Let us be aware that Jesus loves you just the way you are, but He refuses to leave you that way. He wants you to be just like Him. We have heard this many times. Preachers insist upon saying this to us, again and again. Have you given serious thought to what it is like to be like Jesus? Something I read recently triggered a thought. The best way to find out what it means is by allowing Jesus to become us! For a change, it is the other way round. This journey through our mind would be quite fascinating. However, before we embark upon it we must accept that nothing of your circumstances would change; your routine remains the way you planned it. Your health and finances will remain the same. The hard time you are going through, and the problems that led you to it, are not solved. If that is so, what am I driving at, you may wonder?
You see Jesus wakes up in your bed one morning. He puts on your dress, lives in your house, takes over your plans. Your family members are His family members. Your friends are His friends. Even your boss at work is His boss. Your pains and problems become His pains and problems. If nothing changed, then what is the big deal, you may wonder?
One change does occur. Your heart is now His Heart and your life is led by His Heart. That would mean your perspective of life is now not yours but something governed by His priorities. His passion would drive your decisions. His love, His agape Love would govern your thoughts and approaches. Incidentally, the transcendent agape love is the highest form of love and is contrasted with various other forms of worldly love we know. It is the kind of indescribable Love of God for His people and what people should have for Him. It refers to the kind of love that does not serve itself but extends itself for the sake of another.
When Jesus becomes you, what would it be like? Would others around you — family, friends, co-workers, co-worshippers, your Pastor, and even those who dislike you — notice any change in you? Would you treat them differently? Or would they treat you differently? Would they receive more sympathy, empathy, compassion, and mercy from your heart, because it is not your heart but the Heart of Jesus transplanted in you?
And what about your mood swings, the needless tantrum you throw, and the eccentricity you often exhibit? Incidentally, I wrote to the Pastor of my church, yesterday, that eccentricity is an art! Told him it becomes pronounced as one grows in age (not maturing in Christ). I was justifying my eccentricity. When you allow Jesus to become you, you do not have to justify any of your actions. You are justified, sanctified, and all the negativity you had will just not be there. Because it is not your heart anymore, you are carrying the Heart of Jesus.
How would you encounter a traffic jam? Would you curse as you used to? How do you view death? Would you still fear the unknown? Ask yourself these and other questions as Jesus becomes you and transplants His Heart in you. As you keep seeking answers, your vision, which was myopic, slowly regains focus; you will see everything differently, not the way you did before the transplant. What you now see is what Jesus wants you to see, the way He wants you to perceive.
“And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; and that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness” (Ephesians 4:23-24).
Do you remember Bartimaeus, the blind, wretched beggar in Mark 10? I call him the blind man with a 20/20 vision. Do you know why? Because he saw in Jesus the Divinity that the people who followed Jesus and His disciples failed to see. It is a mind like Bartimaeus’s that ours would become, when Jesus becomes us. Once again, Jesus loves you the way you are. However, if you think being regular at church, being a heavy giver, or being stronger in your faith, and so on, would make His love for you stronger, you are wrong. You think so because your measure of love is of this world and not the agape love of Jesus. You ripped the flesh off His back, exposing His bones. You made Him carry the heavy cross to Calvary and nailed Him to it. But He has not stopped loving you and giving you His agape love. He is ready to be you for your sake. Are you ready?
“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5).