Conversations from a painter…..Becoming Like Christ (PI)
January 29, 2008
For those of you wondering how I spend most of my days right now while I am finishing my degree and raising support for CRM, I work as a painter. Not only have I learned a handy skill (which I had none before), but also end up having great conversations in the process. We have a Burmese refugee who works with us named Su Min who jokes me to “stop talking, start painting” and I joke with Nate (my burly boss) that he hired me as his personal spiritual consultant rather than as a painter. Bernie thinks I should start writing about some of these conversations, so I follow the lead of my trusty therapist friend.
Today I had a really interesting conversation while working the brush with my friend Josh Peace. I recently gave him the book Exiles by Michael Frost to read, and he had some really insightful thoughts about it.
I’ll share one of his ideas that really got me thinking (maybe more later)……
In what sense can we become like Jesus? As Protestants, our basic framework for understanding the good news of Jesus is that humans are imperfect (sinful) and never can be perfect on our own efforts, and Christ lived a perfect life to pay a substitutionary atonement for our sins so that we can be back in right relationship with God.
We now speak of becoming like Christ, but in what sense? We’ve talked about his life in terms of perfection, which is the one thing we can never become, so what does it mean to be like Him? If it means being perfect, why would we even try to become like Him?
I think this is a great question that many people wrestle with, and it really spurred my thinking. The basic Protestant gospel helps us to understand what we are free from (the consequences, penalty, and guilt of sin), but often not what we are free for in terms of our humanity becoming like Jesus.
