One Way We Are Conformed To The Image Of Jesus

For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.
Romans 8:29

Romans 8:29-30 paints God's purposes in redemption from beginning to end on the canvas of history. In eternity past, God set His love upon a people [foreknew them] because He wanted them to fulfill a purpose, to have a particular destiny [predestined them]. This purpose is clear. In all that God does in the lives of the people He has chosen from eternity past, He is working toward the ultimate goal of conforming them into the image of His Son, Jesus Christ. This is God's ultimate reason for everything He brings into the lives of His people.

So, as those who are sons and daughters of God, nothing should be more important to us than that we be conformed to the image of Jesus. God's ultimate goal for our lives should be our ultimate goal for our lives.

Believing this should cause us to pray for God to conform us to the image of Jesus. And it should cause us to think about how it is that we ourselves pursue, or work out (Philippians 2:12, 13), being conformed to the image of Jesus.

What does it mean to be conformed to the image of Jesus? One way we might answer this question is to say that to be perfectly conformed to the image of Jesus is to be a perfect mirror reflection of who Jesus is in the way He thinks, speaks, and lives.

He [Jesus Christ] is the image of the invisible God... He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell...
Colossians 1:15,18, 19 (emphasis added)

Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God. And we are to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. Our destiny is to be a perfect image of the perfect image of God.

How is it that Jesus Christ is the perfect image of God? Because all the fullness of God dwells in Him. Everything that God is, Jesus also is, fully and perfectly. All of the attributes of God are found in Jesus.

And when Jesus rose from the dead, He became the firstborn of a new race that would resemble Him and make Him to be preeminent in all things because everything about His people would point to Him. Through the parallel ideas of Jesus being the firstborn, it's clear that Romans 8:29 is Paul's way of saying to the the Romans the exact same thing he says to the Colossians in Colossians 1:18b. God's ultimate goal in the lives of His people is to conform them to the image of Jesus Christ so that in all things Jesus Christ will be preeminent. In other words, God's ultimate goal in the lives of His people is the glory of His name through Jesus Christ.

If God's ultimate goal for our lives is to make us a perfect reflection of Jesus, and all the fullness of God dwells in Jesus, then another way to say it is that God's ultimate goal for our lives is for all the fullness of God to dwell in us just like it dwells in Jesus.

So now the question becomes, how do I become filled with more and more of the fullness of God? Paul tells us through one of his prayers exactly how it is that we come to be filled with the fullness of God:

I bow my knees before the Father...that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith--that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Ephesians 3:14-19 (emphasis added)

This prayer is packed with rich petition. But there are a couple of things that are particularly relevant. Paul's ultimate goal in this prayer is that the people he is praying for be filled with all the fullness of God, which essentially means that they be conformed to the image of Jesus. There is a line of progression in his prayer that builds up to this goal of being conformed to the image of Jesus and something in particular that he directly connects to our being conformed to the image of Jesus: our knowledge of God's love for us. Paul prays that the Ephesians grow in their understanding and experiential grasp of God's love for them because there is a direct connection between their experiential knowledge of God's love for them and their being filled with all the fullness of God (same phrase used to describe Jesus in Colossians 1:19!). The more they are growing in experiencing God's love for them, the more they will grow in being filled with the fullness of God. Or, to say it another way, we can only grow in being conformed to the image of Christ to the extent that we are growing in our experience of God's love for us.

Jesus knew that His father loved him (John 5:20, John 17:24). He knew this perfectly. That's why He is filled with all the fullness of God. He's not like us. So often when we say we know that God loves us we are speaking about something we know intellectually rather than something we know experientially. Jesus experientially knew that His father loved Him and He knew this perfectly. None of us experientially knows Gods' love for us perfectly and I would argue that it is this failure to know God's love for us perfectly that is the root of all of our sin. If we had perfect experiential knowledge of Gods' love for us, we wouldn't sin. That's why Paul and Jesus (John 17:26) pray for us to have perfect experiential knowledge of God's love for us.

Yes, as God's children, for most of us the knowledge that God loves us is more than just intellectual. It is intensely experiential. But no matter how high our experiential knowledge of God's love for us is, God's love for us is still higher. No matter how long, God's love is still longer. No matter how deep, God's love is still deeper. No matter how broad, God's love is still broader.

And so we must labor to know ourselves loved by God more than we currently know. Oh, how He loves us! And as we grow in our experiential knowledge of God's love for us, we will at the same time be becoming more and more conformed to the image of Jesus. This is one way (and perhaps the main way) we grow in being conformed to the image of Jesus: by growing in our grasp of God's love for us. We must continually grow in our grasp of God's love for us because we will never grasp it fully enough in this life.

But one day, we will know that love perfectly, we will be filled with the fullness of God, we will be conformed to the image of Christ, and we will no longer sin. In other words, we'll be glorified.

For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.
Romans 8:29-30

So please grant us, Father, according to the riches of Your glory to be strengthened with power through Your Spirit in our inner beings, so that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith--that we, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that we may be filled with all the fullness of God, that we might be conformed more and more into the image of Your Son, who perfectly knew from eternity past Your love for Him that cannot even be described by dimensions because it transcends every dimension. In Jesus' name, Amen.