The Portrait of a Christian
1Peter 1:13-23
Prayer
Everyone who are Christians looking at this picture of Jesus will have a similar picture form in their minds. We see a Jesus who loved, had compassion, brought mercy and grace. We see a Jesus who loved us so much that He willingly went to the cross to bear our sins and pay a debt that we could not pay. We see a Jesus who bridged the gap between man and God. But there are many people today who don’t see a similar Jesus when they look at Him. Some people see a picture of Jesus and they think who is this man, they never heard of him? Others look at a picture of Jesus and say oh yeah that was a great teacher in the ancient times but what he taught no longer has relevance in today’s world. Some people will say oh yes He was a student of Buddha’s and he was a great teacher. Then others such as Muslims will say yes He was one of the prophets sent by God to bring man back unto the path but was not the son of God and he did not die for man sins. The old saying be careful of what you say or what you do because you may be the only Bible someone may ever see. We are the portrait of Jesus that He has painted and left here on earth. It is sad to say but many of us do not make a good picture of Jesus. We do not reflect Him in our lives or in our daily walk.
A lady’s careless words came back to haunt her. As the Titanic slipped beneath the North Atlantic, London-born Lucy, Lady Duff Gordon, a dress designer with chic shops in London and New York City, turned to her secretary aboard lifeboat No. 1 and said, "There is your beautiful nightdress gone."
Lucy’s ill-timed comment, uttered over the screams of 1,500 victims stranded in the water, started a fateful chain of events.
"Two of the sailors said, ’It’s all right for you--you can get more clothes, but we have lost everything,’ " reports Sir Andrew Duff Gordon, Lucy’s great-nephew. Her sympathetic husband, Sir Cosmo, who had been given the nod to get into the lifeboat with his wife, later gave each of the seamen £5 ($360 today) to replace their belongings--a gesture that inadvertently sealed the couple’s fate.
Back in London, gossipy members of society accused Duff Gordon of bribing the crew to row the two-thirds empty craft from the scene without helping victims in the water.
In May 1912, a British inquest cleared Duff Gordon of the charge. But the damage to the couple’s reputation was permanent. Shunned in some circles, the Duff Gordons, who were unable to have children, drifted apart, though they never divorced. Cosmo died in 1931. Lucy’s business thrived for a time but went bankrupt before her death in 1935. For them at least, says Lucy’s biographer Meredith Etherington-Smith, "it was almost worse to survive than to go down."
Many today are so much more concerned with the worldly things that they forget that they are to be the picture of Jesus here on earth. Have we ever wondered why Jesus left us here in this dirty filthy world rack by sin after He saved? He has a purpose for us a mission for us to fulfill. That purpose is to be His picture to the world. We are to show the world Jesus through our lives, speech, and our love through the hard times that come our way. The way we react and respond is the picture that we reveal of Jesus in our lives. When we feel that the world is crashing down around and that everyone is out to get us or we feel that we are being mistreated our reaction is the picture of Jesus that the world sees. You see anyone can just react to a situation from our emotions of being hurt, mad, rejection, and everything else. But it takes a Christian that is a true portrait of Jesus to react with Jesus’ character and love. When we feel that we need to lash out in angry then we need to lash out with genuine love. God allows these stumbling block and trials to come our way so that we can show the world what Jesus has done for us. 1 Peter 1:13-23 teaches this
13Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; 14As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance: 15But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; 16Because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy. 17And if ye call on the Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man’s work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear: 18Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; 19But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot: 20Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you, 21Who by him do believe in God, that raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God. 22Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently: 23Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.
These verses teach some very important concepts about being the picture that Jesus wants us to be. We can’t just do it. It is a building process that we go through. But we must first want to go through that building process and it is not an overnight thing and it is not something that we learn and that is it. No it is something that we learn everyday of our lives and some days we fail and other days we succeed but we are to strive to do this because God’s word tells that we are to be holy. Verse 16 says Because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy. When we are brought into relationship with God, His holiness creates holiness in us in a purifying, sanctifying action. God’s holiness makes a stringent demand upon us: we must humble ourselves before Him and become marked with the qualities that mark His own life. But how do we do this, it is not in our nature to humble ourselves, instead our nature calls for us to be proud and strive to be above everyone else. How can we be holy? God’s word has an answer
First we must Guard our minds and be sober verse 13 says Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. We are to guard our minds by what we put into our minds. That is why we are called to study the Bible not just tote it around. The bible should be the main reading and entertainment material that we have. We must set aside time each day to study God’s word so that we can guard our minds and be sober or of seriousness, and sound moral judgment. Only through a dedicated Bible study in our lives can we ever hope to be able to guard our minds and be sober. The world offers too many distractions, ambitions, wants, and perceived needs and the only way we can protect ourselves is by a daily dedicated Bible study where we learn from God’s word and implement it into our lives. Only then can we be picture of picture of Jesus that He wants us to be. But there is something else that we must do also.
Secondly we must be obedient children and turn the former lust in our lives. 1Peter As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance: In other words we are to obey God and quite living our life for ourselves doing the same things we did before we got saved. We now know the truth and we can no longer live in ignorance of the truth. That is why we must study God’s word and let that word dominate our lives and lead us even when we feel that we have been cheated, treated unfairly, hurt, lied about or anything else this world can throw at us. If we are in God’s word and living that word then it want matter about how much mud this world throws in our direction it will not be able to stick. If we live God’s word it will slide off and people will see Jesus in us and we will be a true portrait of Him.
When we live our life for Jesus then we discover that Christian purity comes through the truth of faith in Christ. It expresses itself in love for others. Verse 22 says Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently. The more we study God’s word the more we will want to serve Him and the more we will love not only our family but our brothers and sisters in Christ. Obedience should show itself in loving our brothers and sisters from a pure heart. Such pure works demonstrate Christ has cleansed and saved us. We can not love Christ and hate our brother because that would be hating Christ because He dwells in all who are saved. Our love is the Picture by which we show this cruel world Jesus. It can either be a wallet size picture or a full length portrait. It can either be a fuzzy picture that no one can make out or it can be a sharp clear image that everyone can see but in some way we will be a portrait of Jesus in our lives. The more we live for Jesus and Study God’s word the more sharper our picture for Jesus becomes. Bob Lewis tells the story of a Christian woman who owned two prize-winning chickens. One afternoon, the chickens managed to escape from her yard and get into her neighbor’s garden. The neighbor, who was known for his foul temper, captured both birds, wrung their necks and then threw the carcasses across the fence back into his Christian neighbor’s yard.
The woman was understandably hurt and considered giving her neighbor a piece of her mind. Instead, she took the birds home and made two chicken pot pies. She took one pie to her neighbor and then apologized for not watching her chickens more closely. The man was speechless. The chicken pot pie, coupled with an apology, filled him with such a sense of shame that his whole life began to change.
The world is made of things which do not last, but the truth revealed and expressed by God lasts without interruption or fear of destruction. When at work in a person’s life, God’s Word brings new birth. We are born again of incorruptible seed. When we accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and savior He saved us, He purified us with His holy blood. Sin no longer has a hold over us unless we let it. That is why we are to study God’s word so that we can guard our minds and be better able to fight temptation when it comes our way to sin. When no one is around to see what we are doing, watching, talking about, when the world is against us and we feel cheated our hurt we will better enabled to deal with the situations with a Good dedicated Daily Bible Study in our lives. God word sealed in our hearts will come forward in times of need and guide us down the path we need to go to maintain that portrait of Jesus that we are to portray. Several years ago, the chaplain at Norfolk State University in Virginia received a disturbing middle of the night call from one of the leaders in his campus fellowship group. Willie, an African-American, was on his way home from an outreach concert. He had stopped at an open-air market to buy a bag of potato chips and a Coke and while he was standing in line, he went ahead and opened the chips. Immediately a cop came over and arrested him. He was calling from the jail.
"Now, Willie, what else were you doing?"
Willie said, "Reverend Ellis, I told you, I was just standing there. I had the money in my hand, and the guy came up and told me that I was under arrest."
The chaplain found it hard to believe that anything this absurd could happen, but he got dressed and rushed to the jail. Sure enough, there was Willie. It seemed that there was an obscure law called “concealment” that prohibits you from consuming something until you have paid for it--even if you’re standing in line with the money in your hand.
Reverend Ellis spoke to the officers at the jail, pleading for understanding and common sense. He even admitted that he could envision himself doing the same thing! Who in the world had ever heard of such a law? But they were indifferent to all appeals. Willie’s bail was posted and he was taken home. Willie had a promising future. But now he had an arrest record that would certainly interfere with how he was perceived whenever he applied for a job.
A few days later, in a prayer meeting with a group of white pastors in Virginia Beach Reverend Ellis shared Willie’s story. They were equally shocked and appalled. The following Sunday, he had the opportunity to again share Willie’s story to his congregation, as a way of illustrating the questionable treatment that faces so many young African-American men in our society.
In that church were lots of white mothers who, when they were out grocery shopping and waiting in line, would sometimes open a box of crackers or bag of chips to appease an impatient child. In their Bible study the next day, the topic of conversation turned to Willie’s story. They were outraged and decided they would intervene with the management at that open-air market. They expressed their indignation at what had happened. They confessed to the number of times that they unknowingly had broken the concealment law. It didn’t take long for the regional manager of the market to call the chaplain’s office and admit that this had been blown out of proportion. He offered his apologies, the store dropped the charges against Willie, and the chaplain received a fruit basket.
In life we have two choices when confronted by the world we can either react to what is happening or we can let Jesus portray through our actions. Yes it feels good to react and get back at someone for a wrong but is that what we are taught in the Bible or is that what the world teaches us as little children. Did Christ get back at us for causing Him to go to the cross for our sins or did He simply forgive us because He loved us. Often we forget that nothing on this earth can equal what Christ did for us. We reject Him, some curse Him, and we walk opposite Him many times in our lives but yet He still was willing to get on that cross and bear the sins of a world that did not love Him. And He did it not because we deserved because we do not but He did it because He loved us. The picture we are to show of Jesus in our lives is one of love, compassion, grace, and mercy. When the world attacks us we defend with love, we strike back with compassion, heal with grace, and conquer with mercy. This morning ask Jesus to make you a better, sharper Picture of Him.
