Show Notes
In this episode, Derek Vreeland discusses the process of becoming more like Jesus through spiritual transformation. He explores the idea that the Holy Spirit is at work within us, forming us into the image of Jesus for the joy of God the Father. This transformation takes place in the context of Christian community and is facilitated by walking down spiritual pathways, or practicing spiritual disciplines. The goal is to slowly and incrementally become more like Jesus, leading to a peaceable and kind life.
Books mentioned in this episode:
By the Wayby Derek Vreeland
Scripture verses mentioned in this episode:
Hebrews 12:18-24
2 Corinthaians 3:1-18
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Transcript
Narrator: Welcome to Peaceable and Kind, the podcast where we explore the transformation. Each week your host, Derek Vreeland, will delve into the stories, scriptures, and practical steps that help us embody these essential Christian virtues.
Derek Vreeland: Welcome back to another episode of Peaceable and Kind. I am your One man host, Derek Vreeland, and I’m glad that you’ve joined me for this episode. Our podcast is still relatively new, and I continue to say at the beginning of every episode thank you. so much for listening. I talked to a guy last night at church who said he just found the podcast and has been listening to the episodes and they were an encouragement to him and I love hearing that feedback. So hit me up on social media. I am Derek Vreeland at, well, everywhere online just about Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. You can subscribe to my Substack. That’s a way to get more content in association with these episodes. But hit me up online and let me know what you think about these episodes. Today, we are going to talk about becoming more like Jesus One of the titles given to Jesus in the Old Testament in Isaiah is that he is the Prince of Peace. And I believe that peacemaking is a part of the mission, the ministry of Jesus. He has come to bring peace, he’s come to bring reconciliation. And as followers of Jesus, we are finding ourselves becoming more like Jesus. And that’s really the goal of this thing. We believe in Jesus, not simply that our sins might be forgiven, so that we can go to heaven when we die. Rather, we are trusting in Jesus because we believe, well, he’s guiding us into the good life. And we’re becoming like him. We want to imitate him. Which I know can sound extremely intimidating. Like this is Jesus the perfect one, and we’re supposed to imitate his life. it would be like saying, hey, we want to be basketball players, so we’re all gonna imitate LeBron James. I mean, I grew up playing basketball. I grew up in the eighties and so this was the era late eighties, early nineties. was the era of Michael Jordan and that was my idol. When I stepped on the basketball court as a teenager, I felt like Michael Jordan I would watch him play. I would try to imitate some of the things he could do. But while I felt like Michael Jordan, I probably looked a lot more like Michael Scott. I wasn’t the most coordinated or athletic kid, uh, but I loved basketball. And so some people can be intimidated. When they think, well, I’m supposed to imitate these idols, and as a Christian, we’re supposed to imitate Jesus, it can sound intimidating. So today I want to give you a vision on how you can step by step, day by day, year by year, slowly become more like Jesus. Now, before I get to that picture of transformation, I want to walk you through just a couple of Bible passages. As I’ve shared with you, I am a Bible nerd. I am a pastor, and so of course I’m a Bible teacher, but I read the Bible every day, and I’ve been doing so for 30 plus years. And I don’t do it because it’s a part of my job. I do it because I love it. And I love reading in different Bible translations. Currently, I am finishing up a two-year walking through the message translation. And so I want to read a short passage from Hebrews chapter 12 in the message. If you’re not familiar, the message translation was produced by Eugene Peterson And it takes the scriptures and he interprets them and translates them using modern and contemporary language. So in reading the message, some things might sound a little different And the message is not the only Bible that I use currently for my daily Bible reading. It’s what I’m reading through. But I’ll read a passage after the Hebrews passage from a different translation But I want to start in talking about becoming more like Jesus with this passage in Hebrews 12, because the writer of Hebrews is doing what a lot of New Testament writers do. And that is, they draw upon language and imagery and the stories from the Old Testament To show how they foreshadow Jesus, how they point to Jesus, or, as we’re going to see here in Hebrews 12, contrast with Jesus. So let’s start here, Hebrews chapter 12, and I’m just going to read verses 18 through 24 in the Message Bible. Here we go, Hebrews chapter twelve, verse eighteen. Unlike your ancestors, you didn’t come to Mount Sinai, all that volcanic blaze and earth shaking rumble, to hear God speak. The ear splitting words and soul-shaking message terrified them, and they begged him to stop. When they heard the words, if an animal touches the mountain, it’s as good as dead, they were afraid to move. Even Moses was terrified. No, that’s not your experience at all. You’ve come to Mount Zion, the city where the living God resides. The invisible Jerusalem is populated by throngs of festal angels and Christian citizens. It is the city where God is judged, with judgments that make us just. You’ve come to Jesus, who presents us with a new covenant, a fresh charter from God. He is the mediator of this covenant. The murder of Jesus, unlike Abel’s, a homicide that cried out for vengeance, became a proclamation of grace. I want to start with this passage because it is comparing these two mountains, Mount Sinai, where God gave the law to Moses, and then Mount Zion. This is the city of Jerusalem, the holy city, the city of the king. And the writer of Hebrews here is drawing this analogy between how terrifying the experience on Mount Sinai was, with how peaceful and beautiful and gracious the experience of coming to Mount Zion, which is coming to Jesus. Here in Hebrews 12, Mount Zion is a metaphor for coming to Jesus. So in coming to Jesus. We experience grace, we experience transformation. Now, I wanted that passage to be the setup for what I wanted to look at in 2 Corinthians chapter 3. And I’m not going to read the entire chapter. I’m going to kind of pick some of the verses, but I want to get us down to the end of 2 Corinthians chapter 3. But I hate pulling verses out of their context, not giving you the fuller picture. It’s always hard to do. Unless we’re going to read an entire book of the Bible, at some point we have to start I wanted to look at the verses at the end of chapter 3, 2 Corinthians 3, 17 and 18. But before we get there, let’s start at the top of the chapter. This is 2 Corinthians chapter 3, starting in verse 1. From the new revised standard version. And it begins this way. Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Surely we do not need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you or from you, do we You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts to being known and read by all And you show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God. not tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts. Let me pause there at verse three Paul is writing his second letter to the church in Corinth, a church that he helped establish, but now a church that’s questioning. his authority. And it’s almost like they’re asking Paul, you need to give us some letters of recommendation that you’re truly a church leader with real authority. But here Paul is saying, You are our letter. The lives within this church that have been transformed is the evidence that God is at work, and truly that I’m a leader sent by God. But I love this imagery that what’s happening for these Christians, these followers of Jesus, is that God, the Holy Spirit, is writing upon their heart. Not like the old covenant where God wrote on stone tablets. Again, that speaks of Mount Sinai. Moses goes up Mount Sinai, meets with God in this terrifying cloud, and God gives Moses the Ten Commandments. And as you know, Moses comes down the mountain, sees the people worshiping idol, breaks the stone tablets, has to go up again later on in the story to get them again. In this new covenant, it’s not so much that God is writing moral codes on stone tablets, rather, God is writing on the human heart. Now that writing on tablets of human hearts is a picture of a work of transformation. Let me skip down to 2 Corinthians 3, verse 12. Since then we have such a hope, we act with great boldness, not like Moses, who put a veil over his face to keep the people of Israel from gazing at the end of the glory that was being set aside, but their minds were hardened, indeed, to this very day, When they hear the reading of the old covenant, that same veil is still there, since only in Christ is it set aside Indeed, to this very day, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds. But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Pause for a moment. So this is speaking of Moses coming down the mountain after meeting with God, getting the Ten Commandments, and his face is glowing with the glory of God. And because of the brightness he wore a veil over his face. So Paul here in 2 Corinthians is using that as a picture a metaphor. This veil is something that stands between us and God, between us and transformation, between us and knowing who God is, particularly the God revealed in Jesus. And so Paul here is saying that Moses had to wear a veil, but Those of us who have turned to the Lord, the Lord Jesus, that veil has been removed. Now let’s continue. 2 Corinthians 3, verse 17. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. and all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as through reflected in a mirror are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another, for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit So as we have come to Jesus, our faces are not veiled. We get to see the glory of God that is in Jesus. And what comes of this beholding the glory of God? Well, we are being transformed into the same image We’re being transformed into that good image of God that we see in Jesus. And notice it does not say that we change ourselves. No, it says that we are being changed. We are being transformed. And so on this episode, I want to give you A definition of this transformation. We call it spiritual transformation. We don’t call it spiritual transformation because it’s our spirits being changed Even though that’s true, our spirits, our hearts, our character, our soul, that’s being changed. But the spiritual in spiritual transformation speaks of God the Holy Spirit. Who is the one transforming us? Again, 2 Corinthians 3. 18 doesn’t say we transform ourselves, rather, we are being transformed from one degree of glory to another, and this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit So I want to give you a fuller definition of spiritual transformation, one that is built around a vision of the Trinity. I go into fuller detail in chapter seven of my book, By the Way, Getting Serious About Following Jesus. If you want to get that book, you can read a fuller picture of this definition But let me give you the definition. It has five parts, and then quickly walk you through each of the five parts of this definition. Here it is. Spiritual transformation is the work of the Spirit to form us into the image of Jesus for the joy of God the Father. The Spirit does this in the context of Christian community as we walk down spiritual pathways. Let’s look at each part of that definition. Number one, the work of the Spirit. It is God the Holy Spirit within us transforming us. I think this is a little bit of that metaphor. that Paul gave earlier in chapter three of Second Corinthians about the Spirit writing upon our heart. That’s built on Jeremiah 31, 31. This prophecy, hundreds of years before Jesus, that God would establish a new covenant with God’s people. And God would remove hearts of stone, replace it with hearts of flesh, and God would write God’s laws upon our hearts. So God the Holy Spirit is at work in us. If you are a believer, if you’re a follower of Jesus, if you have Come through the waters of baptism, you have received the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit is at work in you. Part of my daily prayers, I pray every day, that I would indeed be filled to overflowing with the Spirit And if you want to know what the Holy Spirit is doing, well, the Holy Spirit is doing today, what the Holy Spirit has been doing from the beginning, and that is working deep within our hearts. The Holy Spirit is working within us, forming and shaping our hearts so that we are becoming more like Jesus. Jesus taught us that the greatest commandments are to love God and to love neighbor. Well it’s God the Holy Spirit who pours out that love in our hearts. It’s God the Holy Spirit who is forming our hearts in the way of love. So that we can look like Jesus. And that’s the second part of the definition. Let’s back up. Spiritual transformation is number one, the work of the Spirit, number two. To form us into the image of Jesus. Jesus came to us as God in human form. Jesus gives God a face. We get to see what God is like fully when we see Jesus as a human being. Jesus was fully God and Jesus was fully human. So Jesus shows us what God is like, but in his humanity, Jesus also shows us who we can be. The image of human flourishing, the image of being fully alive and fully human, we see that in Jesus. It’s as if the Holy Spirit is a sculptor and Jesus is the model And the Spirit is looking at Jesus in his humanity, perfect humanity, fully alive, fully human. And the Holy Spirit takes chisel and hammer to our hearts and is chipping away everything that doesn’t look like Jesus. That’s the second part of the definition, to form us into the image of Jesus. And what’s the purpose of all this? Well, that leads us to the third part of our definition. Spiritual transformation is one, the work of the Spirit. Two, to form us into the image of Jesus, and then three, for the joy of God the Father Do you remember the baptism of Jesus? This is an important story in the Gospels because we see the Trinity on display. Jesus in his humanity going into the River Jordan to be baptized. The Spirit, God the Holy Spirit, descends like a dove, and God the Father speaks from heaven And do you remember the words that God spoke? As Jesus is coming up out of the water and the Spirit descends upon him, there’s this voice from heaven, God the Father speaking. This is my beloved son. In him I am well pleased. It’s almost as if God, in witnessing his own son being baptized, is so overcome with joy. that God leaps up from God’s throne and speaks a little bit like one of those crazy parents at a soccer game. Have you ever spent time around youth sports, youth soccer, youth basketball, youth baseball? There’s always those parents when little Johnny kicks a goal or hits a home run. or nails a three. There’s that one parent that can’t control their excitement, and they just leap up cheering. In my mind, I imagine God the Father on the day of Jesus’ baptism was much like that. God the Father sees his son walking in obedience, coming through baptism, and God exclaims, This is my son, my beloved son. The joy that we see in those words, the joy that we see in the heart of God the Father, is the joy that God the Father receives. As he sees Jesus being formed in our hearts. See, God the Father sees his son, he’s overjoyed. And as the Spirit is forming Jesus in our hearts, when God looks down into your heart, So Spiritual transformation is the work of the Spirit to form us into the image of Jesus for the joy of God the Father, but here comes our part Here comes our place of participation. Number four, the Spirit does this in the context of Christian community. Spiritual transformation in a biblical sense and spiritual transformation historically has always been rooted in a community. The entirety of the Christian faith is not a solo project. There are things that we do individually, but it’s always within the context of Christian community. Have you noticed throughout the Gospels and in the book of Acts, when God the Spirit is at work, when there’s an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, it’s almost always in the context of community. See, if we’re going to become more like Jesus, we need to be in community because we need friends who can encourage us. We need friends who are also following Jesus, who can walk in the ways of Jesus with us. Encouraging us, building us up, celebrating with us on our good days and coming alongside us on our hard days. We need friends But we also need people in community that are different from us. If you spent any time in the church, I’m sure you have encountered people that let’s just say you probably wouldn’t spend much time with except you go to church together. You know those people I’m talking about. the people you avoid in the hallway, those people at church that sit in that section, so you sit a couple sections or a couple pews over. It’s okay to admit that. There are people like that But I believe that God pulls together these local communities, local churches filled with all sorts of different people. And yes, you need friends that you share common interests with, but you also need those people that kind of drive you a little crazy because they can become like holy sandpaper. Smoothing off your rough edges. If anything, it’ll help you grow in patience. And then we come to the final part of our definition. Spiritual transformation is the work of the Spirit to form us in the image of Jesus for the joy of God the Father. And it is the Spirit doing this in the context of Christian community. Number five, as we walk down spiritual pathways. These spiritual pathways are what are more commonly known as spiritual disciplines. There have been Christians for hundreds and hundreds, indeed thousands of years, who have been following Jesus and practicing certain spiritual disciplines I like to imagine these disciplines as well-worn pathways through the forest. If you’ve spent any time backpacking in the woods or maybe walking a nature trail in some park near you. It sure is nice where you find a blazed trail that’s been worn down so you can easily see where to go through the woods. And so these classic spiritual disciplines for me are spiritual pathways. They’re spiritual trails that are well worn, that have been walked by Christians before us. And I’m thinking of the practices of prayer, of worship, the practice of silence and solitude. The practice of both giving ourselves to the public reading of Scripture and daily Bible reading, these are practices that don’t necessarily change us. But they put us in places where we can be changed and experience transformation. This is the goal, I believe, to become more like Jesus as we’re following Jesus And because he’s the Prince of Peace, this is going to lead us into a peaceable and kind kind of life But we first have to open up to what the Spirit’s doing and recognize that Trinitarian image, but then we also have our responsibilities. to keep ourselves rooted in community and continue daily and weekly, even annually to walk down these spiritual pathways. As we do, I believe slowly we’ll be changed. Slowly we will be transformed and we will all together become more like Jesus. Well, that’s all we have for today. Thank you for joining me for this episode. Thanks for listening. Go in peace and be kind.
This transcript was generated with AI and may contain errors.