Would you turn with me to Paul’s letter to the Romans, Romans 8? We will read once again these verses, beginning with verse 28.
And we know that to them that love God all things work together for good, even to them that are called according to His purpose.
For whom He foreknew, He also foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren:
and whom He foreordained, them He also called: and whom He called, them He also justified: and whom He justified, them He also glorified.
Now turn to the first letter of John, 1 John 3, beginning with verse 1.
Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God; and such we are. For this cause the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not.
Beloved, now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be. We know that, if He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him even as He is.
Then turn with me to the Gospel of Mark, Mark 8. I will read from verse 31.
And He began to teach them, that the Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders, and the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.
And He spake the saying openly. And Peter took Him, and began to rebuke Him.
But He, turning about, and seeing His disciples, rebuked Peter, and saith, Get thee behind Me, Satan; for thou mindest not the things of God, but the things of men.
And He called unto Him the multitude with His disciples, and said unto them, If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.
For whosoever would save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life for My sake and the gospel’s shall save it.
Should we have another word of prayer?
Beloved Lord, we thank You that we are gathered here in Your name. We praise You that You have not left us to our own natural energy, talents, or gifts. Lord, You have provided for us an anointing, and we stand now by faith in that anointing—for the speaking of Your Word, the translating of Your Word, and the hearing of it.
Lord, touch our hearts. Speak to our hearts, Lord—not just to our heads, but to our hearts. Meet us this day, we pray.
We shall be careful to give You all the thanksgiving and praise of our hearts. We ask this in the name of our Messiah, the Lord Jesus. Amen.
I am sure everybody knows that the theme of this conference is taken from Romans 8:29: “conformed to the image of His Son.”
My responsibility has been the little phrase we read in 1 John 3:2: “We shall be like Him.”
The purpose of God is very simple. It is that every child of God should be changed into the likeness of the Lord Jesus. There are no exceptions. His predestinating purpose is to conform us to the image of His Son.
But we have to face reality. Few of us are like the Lord Jesus. We still bear all the marks of Adam, even though we are born of God, saved by the grace of God, and the Holy Spirit dwells within us. Still, in all our lives there are areas that are not like the Lord Jesus.
Yet, when we face this reality, we must also face the simple fact that the purpose of God is to change us into the likeness of the Lord Jesus. We have to face the reality of what we are in ourselves, not with depression, but with faith and obedience.
God has made glorious and all-powerful provision for every child of His. All the grace and all the power of God are available to every child of God—all that you need to overcome every problem and every insoluble circumstance in your life.
He has foreseen and made provision. We are without excuse. The grace is there. The power is there. It is the Holy Spirit Himself who has been given to us to make the Lord Jesus a living reality in our lives and to change us into His likeness.
The Lord Jesus, in memorable words, said, “I will not leave you orphans: I come unto you.” He spoke of the Holy Spirit: the One alongside, the Advocate.
I do not really like the term helper. It devalues the Person of the Holy Spirit, as if He were some little helper who gets behind us and pushes us forward. I like Advocate.
You have a lawyer because he is supposed to know everything. You can ask an advocate all kinds of questions, and he ought to give you the answers. That is precisely the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
He is never speaking of Himself, always revealing the Lord Jesus, always taking the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden in the Lord Jesus and making them real to us when we need them. It is the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
I find it amazing that when the apostle Paul speaks about being changed into the likeness of the Lord Jesus, he prefaces that glorious statement with these words:
Now the Lord is the Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
And he ends it with these words:
Even as from the Lord the Spirit.
The Holy Spirit so rarely draws attention to Himself. But when it comes to our being changed into the likeness of the Lord Jesus, He underlines this one simple fact: without the Holy Spirit, there can be no transformation.
You can study your Bible. You can become a biblical encyclopedia. You can be correct in your doctrine. But you will remain just where you are: lots of knowledge and no transformation.
But when the Lord, the Spirit, is there—when He is in charge, when He is obeyed, when His ministry is understood—then He will make the Lord Jesus a living reality in the life of that child of God.
He will change them from a sinner into a saint. He will change them into the very likeness of the Lord Jesus. What was once ugliness becomes beauty; what was once pride becomes humility; what was once impatience becomes endurance. It is the work of the Holy Spirit.
If you quench the Holy Spirit, you are finished. If you grieve the Holy Spirit, His work in you is paralysed. So important is this matter.
How are we to be like Him? Only as we behold with unveiled face.
We behold Him with unveiled face, and we are changed. We are changed from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit.
We still remain earthen vessels—some of us more earthen than others! Clay pots; some cracked, but clay pots. But into that earthen vessel God has poured eternal treasure. It is the work of the Holy Spirit—no less and no more.
The Holy Spirit has always been the supervisor and the manager. When the world was empty and void, He was the One who hovered over the waters. It was the Holy Spirit who supervised the whole creation, who brought light out of darkness.
It was the Holy Spirit who came upon Mary, and Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
It was the Holy Spirit who came on the day of Pentecost and created the Body of the Lord Jesus. He took one hundred and twenty poor, ordinary, unnamed people and joined them to the Head in heaven. The Body became one living organism. It was the Holy Spirit who did it. He was the supervisor. He was the manager.
That living, heavenly organism turned the known world upside down. It turned the Jewish world upside down, the Greek world upside down, the Roman world upside down, and the barbarian world upside down—wherever it remained true to the principles of its birth.
Then man got his clammy hands on it, and it became like any other earthly organisation.
But again and again in the history of the church, the Holy Spirit took the initiative and once again brought people into a living relationship with the Head at the right hand of God.
Whether it was the Paulicians or the Waldenses, whether it was the Reformation, the Anabaptists, the Quakers, the first great evangelical awakening, or right down to our own day, every movement of the Holy Spirit was to bring men and women saved by the grace of God back into relationship with the Head at the right hand of God.
Dear brothers and sisters, I am so glad that the Holy Spirit is the supervisor and the manager. He rarely speaks of Himself. He rarely draws attention to Himself. His whole ministry is centred in the Lord Jesus.
But you cannot do without Him. You cannot ignore Him. You cannot grieve Him. You cannot quench Him. If you do, every level of life is paralysed—whether it is the work of the Lord, the church of the Lord, family life, business life, or personal life.
The fire is gone. The power is gone. The livingness is gone. We are left a collection of religious people.
This matter of being made like Him is essential. Man was created, as the Book says, in the image and likeness of God. You have that in Genesis 1:26.
When man fell, he became something other than what was intended. Do you remember the story? There were two trees in the garden.
I do not know what is wrong with Christians, but they are always wondering what the tree was. Was it an apple tree? Was it an orange tree? Was it a mango? What does it matter?
It was not the tree. It was obedience or disobedience that was the issue. God could have taken a rosebush and said, “You are not to pick those roses. In the day you pick those roses, you will surely die.” It does not matter what the tree was.
But trees in the Bible carry tremendous symbolism. Trees speak of man—human beings.
There was the tree of life, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. There are two kinds of human constitution.
The first is centred in the life of God. Let me put it another way: it is a human being as God intended—God-conscious, God-centred, and God-dependent.
Let me put it still another way: Christ-conscious, Christ-centred, and Christ-dependent.
The other tree represents another kind of human being: self-conscious, self-centred, and self-dependent.
Adam and Eve chose the second. They took of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In the moment that they took that fruit, their constitution changed.
Read it in Genesis 3. They suddenly became aware that they were naked. They became self-conscious for the first time, and they hid from God.
Secondly, they became self-dependent. They took leaves and sewed them together, making some kind of girdle, some kind of britches. They did not wait for God’s answer. He slew a lamb; they used leaves.
When the Lord said, “What have you done?” Adam immediately said, “It was not me; it was the woman You gave me.” Self-centredness! “If anyone is going to get judged, judge her, Lord. She got me into this mess.”
Then Eve said, “It was not me. It was the serpent You created. He beguiled me.” They were all self-centred. In this amazing book of symbolism and typology, we have the whole story of mankind.
Satan had said something so seductive: “Ye shall not surely die. In the day that ye eat thereof, ye shall be as God.” Let me put it another way: “You shall be gods.”
That is the whole of human history. At the heart of everything are human genius, human energy, and human power: “You shall be as gods. You will not need the Lord. You will be yourself a little god—self-contained.”
All of human history stems from this: being other than what God intended us to be.
In Hebrew, Babel is the word for Babylon. Babel means confusion. What was once crystal clear to man, God calls confusion.
When they began to build that tower to make themselves a name, it was corporate self-centredness, corporate self-consciousness, corporate self-dependence.
“We will build the city. We will build a tower that will reach to heaven. We will bring a golden era to mankind, a golden millennium of peace, equality, and brotherhood.” Thus you have the history of this world.
Every time I see Muslim militants decapitating innocent men on television, every time I hear of a paedophile murdering some innocent baby child, I think of what happened in the garden.
Here we are, six thousand years later, and we still have the same constitution—the human constitution. Yet God made us in His image. Think of it: that image of the Lord, that likeness of the Lord, has been horribly defaced.
In its place have come avarice, greed, power, and unbridled ambition. This is fallen mankind: “We will make ourselves a name.” It comes down to the personal: “I will make myself a name.”
I find it incredible that the European Parliament has built a building after the Dutch painter Pieter Bruegel’s depiction of the Tower of Babel. It is still with us. Now we have globalisation. We have come full circle. The whole world is a global village.
There is a great new power arising in Europe. It is the fourth kingdom renewed, revived, recreated.
In front of the European Commission is a very large statue of a huge bull, and on the bull is a woman. It is the old legend of Europa.
It is based on the legend that Jupiter—Zeus—became a bull in order to deceive a woman. He lusted after her and offered her a ride. She took the ride, and then he transformed himself back to what he was and raped her.
Can you believe that that statue is in front of the European Commission? Especially if you know your Bible.
It is not just that. In Revelation 13 and 14, a woman rides on the back of the beast. Something terrible is happening, and most of God’s people are asleep. They have no idea what is happening.
It is not flesh and blood. It is not a human conspiracy. It is Satan. He is going to produce the Antichrist.
Now, dear brothers, come back to what I should be saying. A terrible and fearful change took place in Adam and Eve. They chose a constitution that was to be the curse of human history.
The Lord said, “In the day that you eat thereof, you will surely die.” What did He mean? They lived a long, long life. They did die, but they lived much longer than anyone here.
What did the Lord mean? He meant that something within their human constitution was divorced from God: the spirit, which alone could contain the Lord, died. Not that it was exterminated, but that it was lifeless.
It is like an electric light bulb away from the socket. It cannot give light because it is not connected to the power. So man became dead in trespasses and sins. His soul became pre-eminent—this I-life of Adam.
The whole history of the world, on every level, is contained in this.
Thus the words of the Lord Jesus:
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except one be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born anew.
The only way out of Adam, the only escape we can have from this constitution, is to be born again—to be born of the Spirit.
Listen again:
Wherefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new.
Did you hear that? In Christ—only in Christ—there is a new creation. The old has passed; the new has come.
Dear brothers and sisters, if you have followed me so far, I come now to what I consider the practical and relevant part of what I want to say.
It is not enough to be converted. It is not enough even to be born again. You and I need to surrender that defaced image before we can be conformed to the image of His Son.
We have to surrender the defaced image we have been born with. Do you understand what I am trying to say? Does it dawn on you?
It does not matter how many people are in this room: there is an I-life in every one of us, and that is our problem. “I know. I feel. I want. I shall have. I first. I last. Give me, give me, give me. Let me have it.”
“I only came to these meetings because I want some fullness in my life. I want to be something. I want to know my Bible so that I can lecture others.” Just wait: this is not Christ. This is the old man.
No wonder you have a civil war in your life. No wonder it rages backwards and forwards. It is obvious; it is explicable.
When I sometimes go into some assemblies, it is civil war. Unbelievable! They are supposed to be the new man, but they are very much the old man.
“I do not have my needs met here.” The funny thing is that they go off somewhere else to get their needs met, and in the end they discover that their needs are not met there either. In the end, it is only in the Lord Jesus that your need will ever be met.
But, dear brothers and sisters, there is a price to pay. What is the price? Listen to me: this is not to do with your salvation. This is to do with your being changed into His likeness now.
Your salvation is a free gift. You can do nothing toward it. It has all been paid for. The Lord Jesus saved you, and you could add nothing to it.
If you think it was you coming for the Lord, let me tell you: there is a whole prehistory before you ever found the Lord. Someone loved you from the beginning.
Now let me come back to this. There is a price. What is the price? Your self-life.
“Whosoever would save his life”—and the Greek word psuchē means soul, or self-life, if you want to understand it best—whoever will preserve his self-life shall lose it.
You want to be saved. You want to get to heaven. You want the Lord to clear up your mess. You want the Lord to meet your needs. You want everything the Lord has—but not at the price of the self-life.
You want the Lord to be a kind of cosmetician, doing you up, making you more blessed. But you still want to be I. You want to be in charge. You do not want anyone else in charge.
Whoever seeks to preserve his self-life shall lose it. Whoever loses his self-life for My sake and the gospel shall save it.
Listen to the words of the Lord Jesus:
If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.
Pretty stark, is it not?
It is very interesting that when the Lord Jesus said this, it was the first time He talked about His death, burial, and resurrection—the supreme work of His life.
Peter tried to stop Him. The motive was good. Perhaps Peter had his eye on some kind of position in the kingdom. “We cannot have You dying, Lord. We will stop that. We have a vested interest in what You are going to do.”
Jesus turned to him and said, “Get behind Me, Satan.”
Some of you may have heard me say this before, but it is worth saying again. If I were to say to you, “Get behind me, Satan,” looking straight into your eyes, you would be horrified. You would say, “Do not have that man back again.”
You would say, “I have never been so insulted in all my life. He looked straight into my eyes and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan.’ I am not Satan.”
If I had said, “Satan is troubling you,” that would have been acceptable. If I had said, “You are thinking negative thoughts,” that would have been even more acceptable. But to look into your eyes and say, “Get behind me, Satan”—that is something else.
Peter could have said, “I am not Satan. I am the first of the apostles. He told me that I had the keys of the kingdom. How can I be Satan?”
What was the Lord Jesus meaning? Look at the context. Jesus called the great multitude together with the disciples, as if this were the heart of the gospel.
You can be saved and still have a self-life, but you cannot follow Him and have a self-life. There is no way you can follow the Lord Jesus while holding on to a self-plan. You can only grow in academic knowledge.
To follow the Lord Jesus, He said, “If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself.” I think it is best understood like this: “If any man would follow Me, let him give up all right to himself.”
That is the heart of the matter: my rights, myself, my rights. We live in an age of rights—babies’ rights, unborn rights, women’s rights, animal rights, everything’s rights.
Jesus said, “If you would be a follower of Me, no rights.” A hired servant has rights; a bondservant has none. Here is the cost of being a disciple. You can be a convert, but are you a disciple?
We must close, but is this not tremendous, what the Lord Jesus said? How interesting it is in Ephesians 4, in the passage from which our brother spoke last night:
That ye put away, as concerning your former manner of life, the old man, that waxeth corrupt after the lusts of deceit;
and that ye be renewed in the spirit of your mind,
and put on the new man, that after God hath been created in righteousness and holiness of truth.
I think this putting off of the old man and putting on of the new man is explained very simply: it is a question of lordship.
If Jesus is Lord, you are putting off the old man, you are putting on the new man, and you are being renewed in the spirit of your mind.
Something is happening. You may not always feel that something is happening, but something has happened.
Sometimes people come to me almost weeping: “Oh, I feel I am nowhere.” I say, “There is even now a concealed great change taking place.” According to the more hopeless you feel, it is almost as if the Lord uses this to give us the energy to go on and on and on with Him.
Who then is boss in your life? May I ask it again? Who then is boss in your life? Are you?
If you pursue that self-life, you will discover a poison within yourself. It will destroy you. It will paralyse the work of the Holy Spirit in changing you into His likeness.
When you receive your soul-life—your will, your reasoning power, and your emotions—back under new management, under the lordship of Jesus, it is a tremendous thing.
The apostle Peter makes a very interesting statement in his first letter:
Sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord.
Set Him apart as Lord in your life. Who is boss in your life? Set the Messiah as Lord in your life.
If you do, you will discover the truth contained in another amazing Scripture, Hebrews 4:12:
For the word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit.
This spiritual laser surgery, this dividing of spirit from soul, can be painful, but it is absolutely necessary.
Otherwise, you always think that your will is the will of the Lord, that your voice is the voice of the Lord. Actually, it is not His voice; it is the voice of your soul.
Now, dear brothers and sisters, we must end. The cross removes; the Holy Spirit produces life and power.
Note that little phrase: “even as from the Lord the Spirit.” Let me come back to what I said at the beginning: the Holy Spirit is the supervisor and the manager of your being transformed into the image of His Son.
He wants the keys of your life. Keys represent authority. He wants the keys of your life.
How can He be Lord if you retain the keys? How can He be Lord if you are the boss?
A new man, a new creation, leading to all things new.
“We shall be like Him.” The process is now, and we do not have so much time.
Things are now moving so fast that unless we have real dealings with the Lord, we shall be overtaken.
Let us be quiet for one moment.
Now, in this quietness, do not just be vacant. Ask: Who has the keys of my life?
Dear Lord, help us to surrender that defaced image. Help us to put off the old man with all his doings. Help us to give You the keys of our life.
Help us, Lord. Have mercy upon us. Our worldliness, our lukewarmness, the many issues in our lives that we have not allowed You to deal with.
Take this Word and, Lord, make it so real that we cannot escape it.
Dear Spirit of God, You never draw attention to Yourself. Do Your essential work in every one of our lives. Make us Christlike. Change us into His likeness.
Help us to repent of any grieving that we have done, or any quenching. Be free to do Your own work.
We ask it in the name of our Messiah, the Lord Jesus. Amen.