John 12:23-24; Luke 9:23
Walk into almost any church, and you will see one of two realities – either the predictable machinations of moralistic therapeutic deism and passive consumer religion, or the beauty, mystery and enthusiasm of a gathered community of Jesus followers, experimentally living out their faith.
One reality is an opportunistic human endeavour to leverage people’s fear, greed and ignorance for personal fame and fortune. The other reality is a worldwide spiritual collective, united across the spectrum of differences that seek to divide and conquer, a collective that resists being managed, measured or manipulated.
One is the modern Christian industrial complex; the other is the ancient way of Jesus.
As my Facebook friend Tim Healy says, “Don’t confuse the industry that Christianity spawned with the community that Jesus birthed.”[1]
I want to suggest to you today that the local church is nothing less than the hope of the world, and Jesus came to wake us up, give us life, draw us into community, and equip us for his mission in the world!
The alignment of our lives with the mission of Jesus begins with an invitation to be with him, to learn from him, to become his apprentice.
I suggested in my last sermon that the aim of a first-century apprentice to a rabbi was to learn the Torah, and then to learn life from someone who has mastered life. Jesus said, “A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher” (Luke 6:40).
As followers of Jesus, our aim is to “come and see,” to check him out, learn his teachings, and practice his way of being in the world. This is discipleship, this is apprenticeship to Jesus, what used to be called “the imitation of Christ,” what we now call “spiritual formation.”
But as teacher and writer John Mark Comer says,
spiritual formation isn’t a Christian thing; it’s a human thing. To be human is to change, constantly. Whether we are religious or not, we grow, evolve, fall apart, and come back together. We can’t help it; the nature of the human soul is dynamic, not static … the question isn’t, Are you being formed? It’s Who or whatare you being formed into?[2]
If you identify as a Christian, it is vitally important that your spiritual formation aligns with who Jesus is, what he is like (his character and inner motivations), and what he does in the world.
When Jesus said to the two disciples of John the Baptiser in John 1:39, “Come and see,” he was inviting them to closely observe his way of life, to see if they really wanted to be his apprentices, his disciples. It was an invitation to be with Jesus. It was an awesome opportunity, but taking the next step and truly apprenticing to Jesus came at a cost.
And Jesus was crystal clear about the nature and extent of that cost. In Matthew 16:24 and Mark 8:34, Jesus says, “If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”
In Luke 9:23, Jesus says, “If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me.”
The Fourth Gospel does not have this teaching from Jesus, but there is a similar one. Two apprentices of Jesus, Philip and Andrew, come to him with a question, and Jesus gives a hint of his impending death: “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains by itself. But if it dies, it produces much fruit” (Jn 12:23f).
“Come, and see” – that’s invitation to apprenticeship.
“Come, and die” – that’s initiation to apprenticeship.
To their eternal credit, the original twelve disciples all signed up, and church tradition tells us that each one followed Jesus to a violent death.
But “death” can also be a metaphor. As Luke put it, “If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me.”
There’s a daily rhythm to the cruciform life, just as there is for our mundane daily existence. For all of us, life is a cycle: work, eat, sleep, wake, repeat. Jesus invites curious would-be apprentices to deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow him. And then repeat.
Years later, we read of Paul, transformed by the mercy of God from a zealous murderer of Christians into a seasoned follower of Jesus. Here’s Paul describing his understanding of apprenticeship to Jesus:
“I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20).
Who could measure up to such an ideal? Who in their right mind would sign up to a program that requires them to “come and die”?
As I said, it’s not a question of whether you are being formed, but who or what you are being formed into. It’s about change, about being formed and reformed and transformed into the image of Jesus.
Every day, each of us is shaped as a person in countless ways: there’s a complex array of genes, family-of-origin traits, childhood experiences, education, habits, decisions, relationships, inner orientations, attitudes, environments, responses to environments, and more.[3] In our best moments, we long to be better people – better parents, lovers, workers, friends, listeners, learners, cooks, gardeners, hobbyists, readers – and better disciples of Jesus.
I’m reminded of a cartoon I saw this week where a Buddhist priest says, “You’ve mastered the selfie; now master the self.”
But this takes time and effort. New York Times journalist David Brooks distinguishes between “résumé virtues” and “eulogy virtues.”
Résumé virtues are the qualities we brag about while we are living – we talk about where we work, what we have accomplished, accolades we have received, and so forth.
Eulogy virtues are what others say about us after we die – what kind of person we were, what shaped our character, and the key relationships that had an impact on our journey through life.[4]
Eulogy virtues are what really matter. At their best, they are evidence of genuine self-mastery, and they attest to the long, slow process of spiritual formation. For Christians, who want to shape their spiritual formation in the Way of Jesus, rather than accidentally, or in the way of the world, it’s about how to become like Jesus – becoming who we are “in Christ.”
For British pastor and writer John Stott,
Christlikeness is what God wants to see in us … God is making human beings more human by making them like Christ … [But] Christlikeness is not only what God wants to see in his people, but also what the watching world wants to see.[5]
Jesus alone was without sin. Jesus alone was the ideal person, fulfilling and excelling in what it means to be fully human. Each of us needs the life of God breathed into our “dry bones.”
Each of us needs to experience regeneration, to be restored, refreshed, and renewed by the Spirit of God. Each of us needs to experience what Davis McCaughey called “the rhythm of the Gospel” – the awareness that none of us has responded to God’s love with a full obedience; and a desire for a continuing renewal of heart and mind in which God will use our worship, our witness, and our service to set forth the word of salvation for all people.[6]
The bad news is that, try as we might, there are forces within and without us that have a vested interest in us not becoming like Jesus, not aligning our lives with the rhythm of the Gospel. Theologians describe these foes as the world, the flesh, and the devil – but we will have to leave that for another time.
How can I tell if my spiritual formation is working? Ask yourself,
- Am I becoming more loving, more kind, in attitudes and actions?
- Am I growing in my understanding of what the Bible teaches?
- Am I becoming more passionate about being in community with other followers of Jesus?
- Do I more evidently show the fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22-23)?
- Is the way I practice my apprenticeship to Jesus more natural, and less forced, than it was a year ago?
- Is my inward journey of self-discovery matched by my outward journey of sacrificial love for a world in need?
In the words of novelist Flannery O’Connor, “Push as hard as the age that pushes against you.”[7]
Spiritual formation is hard and slow work. We can’t save ourselves. It’s not enough to master the right spiritual techniques and try to form ourselves into little replicas of Jesus. John Mark Comer reminds us that life has a way of unravelling that fiction. Yet he is optimistic about the possibility of becoming like Jesus. He says,
Something approaching Christlikeness is possible in this life … We can be healed, we can be set free of broken patterns that stretch back generations, we can be transformed into people who are genuinely pervaded by love and joy and peace. Our souls can throb with the bliss of union with God. Our bodies can become temples; our neighborhoods, holy ground; our days, eternity in time; our moments, miracles.[8]
The experience of becoming like Jesus is “to be alive in the intimacy at the centre of the universe.”[9]
“Come,” Jesus invites us, “Come, and die.”
Sermon 796 copyright © 2025 Rod Benson. Preached at North Rocks Community Church, Sydney, Australia, on Sunday 2 March 2025. Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from The Christian Standard Bible (Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers, 2020).
References
[1] Tim Healy, Facebook post, 18 Feb 2025.
[2] John Mark Comer, Practicing the Way: Be with Jesus, Become Like Him, Do As He Did (Colorado Springs, CO: Waterbrook Press, 2024), 69f.
[3] Comer, Practicing the Way, 70.
[4] David Brooks, The Road to Character (New York: Random House, 2015), xi.
[5] John Stott, Life in Christ: A Guide for Daily Living (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003), 114-116.
[6] Davis McCaughey, “Church Union in Australia,” The Ecumenical Review 17, 1965, 41-44.
[7] Flannery O’Connor, The Habit of Being (ed. Sally Fitzgerald; New York: Vintage, 1980), 229.
[8] Comer, Practicing the Way, 116f.
[9] Darrell W. Johnson, Experiencing the Trinity: Living in the Relationship at the Centre of the Universe (Vancouver: Canadian Church Leaders Network, 2021), 53.
Image source: Nutreos.com
iDigress 
Thank you
Ros Gooden