ephesians 4:22–24).

If we say we are in Him, then we must walk as He walked. This is not a burden laid on us to earn His favor; it is the natural fruit of a life joined to His: “He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked” (1 John 2:6). He is in us, and we are in Him. Let us then be imitators of God—abiding in the Vine, renewed in mind, bearing much fruit, and growing day by day into the likeness of the Son, until the day we see Him and are made completely like Him.