What Difference Would It Make?

What difference would it make to Christians if we had no idea that we were supposed to become conformed to the image of Christ?
I can't help wondering about that.
Imagine if all we knew was that God had sent Jesus Christ so we could again be part of His family. . .
What if the Epistles only had the first parts, which are all about Christ -
and not the second bits about behaviour? 
How would that affect us?


Would we be freer to worship Him?
Would we be freer of self scrutiny with its inevitable pride or condemnation outflow.
Wouldn't we judge each other less, criticise each other less because we wouldn't have expectations of one another?
No one would be saying, "Call yourself a Christian!?" accusingly, because not-Christians wouldn't have those expectations of us either.
Because, let's face it, no one has a problem with Jesus -
But with the church, and with Christians?
Ohhhh yes.
But not with Him.


So much pain comes from our, and others' expectation that we be more like Jesus.
They point fingers at our awful failure.
And we spend ridiculous amounts of time thinking about ourselves
Trying to find ways to move this boulder of 'ME-ness' out of the way

We try SO hard, for so long, in so many ways . . .
For us, we are the immovable object.
Seriously.
We may think we can do it but
There is only One who can.
And His way is so odd.

He does it when we are not trying to do it.

He does it by Himself so we can't feel proud of ourselves.

He does it when we know we can't

He does it when we are caught up in how wonderful He is.

By taking our own spiritual temperatures, we slow the whole process down

And get in His way, like clumsy baby fingers 'helping' Dad.

Now God doesn't make mistakes
He's not  going to read this post and think, "Gosh, she's right! Maybe I should have done things differently!"
Let's face it, if we could have made ourselves "good" without Him, Jesus would never have needed to come here.


He has very good reasons for His doing things this way
Its to do with realising how much we need Him
Amongst other things.
But that's another story.