a framework for forming men (pt. 5)

When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.

Bonhoeffer

Then he said to them all: "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it."

Luke 9:23-24 

Fellas, you have to pay attention to your walk with God. Much of what goes on in the church today under the guise of spiritual formation is just lifestyle enhancement and self-care framed as the way of Jesus. Theology, teaching, and practices all somehow point back to living a sustainable life for the sake of yourself. It’s a sweet trap to be obsessed with your own spirituality - to only focus on yourself while the world burns down around you.

It’s not that self-care is wrong. It has its place and season. However, it’s just not enough for a life of discipleship under a leader whose life ended by violent crucifixion, stripped naked and bleeding for the sins of the world. Jesus invited us to take up our cross daily, and the fellowship of suffering he invited us into is neglected in the Western Church. But the good news is that we find our life by dying. Our true self by crucifying the false self. For Jesus, the cross led to resurrection. Death to life. And for men today, the way of the cross still leads us out of the wasteland of modern life into union and conformity with the life of Christ himself.

For the last 5 weeks, we have been talking about a pathway of formation for men that follows these 5 movements

FORMATION
DEFORMATION
COUNTERFORMATION
TRANSFORMATION
CONFORMATION

Today, we look at the last of the 5 movements: conformation.

Romans 8:29 tells us that "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."
  
Regardless of your view of election, either Calvinistic or Arminian, we can agree on the end goal of election: that you be conformed to the image of Jesus. This means that your ultimate purpose in life, the purpose behind your hobbies, work, small group, social media viewing, relationships, sexuality, Netflix watching, and commuting is pointed at one great aim: your transformation from your broken sinful self into the gracious, loving renewed image of Jesus. You have been adopted into the family of God, and you are going to take on a strong family resemblance - that of Jesus.

Conformation or conformity means to take the shape of something. In our case, we are choosing to take the shape of the life of Jesus. This isn’t just a few practices here, a few beliefs there, and a few programs along the way. It is to take on the pattern, the personality, and the lifestyle of Jesus Christ. We all enter this world, corrupted by sin and the flesh, living in the world under the power of the evil one. We bear the image of Adam, our fallen father. But in Christ, we are made new and now bear his image. 1 Corinthians 15:49 puts this beautifully: "And just as we have borne the image of the earthly man, so shall we bear the image of the heavenly man."

Becoming like Jesus is not optional for disciples of Jesus. 1 John 2:5-6 says: "This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did." 

How then do we begin a journey of conforming to his image?

CONFORMED THROUGH DEATH

To become a Christian is to die to self and live to God. It is to repent and believe in Christ and join him in his suffering and death. Our lives are mysteriously united with his, but our death is also his death. That is what baptism symbolizes for a Christian. At our church we say, "buried with Christ in the likeness of his death, raised to walk in newness of life."

Paul is going to talk about this mystery in Galatians 2:20. "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."  The journey of conformation is a journey of death. Paul continues in Galatians 5:24 stating, "Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires."

The way of conformity is to die to the system of the world that seeks to mold us into its image.
The way of conformity is to die to the self-justifying religious self, seeking to earn its way to God.
The way of conformity is to die to our sinful self, the one bent on making us the god of our own lives.

We renounce these things, turn away from them with all our might, and follow Jesus to the cross. Ayn Rand once wrote, ‘The first right on earth is the right of the ego.’ Followers of Jesus have a different vision: The first right in the kingdom is self-denial.

CONFORMED THROUGH STRUGGLE

This death is a one-time decision, a legal verdict and a switching of allegiance, but it is a decision that must be lived out constantly, even daily as Jesus reminds us. To become a Christian is to receive the glorious power and life of Jesus, and it’s to die a painful, often humiliating death to our ego-driven self. 

Professor Gerald Sittser has an idea that embodies this well; he calls it becoming a bloodless martyr:

G. K. Chesterton said of Francis of Assisi that he turned martyrdom into a way of life.  For the sake of Christ, he learned to die daily to the gods—ego, pleasure, power, success—that threatened to dominate his life, which was why he lived with such vitality and passion.

Bloodless martyrs, dying to the world, yet filled with kingdom life and passion. What a vision!

Being crucified in the place of public opinion for our vision of Jesus’ exclusive love.
Being mocked and jeered by radical activists for our convictions of historic sexual ethics.
Being attacked by the god of mammon for our simple contentment.
Being snubbed by the elite for standing with the oppressed.
Being rejected by the system of the world for refusing to go along with its secular, dehumanizing agenda.

Men are made to give themselves to something. To exhaust themselves on the field of battle for a worthy cause. We are made to take up something. If we don’t take up our cross and follow Jesus, we will take up something with our strength. And much of the crisis of the modern world is that men are giving themselves to and dying for the wrong things.

Jesus never said…

Take up your politics.
Take up your accomplishments.
Take up your arguments.
Take up your legislation.
Take up your culture wars.

He said we are to take up our cross.

Yes, there may be consequences and implications that bleed into other areas of life, but it will be the blood of self-denial, not the blood of others, we sacrifice for our own self-righteous causes. 

CHOOSING THE WAY OF THE CROSS

Conformity to the image of Jesus happens in large moments, like the testing of faithfulness and the willingness to suffer, but it also happens in small moments, the imperceptible moments of formation that shape who we become over the long haul. And for many of us, living in the West as we do, these are the moments of conformation we must pay attention to. As C.S. Lewis noted:

Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.

You are being conformed to the image of something. Conformation has staggering and eternal consequences. 

Choose the fruit of the spirit over the works of the flesh.
Choose contentment over thoughtless consumerism.
Choose self-denial over dominant selfishness.
Choose enemy love over vengeance and hate.
Choose Jesus over everything. 

THE TERROR AND TRUST OF CONFORMATION

It can be a terrifying thing to choose the way of the cross. Christ himself felt this in the garden and on the cross. But Jesus’ source of comfort and power during the crucifixion was trust in his father. The father who called him his beloved, the father who delighted in him, the father he would be returning to in resurrection glory. The father into whose hands he committed his spirit.

And we will need the father’s love as we die to ourselves and the world around us. We cannot die out of willpower, ideological zeal, or self-righteous defiance. We must die out of love. Love the father lavishes on us. Love for Christ, love for this damaged world, love for a broken humanity. We must learn to entrust ourselves to him as we lose much of what the world craves, believing from the witness of the saints and the faithful that the promises of Jesus are true.

That in dying, we live; in losing, we gain; in pain, we find healing. And on the other side of the cross, a life of resurrection awaits. 

Brothers, let us die that we may live. Let us embrace the fellowship of His suffering. Though painful in the process, glory awaits.

Cheers. 

Jon.