Like Jesus

Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread. Today's reading titled Like Jesus was written by Bill Crowder. As a boy, theologian Bruce Ware was frustrated that 1 Peter chapter 2 verses 21 through 23 calls us to be like Jesus. Ware wrote of his youthful exasperation in his book The Man Christ Jesus. Not fair, I determined, especially when the passage says to follow in the steps of one who did no sin.

This was totally outlandish. I just couldn't see how God could really mean for us to take it seriously. I understand why Ware would find such a biblical challenge so daunting. An old chorus says to be like Jesus, to be like Jesus, my desire to be like him.

But as Ware rightly noted, we are incapable of doing that. Left to ourselves, we could never become like Jesus. However, we're not left to ourselves. The Holy Spirit has been given to the child of God, in part so that Christ can be formed in us. So it should come as no surprise that in Paul's great chapter on the Spirit in Romans 8, we read for those God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son. God will see his work completed in us, and he does it through the spirit of Jesus living in us. As we yield to the Spirit's work in us, we truly become more like Jesus. How comforting to know that's God's great desire for us.

Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is from Romans chapter 8 verses 22 through 30. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all.

Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God's people in accordance with the will of God. And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he also called. Those he called, he also justified.

Those he justified, he also glorified. Let's pray. Father, we want to be more like your Son, but so often we fall short. Please forgive us and help us to yield to the work of your Spirit so that Jesus might be formed fully in us. Thank you, Lord. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.