The “REAL” MAKEOVER!
"Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge, and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness, and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these qualities is blind or shortsighted, having forgotten his purification from his former sins. Therefore, brethren, be all the more diligent to make certain about His calling and choosing you; for as long as you practice these things, you will never stumble; For in this way the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be abundantly supplied to you" (2 Peter 1:5-11 NASV).
“Do you feel bored with yourself, lost your confidence? Not to worry, you can make yourself feel like a million dollars in no time – you just need to give yourself a little TLC.” That’s the tagline of a WikiHow article on doing a “total makeover.” It then gives this advice: "To do a self-complete makeover, update your wardrobe with outfits you love in a style you’ve always wanted to try, like classic, sporty or artsy. Buy accessories like scarves, belts, hats and shoes that reflect your new look. Choose a haircut that’s appropriate for your face shape, or try dyeing your hair for a more dramatic change. For more tips, including how to do a full makeover, read on!"
The hunger for that kind of superficiality is insatiable! We live in a world of people who fantasize about being someone else; of living vicariously through someone they think they want to be like.
Do I overstate the case? I hold in my hand exhibit “A” – a list of reality television programs: 23 pages long – 23 pages! Past and present; everything from Docusoaps to Dating to Makeovers and Lifestyle changes. For me, the one that characterizes this vapid and lifeless mindset the most (wait for it)…Keeping Up With the Kardashians. (And what’s even more disturbing is the fact that the market demand for that rubbish warranted four spinoffs!)
The reason the market for such drivel is endless is because it taps into a part of us that craves significance and attention.
Need more proof? I hold in my hand exhibit “B” – the bride who canceled her wedding after guests refused to pay her $1500 attendance [entrance] fee! The bride went online to lament and whine: “How could we have [the] wedding that we dreamed of without proper funding? We’d sacrificed so much and only asked each guest for around $1500…I just wanted to be a Kardashian for a day and then live my life like normal.”
It reminds me of the Apostle Paul’s description in Ephesians 4:17-18 of those outside of Christ: "So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts (NIV)."
It’s too bad you don’t see a kind of “disclaimer” before each program that warns people that if they watch this twaddle, it only leads to “dumb and dumber”: “Caution! This makeover was a futile attempt that made no one happy and most of the participants were left disappointed and damaged after the filming of this episode.”
But it doesn’t have to be like that. Why would anyone settle for the superficial and temporary, especially in light of the incredible offer that God in Christ has made available?!
Listen to it again, brethren: “Grace and peace are yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord” (2), “everything we need for life and godliness” has been given to us through our knowledge of Him (3), we have become “partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust” (4).
The real “makeover” is a transformation of mind and spirit. It is a heart adorned with the unfading beauty of Jesus. It is the divine nature of a God from Whom we have received the righteousness of Jesus.
Now, the question that’s ours to answer is “How much of that do we want?” In Luke 11, Jesus teaches a life-changing lesson that speaks to that question. He talks about a person who has been healed and cleansed. But when that person doesn’t replace the evil with good, when he doesn’t fill his mind and heart with the things of God, then the demon will come back with seven other “spirits more evil than itself, and they go in and live there; and the last state is worse than the first” (Luke 11:26). In other words, don’t waste the blessing of God by doing nothing when the abundant life is ours to enjoy to a measure beyond comprehension:
"For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ" (2 Pet. 1:5-8 NIV).
There it is – the real makeover!
Verse eight says that as these qualities become more and more a part of our personalities, the more our knowledge of Jesus produces His character in our nature.
I call it the “Circle of Life.” You learn from Jesus; you act on what you’ve learned from Jesus; you learn more about Jesus because of what you acted on – ad infinitum. In essence, this is what it means to be a disciple. A disciple is a learner, an observer, an imitator (Matt. 10:25). It is a symbiotic union in which we feed off of Jesus and Jesus feeds us (Jn. 15:1-5). And in that regard, no one or no thing is more important than Him: "If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be My disciple…In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple" (Lk. 14:26, 33 NIV).
Yes, discipleship is costly. It costs my life, but in return I get His life (Gal. 2:20)!
Peter knew exactly what that meant, because when Jesus called him and his brother to follow Him in Luke 5, it says, “They left everything and followed Him” (also Matt. 19:27). Nothing stood between him and Jesus: not his boats, not the family business and ultimately…not even death. Following Jesus manifest itself in an outward demonstration of an inward commitment that has no rivals! "Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness…" (Matt. 6:33 NASV).
His “divine nature” is made real/authentic in me by actively learning from Jesus how to love our enemies, bless those who curse us, walk the second mile with a rival; how to forgive, be patient, sympathetic, kindhearted (1 Pet. 3:8) – basically, living out the grace and peace He’s planted in our hearts.
So, what effort are we willing to put forth to validate His calling and choosing us?
…Make every effort… (NIV)
…Applying all diligence… (NASV)
…Work hard at… (TLB)
…Do your utmost… (Phillips)
…Devote yourselves to lavishly supplementing… (TPT)
It’s the very thing the Apostle Paul said in Philippians 2:12: “…Work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure…Our life in Christ is a participation and cooperation with the Spirit of God that results in the “real makeover.”
CONCLUSION:
His life was dedicated to persecuting the church of God “beyond measure” with the intent of destroying it (Gal. 1:13). He would go from house to house, dragging men and women off to prison, beating them, (Ac. 8:3; 22:19).
He was so hostile to believers that every vote was a “thumbs down” (Ac. 26:10). In his own words, he admitted: “…I tried to force them to blaspheme; and being furiously enraged at them, I kept pursuing them even to foreign cities…” (Ac. 26:11).
Who I am talking about? (Ans. Saul)
So much hatred, so much rage – until he met Jesus.
“While so engaged as I was journeying to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests, at midday, O King, I saw on the way a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining all around me and those who were journeying with me. And when we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew dialect, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’ And I said, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ And the Lord said, ‘I am Jesus whom you are persecuting" (Ac. 26:12-15 NASV).
They led him into Damascus where he waited for a man named Ananias, who came and told him that God had appointed him to be a minister and a witness to the things he seen and heard (Ac. 22:15). And, then, Ananias tells Saul, “Get up and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on His name” (Ac. 22:16).
Saul, now known as Paul is obedient to the heavenly vision (Acts 26:19), and as he says in Acts 20:24, “…I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me – the task of testifying to the gospel of God’s grace.”
Now that’s a “real makeover!”
