How would God like us to live?

When Jesus went back to heaven, He left His disciples to carry on His life on earth. We immediately think that they were to be missionaries, or ministers, and to teach and preach the Gospel. And that is right, but there is more.

Many people today have a completely false picture of God. When Jesus came to earth He came to reveal what God is like. He came to show people His Father but He also said I and My Father are one. So when we are to carry on His work on earth it is not only doing, but ‘being’. We are to be like God, so people can see the likeness of God in us.

What does this mean? We shall not be God, but the miracle is the transformation so that we can be like God. People will see the ‘family likeness’. They will see the Father, they will see our Elder Brother. Our aim is to bring honour and glory to our Father.

Only Our Saviour, the one who can save us from our old likeness, can assist us to reveal the new likeness. It is not like good things tied on like baubles on a Christmas Tree that would blow away at the first storm, but the goodness of God will rise up like the sap in a living tree, and produce evergreen leaves and buds and blossoms and fragrance and good fruit.

When He comes and He will come, for Jesus promised, I will come again, we shall see Him. Converted sinners will see His face, for we shall be like Him. John says, ‘Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not. 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. And every man that hath this hope in Him purifieth Himself, even as He is pure.’ 1 John 3:1-3.

We are as weak as earthen vessels but in our everyday mortal flesh we can still reveal his character. We can have His thoughts and His feelings and His actions in our frail bodies and minds. We know that by beholding we are changed. As we read of His life in the Gospels day by day, we are influenced and drawn upwards to a different way of life. Gradually we become like our Master.

However, if we begin looking around us and see the criticisms and hear the sneering, or even compare ourselves with others and think we are not doing too badly, we shall fall with a nasty crash. The Bible makes it clear, ‘Let us run with patience [endurance and constancy] the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author [the one who initiates] of our faith and finisher [the final polisher].’ Hebrews 12:1. God will make us beautiful for Him even in the bodies and life we have on this earth.

Then, when He comes He will change these bodies in the blink of an eye, and our new minds and characters will be given a new and glorious body and we shall live with him forever.