How Christian Character is Formed | Colossians 3:1-17
Brian Hedges | October 16, 2016

I want to begin this morning with a quotation from those great theologians of the church, Frog and Toad. Have any of you ever read the stories of Frog and Toad? Maybe your parents read them to you when you were children or maybe you read them to your kids?

There is a great little story where Toad bakes a lot of cookies and he eats the cookies, and he thinks, “These are really good cookies, and they taste even better.” And so he invites his friend Frog to eat some of them with him. And they eat, and they eat, and they eat, and they eat, to the point that they start to feel sick. And so they decide, “Well, we need to stop eating cookies”. But they just keep eating more. And so finally Frog says, “We need more willpower,” as he is putting a cookie to his mouth.
And so Toad asks, “What is willpower?”

He says, "Willpower is trying hard not to do something you really want to do."

And so they try to exercise willpower. They put the cookies in a box. But, of course, they can still take the lid off the box. So they put a string around the box. But, of course, they can still untie the string. They decide to put the box up on a shelf. But, of course, they can climb up and get the box off the shelf and open the box and still eat cookies.

So finally they take the box of cookies outside, they feed them to the birds, and the birds eat all the cookies, and then Toad is really sad, and he says, “Now we have no more cookies left, not even one.”
And Frog says “Yes, but we have lots and lots of willpower.” And then he says, “I’m going to go bake a cake.”

Now that’s a great little story that illustrates the way that many people think about building character, and about trying to change. A lot of people think that building character and trying to change is essentially about exercising willpower. And that willpower is essentially trying really hard not to do something that you really want to do.

But that story and that view of willpower, of course, falls far short of the Christian vision of transformation. And this morning I want to talk about that. I want to talk about the Christian vision of transformation. I want to ask this question. How do you form Christian character?

We have been talking about discipleship for the past couple of weeks in this series. And today is the third message, and today I want to talk about how the character of a disciple is formed. How is it that we become like Jesus? How do we become more like Christ? And today I want to ground our thinking in one of Paul’s great texts in Colossians the third chapter. So if you want to follow along in your Bible or on the screen, it’s Colossians 3:1-17.

So hear the Word of the Lord.

1 If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. 3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. 5 Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. 6 On account of these the wrath of God is coming. 7 In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. 8 But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. 11 Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all. 12 Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14 And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 15 And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. 17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

This is God’s Word!

So how is Christian character formed? How do we become more like Jesus? And what I want to do is answer with three words. And then give you three statements to correspond with these words, and then kind of work through this.

I have put this in a diagram to help you see how this works. Here are the three words:
• Identity
• Desire
• Habits

Spiritual formation, the transformation or the formation of our character, happens in the intersection of those three things: Identity, Desire, and Habits. And all three of these are crucial.

And here are the statements that go with these words:
1. First of all: “You become who you are” – that’s identity. That is, you become who you already are in Christ. You begin to live out of the new identity that we have in Christ.
2. “You become what you love” – This is really crucial, as we’ll understand here in a few moments, that the component of desire is absolutely critical to the transformation of our character.
3. “You become what you do” – And that’s the place of habits. Habits have a shaping influence in our lives. The things that we do, the practices that we observe. What we do with our bodies affect and shape our minds and our hearts and our spiritual lives.

And spiritual formation then, this formation and development of Christlike character, is found in the intersection of these three things. When these three things converge, identity, desire and habits, that’s where you get spiritual transformation.

Now let’s look at each one of these in turn. And I’m not going to give so much a thorough exposition of Colossians 3, I’ve done that more than one time in the past, but I’m just going to briefly ground the idea in Colossians 3 and show you where it is in a couple of other texts and then to try to flesh this out with some illustration and application.

So first of all…

1. Identity: You become who you are.

Now you see that in verses 1-4, where Paul, before he makes his appeal for how to live the Christian life, putting away certain sins, putting to death certain sins, and putting on the virtues of Christ.

Before he says all that, he reminds them of who they are. And who are they? They are those who are raised with Christ. They have died, and their life is hidden with Christ in God. He’s pointing back to Christ’s death and resurrection, and he’s saying that they are united to Christ in his death and resurrection. They are in Christ. This is who they are. This is their new identity. And then he looks forward in verse 4, “When Christ, who is your life, appears, you will also appear with him in glory.”

So he is grounding all of his exhortation that will follow in this gospel reality of who they are in Christ.

Now you can see the same thing in Romans 6:1-14. I’m not going to read the passage but here it is in paraphrase. Paul basically says there that the reason you shouldn’t keep on sinning in order for grace to increase is because you have died to sin. Because you have already been baptized into Jesus’ death. You’ve been buried with him in baptism, and you’ve been raised to walk in newness of life. And if you have been joined to Jesus in his death and resurrection, then sin has no authority over you. And therefore you are to count yourself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus the Lord, and you are not to let sin reign in your body. Notice how important the body is. These passages and many others like them.

You can think of 2 Corinthians 5:17. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; the new has come. Or the “in Christ” language in all of Paul’s writings, but especially in Ephesians, where over and again in Ephesians, Paul says we that we are in Christ, we are blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ, we are chosen in Christ, we are predestined to adoption in Christ, we are blessed in Christ, we are sealed with the Holy Spirit. All of these blessings that are ours in Christ Jesus.

So take all these passages, and they are all talking about our union with Christ. That’s the theological word, or the theological phrase, for what is going on here in this whole realm of identity. Our union with Christ. That’s the first component to spiritual transformation. You can’t really change unless you are in Christ. You can’t become like Christ unless you are united to Christ. This is the crucial gospel component to transformation, discipleship, sanctification.

This is important for a couple of reasons. First of all, it is important objectively because we’ve got to understand that we really are changed through being connected to Jesus, being united in Jesus, and there really is power there. No matter how you feel about it, at any given moment, if you are in Christ, you are connected to immeasurable power. You are not just left on your own. If you are in Christ you are connected to Christ through the Spirit, so that what is true of him is also true of you, and all the resources that are at Christ’s disposal for living the true, perfect, authentic human life that he lived in the power of the Spirit—all those resources are available to you! That’s what we were talking about last week under this rubric of the kingdom of God. Jesus offers to us the “good life” of living under the reign of God where we love God and we love others. He offers that to us, but we only get it when we are connected to him, united to him by the Spirit. So there is a real power here. This is new. And it’s available to us, this objective reality. This is always Paul’s pattern in his letters. He starts with identity in Christ, then he moves on to exhortation. He starts with position; he moves on to practice. He starts with doctrine, he moves on to duty, responsibility. He starts by telling us who we are in Christ, and then he tells us, “Now, live that way”. That’s always his pattern. You see it over and over again in his letters.

So here’s the basic principle: You become who you (already) are in Christ. The first step in Christian living is learning to live out of your new, true, essential identity in Christ.

Do you remember that scene from The Return of the King, this is the third Lord of the Rings movie, where lord Elrond, the elf lord from Rivendell, comes to Aragorn (Aragorn is the Ranger of the North) and he is actually the king, he’s the true king, but he has not taken on the role of king yet. And Elrond comes to him and he brings him the re-forged sword, the shards of Narsil, they re-forged it into a new sword, and he gives him the sword and he tells him this. He says, “Put aside the Ranger. Become who you were born to be.”

That’s essentially what Paul tells us in Colossians 3 and other passages. Put away the old man and become who you were born again to be in Jesus. Put off the old and put on the new because you are dead to sin and you are alive in Christ, and you are raised with Christ, and seated with Christ. You are in Christ. That’s an objective reality.

Here is the second reason why this is so important: subjectively and psychologically. Psychologists have been noting for years the importance of our self-concepts. This is very important whether you are a Christian or a non-Christian, the way you think about yourself affects the way you act, the way you behave. And a lot of times you’ll see children or even adults who are marked by certain kinds of bad behaviors and at the root of it are their concepts of themselves. The way they view themselves.

You see, we all tend to live out of our perceived identities. We act like the people that we think we are. We have self-concepts that are reflected in our self-talk. The problem is that we so often over-identify ourselves with things that should not be central to our identity. We over-identify ourselves with the secondary things rather than identifying ourselves with the primary things.

For example, as a Christian, your identity is not white, or black, or any other racial or ethnic distinction. Your main identity is not determined by being male or female. Or by being Democrat or Republican, or even by being American (or if you’re not a US citizen, then whatever your country of origin may be, by your nationality). These things may describe something true about us, but they don’t define us. They are not to determine who we are and how we behave. Because we are first and foremost Christian.

On the other hand, sometimes we over-identify with our own fallen condition. And if your main self-concept and your main self-talk is, “You’re such a sinner,” “you’re so broken,” “you’re so messed up,” “you’re a law-breaker,” “you’re so guilty.” If that’s the background track in your head, you know how you are going to act? You’re going to act like a guilty, broken, law-breaking sinner. And that is not to be the background track if you are in Christ. Did you know that, Paul, I don’t think one time -- I can’t think of it, I may be wrong in this, I didn’t research it -- but I don’t think there is a single time where Paul addresses Christians as sinners. You know how he addresses them? The saints. “To all the saints who are in Christ Jesus…” That is how he addresses them. That’s even how he addresses the Corinthian church. If you know anything about the Corinthian church, they were a bunch of dirty, rotten scoundrels! And yet Paul addresses them as the saints who are in Christ Jesus. Because there is this basic principle that is so true: we live up to our identity. Or we live out of our identity. And so both for objective and subjective reasons this is crucial.

Here’s one more illustration. Saint Augustine. He was saved as a young man around 30 years old, from a life of immorality and sin. And there is a story that goes like this, one day he met an old lover in the marketplace. And she tried to get his attention. She tried to attract him. But to no avail. And she finally said, “But Augustine,” she said, “it is I!” To which he replied, “Yes, but it is not I.” You see, it was because he had changed. Because he had a new identity in Christ. To put it in Paul’s words in just one verse, Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” That’s the first step. That’s the first component to real transformation: is understanding your identity in Christ. You are crucified with Christ, raised with Christ, seated with Christ, you are in Him, united to him, and that comes first. We’ve got to understand that.

But that’s not all there is. I’m arguing here that the transformation, the actual practical real transformation of our character into the character of Christ as disciples happens in the intersection of these three things. The overlap of these three things. So it is identity overlapping or intersecting with desire and habits.

Let’s talk about desire…

2. Desire: You become what you love

This is also an essential piece to formation, because the reality is that we are never better than our desires.

I quoted last week, James K. A. Smith, a professor of Philosophy at Calvin College. Smith is one of the most, I think, important thinkers of our day, thinking about formation and worship and Christian education. And he says in his book, You are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit. He says, “What do you want?” is the first, last, and most fundamental question of Christian discipleship. And he points out how many times in the gospels Jesus asks, “What do you want? What do you desire?” “What do you want?” he says, “is the most incisive, piercing question Jesus can ask of us precisely because we are what we want.”

We follow our loves. As I mentioned last week, he says, that we’re not so much pushed along by our beliefs as we are pulled along by our desires. And he quotes this French author (whose name I can’t pronounce, so I won’t even try), who said, “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the immensity of the sea.” Antoine de Saint-Exupery. You see, you work on the level of desires.

Now you also see this in the text in Colossians 3, verse 2. Paul says: “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.” Now, in the phrase “set your minds,” the word “mind” can be a little bit misleading because it does not convey enough. The Greek word here is phroneo. Mind. “Set your minds” carries the idea, not only of the mental or intellectual components of our inner selves, but also the affectional and volitional aspects of our personalities. That is, it captures not just what we think, but what we desire and what we will. What we choose.

And so Paul is essentially telling us that we are to set the gaze of our whole souls to be so steadfastly and intently focused on Christ that knowing him is at the center of our desires, pleasing him is at the core of our commitments, becoming like him is at the heart the of our ambitions, and bringing glory to his name is our deepest and most consuming passion.

This again is reflected throughout Scripture. Do you remember how Paul said in Philippians 1:21, “…to live is Christ, and to die is gain”? What’s the consuming passion of Paul’s life? What’s the fundamental, driving ambition of his life? It’s Christ. To live is Christ. This is what he desires. Or take Philippians 3:8, 10: Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord . . . [verse 10] that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.” Or do you remember that passages in Acts 21:13? Paul is headed to Jerusalem, and the disciples in every town are trying to talk him out of it, because there is a prophecy that he will be bound, that he will be imprisoned when he goes to Jerusalem, they don’t want him to suffer, they don’t want him to be imprisoned. So they are trying to talk him out of completing his mission. And Paul says: “What are you doing, weeping and breaking my heart? For I am ready not only to be imprisoned but even to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.” He is driven by this desire to please Christ, to glorify Christ. To know and to honor Christ.

I think that these references, and there are many more, show that the transformation of our loves, our passions, our ambitions and desires, are central to the formation of true Christian character.

Back to St Augustine. This was one of the great insights of Saint Augustine, who left us that great classic spiritual autobiography, the Confessions. There is one place, not in the Confessions, but I think this was in one of his homilies. Augustine once said, “The whole life of a good Christian is a holy desire.” Augustine had a very particular understanding of virtue, or character. And the way character is formed and shaped and what that actually means and what that is. He defined virtue as “rightly ordered love.” The right ordering of love was a running theme in Augustine’s life and writings.

What Augustine meant is that we should love things in proportion to their worth. And we are genuinely good people. Good that is in our character when we love things in the right order. When the things that are greatest we love best and most. Where things that are of lesser worth we love less, and things that are of no worth, we don’t love at all. So a well-ordered heart, for Augustine, is a heart in which one’s greatest loves, one’s deepest desires, one’s highest affections are attached to the greatest, deepest, and highest things. And of course, God Himself is at the top of the pyramid here, with human beings next, then inanimate things, and created goods, and things and possessions, those are much further down the list.

Beneath this, Augustine’s conception of virtue, this idea of rightly ordered love, there was a foundational conviction about the nature of reality. Augustine believed that the summum bonum, that is the highest good, was God himself. That God himself is not just a great being to be worshiped, but the best of all beings. Infinite goodness in God himself. And to know God, to possess God, to be united to God, to desire God—that is the highest calling of all. And that our loves will be ordered as they are ordered under this supreme love. And so in the Confessions, for example, Augustine says:
“For there is a joy that is not given to those who do not love you, but only to those who love you for your own sake. You yourself are their joy. Happiness is to rejoice in you and for you and because of you. This is happiness and there is no other. Those who think that there is another kind of happiness look for joy elsewhere, but theirs is not true joy.”

This is really important. The transformation of our desires, so that we desire God, and our loves are ordered under this supreme love for God. The reason this is so important is because if this doesn’t happen to you, if your desires are not changed and transformed, then the Christian life is always going to feel like exercising willpower. It’s always going to feel like trying really hard to do the things you don’t want to do. Or trying really hard not to do the things you really want to do. Because you still have not experienced change at the level of desire. And listen, that is a very frustrating way to live! It’s really frustrating to always be trying not to do what you really want to do, and trying really hard to do things that you don’t love. That’s frustrating. And that’s the best-case scenario. At worst, it leads to the worst forms of hypocrisy, where we outwardly pretend to be things that we are not, and to love things we don’t love. And to desire things that we don’t desire. And so we need this deep transformation of our hearts and desires.

Let me give you one more illustration. Many of you have heard me use this before. Greek mythology tells the fascinating story of Odysseus and his perilous journey home following the Trojan War. And, of course, he faces many obstacles and many dangers. But among them are the Sirens. And the Sirens are these bird-like women who have a seductive song. And the sound of their song lures sailors to their death. And Odysseus knows of this danger. And he is sailing through these waters. So he tells his men to put wax in their ears, but he leaves his own ears open and instead binds himself to the mast of the ship, so that no matter what song he hears, no matter how seductive, no matter how powerful the song, he won’t be veered off course. And his men are to follow this straight path home.

But there is another story, though, told about the Sirens, this one is the story about Jason and the Argonauts. In the story of Jason, he also encounters the Sirens, but he combats the Sirens in a different way. Instead of ropes and wax, these external constraints, to keep him from being seduced by the song, he brings along Orpheus, who was the greatest musician of the world. And he has Orpheus play a sweeter song. And so he is captivated by the sweeter song of Orpheus and is not led away by the seductive song of the Sirens.

Those stories are powerful metaphors, pictures, of two different ways of trying to live the Christian life. Some people try to live the Christian life by putting wax in their ears and by roping themselves to the mast by using rules and external constraints. Essentially by using the law to compel obedience.

But the gospel gives us something so much better. In the gospel we have the transforming power of Christ and His Spirit to renew our hearts from the inside out so that we are changed in the very level of our desire and motivations. And we are driven along by what Thomas Chalmers called, “the expulsive power of a new affection.” We are captivated by a sweeter, more satisfying song.

And that’s why devotion to Christ is so crucial. Union with Christ, that’s our identity. Devotion to Christ, that’s the realm of desire. We become not only who we are in Christ, we become what we love.

Here’s the basic principle: You become what you love. If you desire to change, then you’ve got to change at that level, the heart level.

All right, so we’ve looked at identity. We’ve looked at desires. Now thirdly, let’s talk for a few minutes about habits:

3. Habits: You become what you do

It’s not only true to say that you become who you are in Christ, and you become what you love, but it’s also true to say that you become what you do, or you are shaped by what you do. You are shaped by your practices. There’s an old saying, “Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character.” The things that we do shape us. They shape our character.

Now, this is an observation that the philosopher Aristotle made. Aristotle said that we develop virtue or acquire virtues by first exercising them. He says anything that we have to learn we learn by the actual doing of it. So people become builders by building and instrumentalists by playing instruments. Similarly, we become just by performing just acts, temperate by performing temperate ones, and brave by performing brave ones.

Now, this is an ancient insight verified by psychologists today, and I think all over the place in Scripture, that the things we do shape us and change us. In fact, neuroscientists in recent years have begun to discover that our actual habits and practices, the things we do with our bodies, they form connections in the brain, they form this synapsis in the brain, connections and neuro-pathways, so that the brain actually gets shaped by our practices. And so one of the unique phenomena of our day is how this little device is changing the way we think. [Holding up cell phone] Like it has actually changed our ability to focus and concentrate and observe for long periods of time, a particular task. Like reading a book. Or writing an essay or letter. It’s much more difficult to do today than it used to be because we are so much more distracted by the smart phone and technology. What we do shapes us and changes us.

Now we see this in all different kinds of ways. Here is a common Illustration: playing a musical instrument. My son Matthew started playing the violin last fall. He started taking violin lessons at school. It takes a lot of practice for the student and a lot of patience for the parents for someone to learn to play the violin! But Matthew is very interested and very determined and just threw himself into it. So he is practicing almost every day, without being told. And sometimes practicing for a couple of hours at a time. He advanced so quickly and did so well, that for the spring concert, his violin teacher commended him publicly and had him play a duet with her in the spring concert after only playing for a few months. And he nailed it! He did a wonderful job.

Now what Matthew is discovering is what thousands of other people, and many of you have also discovered, that learning a skill requires regular practice. It requires an ongoing process of development where you are training your body and your mind to do certain things so that you develop the skill. And the more time you give to it, the more the skill develops. This is true with language acquisition. It’s true with learning a sport. It’s true with learning an instrument. And it’s also true in developing character.

So Aristotle says you become just by performing just acts. You become brave by acting with courage. And I think the same thing is true in the Christian life. In fact, it’s profoundly true in the Christian life.

And we see this in Scripture. So let me ground it now in the text. You see this in Colossians 3, where Paul, having reminded us of our identity in Christ, and telling us to set our minds, our affections on Christ, he goes on to give lengthy exhortation about how we are to live, and everything he is saying here, works out in the level of practices. So he tells us we are to put off certain vices. We are to put them to death, the sins in our lives, and we are to put on the virtues, the virtues of Christ. Like an old set of clothes, put off the sins. Like a new set of clothes, put on the virtues of Christ. He tells us that we are to let the word of Christ dwell richly in our hearts. We are to do this as a worshiping community, as we are singing to one another the psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. These are spiritual practices of worship that form us and shape us. We are to imitate Christ. As he has forgiven us, so we are to forgive others. You know what that means? You become a forgiving, compassionate kind of person by regularly performing acts of forgiveness. As you choose to forgive others for small things and little things day in and day out, you become a more forgiving person. You develop a capacity for forgiveness and for compassion. This is essentially what Jesus means when he says, “Follow me” (Mark 1:17). Or what Paul means when he said, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Cor. 11:1). Or what John means when he says we “ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.” (1 Jn. 2:6)

So the role of our practices, our habits, is really important, because we are shaped by what we do. We become what we do. And this works both positively and negatively. So I’ve been talking along the positive lines. If you act like Christ. If we imitate Christ, over time you become more and more like him.

But it’s also true negatively. That if you continue on in patterns of sin, those patterns get more deeply etched and engraved into your soul. One of the most powerful illustrations of this comes from C. S. Lewis’s novel, The Great Divorce. Now you may remember. The Great Divorce (I’ve quoted from this many times), it’s a story of this busload of ghosts from hell, they get an excursion into heaven with a chance to stay if they will. The only thing they have to do is leave behind their sins. They just have to give up their desires or their prejudices or their bitterness, or whatever it is that is binding them and blinding them from the glories of heaven. They just have to give it up. And one by one they all get back on the bus and go back, except for one who chooses to stay.

But there is one story that I think is really illuminating in this whole area of transformation. And it’s the story of an old woman who grumbles, this grumbling old woman. Now, when we think of a grumbling old woman, we don’t think of someone who is deeply sinful. When we think of a grumbling old person, you just kind of think they are kind of cranky. But they’ve not lived a life full of immorality. But what Lewis is showing is that even these kinds of sins, left unchecked, they so distort the soul that the soul loses its capacity to see and enjoy and love God. So here is the crucial quotation. This is the conversation between the narrator of the story and his guide, and they are talking about this woman.

"It begins with a grumbling mood, and yourself still distinct from it: perhaps criticizing it. And yourself, in a dark hour, may will that mood, may embrace it. [You] can repent and come out of it again. But there may come a day when you can do that no longer. Then there will be no ‘you’ left to criticize the mood, not even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself going on forever like a machine."

Do you see what Lewis says has happened to this woman? She has embraced the very thing that damned her. She willed the grumbling mood. She embraced it. And then without repentance, her identity dissolved into the sin. And she has become, more or less, an eternal grumbler.

This is the end of all idolatry. Scripture talks about how those who worship vain idols become vain themselves. We become like what we worship. If you choose to serve your avarice, or lust, or pride, or your envy, or your jealousy, or your hate. You choose to serve that, you will to enjoy that. You build your life on that. You can lose your capacity to enjoy God altogether.

Now, I believe that for a Christian, God won’t let you will that without repentance. His Holy Spirit will keep pleading and prodding and working and will bring you back to repentance. But the danger is there. And our assurance is found in our fighting against the sin. And we do that through our practices. Through what we do.

I’m going to talk more about what these practices are, what this looks like, in a future message. But for now, here’s this third component, saying it another way. Not only must we be united to Christ, and not only must we be devoted to Christ, we must also imitate Christ. Identity, desire, and habits. In our Identity, we are united to Christ. In our desires, we must be devoted to Christ. And in our habits, we imitate Christ. The only safe path for a Christian to walk is the path blazed out by Jesus Christ himself. He is our model, our example, our forerunner. That’s why the imitation of Christ is so crucial.

Let me conclude by just reflecting with you for a minute on the synergy of these components. I’ve said that it is in the intersection of these things, the synergy of these components or ingredients. It’s when identity, desires, and habits meet. When those three things meet and converge, that’s where the real practical transformation takes place. That’s where we actually practically become like Christ.

I want you to think for a minute about how these things work together. The loss of one will impact the others. So, for example, good habits are necessary to remind us of our identity and to fuel our desires.
So someone one time said, on the importance of having a quiet time or devotional time with the Lord, “You don’t need to have a quiet time in order for God to love you. But you need to have a quiet time so that you can hear God say, ‘I love you.’” You see? So it’s not so much that we are earning anything. We are not earning anything. You don’t accrue merit. You don’t earn righteousness or earn love from God by doing spiritual disciplines. But the spiritual disciplines remind you of who you are in Christ! They remind you of your identity, and they shape your desires. They fuel the good desires.

On the other hand, the habits also follow our desires, and the desires follow upon a new identity. So that if you are not in Christ, you won’t have the capacity within yourself to desire communion with God or fellowship with God. You’ve got to be in Christ. You’ve got to be connected to Christ. That’s why faith comes first. We’ve got to believe the gospel. So these things converge. If you are not in Christ, you have no power to desire him or to imitate him.

So I can say I will never become like Jesus until I'm united to him, devoted to him, and then learn to imitate him in day-to-day life. My union with Christ gives me confidence. Confidence that I belong to God. But it’s devotion to Christ that focuses my passion on the things of God. And it is my imitation of Christ that provides direction for how I am to live.

You might think of it in this way. Spiritual formation is a reorientation of the self. Reminding myself of my identity in Christ reorients me to Christ as my substitute, my representative, and as the head of new creation, my example. Desire reorients me to Christ as my life and my joy. And the habits reorient me to Christ as the ultimate pattern for true human flourishing.

When we think about the place of Christ in our formation, Christ is for us. That’s the work of Christ. That’s where our identity is found. It’s in the work of Christ. Christ for me. The glory of Christ, that should be my desire. That’s Christ above me. And then the example of Christ. That’s the realm of habits. That’s Christ before me.

My identity is shaped by Christ is my Savior. My desires are shaped by Christ as my Treasure. Remember the parable of the treasure in the field? And a man sells everything he has to buy the field and to get the treasure. Christ is the treasure. Or the kingdom of God revealed in Christ, that’s the treasure. But Christ is also my Example, and that shapes, again, my habits.

We could even think about this in relationship to the Holy Spirit. What is the Holy Spirit's role in these three things? Well, the Holy Spirit is the bond of our union with Christ. The Spirit is the one who actually binds us to Christ. That’s the realm of identity. The Spirit is also the one who regenerates us and creates us anew in Christ Jesus. That’s the realm of desires. And the Spirit is the one who gives us the grace and the strength to establish new patterns of living. That’s the realm of habits.

And then finally, think about it in this way. Think about it in terms of your discipleship to Christ. Your growth as a disciple in Christ. That’s what this whole series is about. What does it mean to be a disciple of Christ? What does it mean to follow Christ? And I’d suggest to you that understanding this framework of identity, desires, and habits, will help give you focus in your own discipleship, and in your discipling relationships with others. So our focus is determined, in some degree, by need. And all Christians need the whole gospel, but different states of heart and mind need different emphases. So, for example, if you’re struggling with guilt, and just feelings of condemnation, if that’s where you are, you just feel condemnation. You walk around with this guilt cloud over your head most of the time. You’re beating yourself up: “Bad Christian! Bad Christian!” If that’s where you are. That’s the felt need. That’s the felt need. The root sin beneath that is the sin of pride. It’s the sin of pride, of thinking that you actually could be good enough, and of looking at your performance as the basis of your acceptance. And what you need is an emphasis on your identity in Christ. You go back to that part of the diagram. Your identity in Christ. You need to live in the first three chapters of Ephesians, and the first two chapters of Colossians, and in Romans 6-8. You need to live there. You need to get this. Who you are in Christ! You are not a sinner anymore, by definition. You still commit sins. You still do sinful things. But your identity is: beloved son or daughter of the King. You are in Christ, and you need to get that. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus! And repentance, then, will look like this. It will be repentance from self-righteousness. It will be repentance from looking at yourself too much. I love those words of Robert Murray McCheyene, that 18th-century Scottish pastor, who said, “For every one look at self, take ten looks at Christ.” So that would mean for every ten looks at self, take 100 looks at Christ. Get your focus on your Christ, your identity in Christ. If you are struggling with guilt and condemnation, discouragement, if that’s where you are, then put focus right there.

Now here is another case. What about people who are struggling with apathy? So that’s kind of the felt need; that’s the felt concern. You are just indifferent. You just don’t care that much about discipleship. I mean, you want to be saved, you don’t want to go to hell, you want to go to heaven. And you want to please Jesus. But my goodness! “I’m too busy for spiritual disciplines. Too busy to read my bible. Too busy to pray.” The root sin to apathy is idolatry. It’s idolatry. A lack of desire for God—that’s present. The lack of desire for God in your life is because you desire other things too much. It’s this disordered love. Your loves are out of order. Your desires are out of order. And what you need then, is an emphasis on desire, on devotion to Christ. You need repentance from inferior, lesser loves. You need your heart to be sorted out and reordered and changed in the level of desires.

Now, that doesn’t mean that you spend a lot of time in introspection, looking at desires. What you still need is Jesus. You need to see Jesus, but you need to see especially the beauty of Jesus. You need to see the goodness of Jesus. You need to see that Jesus really is everything you desire. You need to see that Jesus is bread of life, living water, that only he can satisfy your soul. And you need to take honest account of how dissatisfied and disillusioned you are with the broken cisterns that you have been pursuing.

One more. People struggling with inconsistency. You’re just inconstant. Wishy-washy, on one day, off two, on two days, off three. In and out of your Bible, but no regularity. No regularity in prayer. Just inconsistency. And I think the root sin of inconsistency is what the ancients would call sloth. Sloth. This refusal to fully give yourself to God and to others. And what’s needed there is an emphasis on habits or the imitation of Christ. Repentance here will be very practical. It will be repentance from practical disobedience to Jesus and neglect of the means of grace.

I think neglect is one of our biggest sins. This is something I’ve been feeling and seeing in my own life in the past several years as a Christian. I’m still working on this. But I see in my life that one of my biggest sins is the sin of neglect. And when I neglect prayer, or I neglect the Word, or I neglect the means of grace, when I neglect those things, what’s where I start to go off the rail somewhere else. And oftentimes if I can see I blew it there – you know, like I lost my temper with my kids, and just yelled and said things I should not have said. When I see that happening, I can always go back and see, my goodness, look at my habits that last few days! Where is the solitude? Where is my time with God? Why is my heart not quiet? And so there has to be a reordering in very practical ways in schedule and priorities, and disciplines. But again, it’s all about Christ. It’s not a focus on self. It’s focusing on my union with Christ (that’s my identity) and Christ is the most desirable object, and then Christ’s pattern of life in being connected to Christ so as to receive grace and strength from him for living.

So union with Christ, devotion to Christ, imitation of Christ. Identity, desire, habits. When those three things converge that’s where we really change.

Let me end with this. This is a prayer, adapted (I think) from St. Patrick’s Lorica. This might be a good prayer to tuck away in your Bible and pray on a somewhat regular basis.

As I arise today,
may the strength of God pilot me,
the power of God uphold me,
the wisdom of God guide me.
May the eye of God look before me,
the ear of God hear me,
the word of God speak for me.
May the hand of God protect me,
the way of God lie before me,
the shield of God defend me,
the host of God save me.
May Christ shield me today.
Christ with me, Christ before me,
Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit,
Christ when I stand,
Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.
Amen

Let’s pray.

Father of Christ and Father of our own hearts, we bow before you and we pray that the words of Paul in this passage would be true for us. Christ in all. Christ all in all. May it be true for us, Lord. Change us wherever we need to be changed, and help us this morning and this week to take honest account of ourselves and where we are, and then give renewed focus and attention to the particular dimensions in our formation and discipleship that will lead us to more Christ-likeness. Father, forgive us for our passivity in these things. We so often don’t give the kind of time and attention to you that we should. So forgive us for that. Forgive us for our blindness. We don’t see your goodness and we don’t see Christ as the treasure that he is. So open our eyes and help us see the beauty of our Lord. The beauty of the gospel. And may it capture our hearts anew. And now use the table to that end as we take the bread and the juice. May we do so with faith, taking Christ our Lord. And as we continue in worship, may our hearts be drawn to you, our Lord and our God. We pray it in Jesus name and for his sake, Amen.

Brian G. Hedges

Raised in a pastor’s family, Brian was graciously drawn to Christ as a teenager and began preaching when he was 18. Brian became our Lead Pastor in 2003. Brian is married to Holly, who works in administration at a local Christian school. Brian and Holly have been married since 1996 and have four children. Brian is the author of numerous books, enjoys reading, working out, being outdoors, and playing golf.