Until Christ is Formed in Us
A sermon brought forth from Mathew 13:44-46 and 2 Peter 1:1-11 preached on July 2, 2023
We believe in a lot of unbelievable things. We believe that there’s an invisible power that created everything we can see and everything we can’t. We say that there’s a God who brought the entire cosmos into being. Though we’ve never seen this God we say He’s everywhere. At least to us, it’s the only way any of this makes sense—if some wonderful, glorious being who is pure Goodness and Love (capital “G,” capital “L”) made it happen. But not only that.
We believe that this God who made it all is also close and personal; always loving, always upholding, always creating, redeeming, and sustaining. What we believe gets even crazier, though. We also say that 2,000 years ago and halfway around the world a human being was born in a particular place and time who was just as human as we are but also just as divine as God is, and even though He existed long ago and far away, we keep talking about Him like He’s here with us now, right when and where we are. That’s because we believe that this Divine and human One, this God-person, died and was buried and three days later came alive again and is still alive today.
We believe in a lot of unbelievable things.
I’ve pondered all this. I don’t believe all this just because someone told me to. I was born into the faith, but I’ve lived many lives since. My faith is hard-won. I’ve had faith and I’ve had crises of faith. I’ve considered how outlandish it all is. Maybe you have too.
I know how many miracles it takes to make it true or even plausible. Miracles all the way through. There have been seasons of my life when I’ve questioned everything and was left to hold onto the smallest bit of belief. There have been times when my faith has been torn down or when I’ve torn it down and deconstructed it myself. And there have been other seasons in my life, whether in easy moments or difficult ones, when my faith’s been strong and everything fit together. But even in the thinnest of seasons, there’s not been a moment when I didn’t believe that God was present and good.
In part, I have Peter and Paul to thank for that—not the 60’s folk singers, though their songs have sustained me, too—but the ones whose witness we can turn to in scripture. Consider what each was like at first and what happened to them once Christ got a hold of them. There are miracles all the way through.
First Paul, the hardened Pharisee who breathed murderous threats against the first Christ followers, becomes a Christ follower himself. And even if you overlook or have a hard time believing what happened to him on his way to Damascus, you can’t argue with his transformation. No one so bent on wiping out an entire faith suddenly becomes its most powerful advocate and loudest voice because they felt like it.
Paul experienced Christ—not a message about Christ or a message from Christ; Paul experienced Christ Himself. Unmediated and powerful, and it changed Paul so profoundly that it’s almost like he lived twice. Same with Peter, the one who wrote these strong and confident words, “Make every effort to confirm your calling and election.”
He had his calling confirmed by the risen Jesus over breakfast on the beach. The one who wrote, “make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control” is also the one who, through the Holy Spirit’s guidance and wisdom, overcame the compulsiveness of his younger years and became the steady rock on which Christ’s Church was built. You can’t argue with his transformation. At least I can’t.
At the beginning of his second letter to his churches, it sounds like Peter reflects back on the way he used to be as he encourages us to do away with our ineffective and unproductive ways, our nearsightedness, blindness, and stumbling. Peter knew those ways all too well, but the Living One took hold of him and reshaped him from deep inside.
Christ is formed in us. Peter knew that well. I’ve pondered all this.
Chase after the reality that lies deep at the center of our faith. That’s Peter’s encouragement. Don’t ever stop digging deeper into the reality of who God is and the life He’s laid out for us in Christ Jesus.
It’s the greatest of treasures, he says, and there’s nothing else worth investing ourselves in. Peter’s words remind me of Jesus’s from Matthew 13, our first reading this morning. I wonder if Peter had them in mind as he started on his second letter to the Christ faithful of his congregation.
“The Kingdom of heaven (or the Kingdom of God) is like buried treasure or like stumbling onto a fine pearl.”
When a man found the buried treasure, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field. When the merchant found the pearl, he sold everything he had and bought it. It’s worth letting go of lesser things to gain something of greater value. The Kingdom of God is of greater value than anything else. We should be willing to give up all else to obtain it. Because once we know how much richer we will be if we gave away everything we think is important—then we will know what’s truly worth living for. Then Christ will be formed in us.
What we’re talking about here is spiritual transformation. Spiritual transformation is the process by which Christ is formed in us—the way only Christ can bring us to life and wake us up inside. The same God who spoke the world into being—taking what was formless and empty and giving it shape and fullness—can speak us into being, can take what’s formless and empty about us and do the same.
God transforms us into the image of Christ through the real presence of the Holy Spirit. This is the miraculous work of God. We don’t do this on our own. There’s no way to wish it into reality, control it, or make it happen—in ourselves or anyone else. This is something only Christ can accomplish in us. Yet there’s something we can do. Peter encourages us to create the conditions in which spiritual transformation can take place. In other words, we can make ourselves more available to God for the work that only God can do.
We start, Peter says, by trading in self-effort—all the strenuous self-determination and heavy lifting that exhausts us and keeps God at a distance—for the Spirit’s effort in us. Self-determination and exhaustion are death-dealing. We would do well to exchange those ways for what’s life-giving. Spiritual director and teacher, Ruth Haley Barton puts it this way:
“Christian community is not and never can be about us. When our dreams and convictions about what we think community should be are dashed against the jagged reef of human limitations and we fail to live up to one another’s needs and expectations, then and only then are we ready to accept the fact that Christian community is not about us at all. It is about the transforming power of Christ—all that He will do in and through and for each of us.”1
I don’t have better concluding words than Peter’s own.
“For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
These are the conditions we can create to make spiritual transformation possible. Then there will be miracles all the way through.
All praises to the One who made it all and finds it beautiful! Alleluia! Amen.
Ruth Haley Barton, Life Together in Christ: Experiencing Transformation in Community, IVP, 2014.