Beholding His Glory ~ Pastor Bill Slabaugh

Each one of us a believer in Jesus Christ is a masterpiece in the making. We are being crafted and sculpted into the masterpiece God wants each one of us to be.  But God doesn’t transform us into the image of Christ just to make us into a beautiful work of art to be displayed in a museum, or to put on a shelf,  or placed in a vault. He shapes us into what He wants us to be for the work of service, as a tool, to the building up of the Body of Christ. The Holy Spirit gives us spiritual gifts so that we might serve God and serve one another as a tool in the hand of the Master.

The One who created all that there is—the One who created you—desires to do an Extreme Makeover for every single person on this earth. As amazing as it is to see the transformation of a house on the reality show Extreme Makeover Home Edition, God wants to do a relational, spiritual, emotional, internal transformation in every man, woman, and child. He wants re-creation. He wants to take the old and put it away. He wants something new to come in. He wants to take the old and cleanse. And He wants to put your past behind you. You will discover in this message from God’s Word that you are God’s Masterpiece in the Making as you are transformed more and more into the image of Jesus Christ.

Ephesians 1:3-4

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him.  

The phrase “in Christ” is used eighty-nine times in the New Testament. This great truth to be “in Christ” means that when you trust Jesus as your Lord and Savior a union is established between Christ and you. This union is established between Christ and you in such a way that everything in Christ that can be shared will be shared with you. Only Christ’s deity and it’s unique God-defining attributes like omnipotence and omniscience cannot be shared. But everything else that Christ is and has is yours in Him.

For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith. (Romans 12:3)

Paul shows us in Romans 12:3 that you are not to think too highly of yourself.  But he also shows us that you are not to think too low of yourself.  Godly humility is not thinking too low of yourself, but to think as to have sound judgment.  If you are a believer you are a recipient of God’s Grace—not only the grace that saved you, but the grace by which God has gifted you for service. Our spiritual gifts differ according to the grace given to each one of us. But each one of us does have gifts.  You are not nothing. You  are not someone who can’t do anything or incapable—not at all.

Since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, each of us is to exercise them accordingly: if prophecy, according to the proportion of his faith; (Romans 12:6)

God’s goal for you as a Christian is for you take the same form as His Son, Jesus Christ. The apostle Paul taught that before time began God chose to save believers so that they might come to have the same form as His Son (Romans 8:29). 

This expresses the glorious goal of Christlikeness—of becoming like Jesus in our actions, in our behavior, in our thinking, motivations, compassions, love, and in our service to others. It’s everything that it means to be “transformed by the renewing of our minds” (Romans 12:2). In this we “prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.