The Disciple’s Character

Two thousand years ago, in China, the people wanted to protect themselves from the barbaric tribes that lived to the north of them. So they built a wall. It was quite a wall! Ranging from 15 to 39 ft. high, it was up to 32 ft. thick in places. It had a total length of 6,200 miles. The Great Wall of China was too high to climb over, too thick to break down, and too long to go around. It was the most amazing feat of building in human history. And when they completed The Great Wall of China in 200 B.C., the Chinese people were certain that their security had been achieved.

Except that in the first 100 years of the Great Wall’s existence, China was invaded 3 times by the barbarians! What happened? Was the wall a failure? Not really. Not once did the barbarians climb over it, break through it, or go around it. No, they got past the wall because of human nature.

In that wall were several gates. Each was guarded by gatekeepers. The barbarians simply bribed the gatekeepers, and then they marched right through the gate. The fatal flaw in the Chinese defence strategy was that they had put tremendous resources and effort into building a wall, but they hadn’t put enough effort into building character into the gatekeepers.

The issue of character is what we want to focus on today. We have been studying what a fully-equipped follower of Jesus Christ looks like. Because our church’s goal is to become a training center that produces that kind of people—fully-equipped followers of Jesus Christ.

Please take out your Catch the Vision brochure. If you don’t have one, the ushers will give you one if you’ll just raise your hand.

This brochure describes what a fully-equipped follower of Jesus Christ looks like.

Two weeks ago we saw that a follower of Jesus Christ is a Christian—he / she has been converted. That conversion brings about many significant changes in his / her life. They are born again. They go from being spiritually dead to being spiritually alive. The enter into a relationship with God.

And last week, we saw that a fully-equipped follower of Jesus Christ is a person who is enjoying communion with God. There’s a close, ongoing fellowship that is absolutely central to that person’s life. A true disciple listens to God, talks to God, and worships God every day.

Now this week, we’re going to look at the character of a Christian. Because as we come into relationship with God through conversion, and as we develop fellowship with God through our communion with Him, He begins to work on building character into our lives.

I want to divide our study up into three sections:

1. The purpose of Christian character

2. The pattern for Christian character

3. The practice of Christian character

1. What is the purpose of Christian character?

Q. Why does God want to build character into us? I mean, why doesn’t he just save us and then let us live out our lives and then take us to heaven when we die? Why go to all this trouble of trying to build character into our lives?

Well, it’s because God has a very exciting agenda for us—an agenda that is far greater and higher than that which we have for ourselves. And He has revealed that agenda to us in Romans 8:29.

Romans 8:29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.

Let me read it to you from the Living Bible because it brings it out even better…

From the very beginning, God decided that those who came to him should become like his Son, so that His Son would be the first, with many brothers.

Do you hear what God’s purpose is? It is to make us like His Son. To make us like Jesus Christ. Why? Because Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is the epitome of what a human being should be. His character, His values, His outlook on life, His attitudes, His self-image, His view of other people, and how He treated them—these things are the way that a human being ought to live. He is our model.

When you’re looking at Jesus, you’re looking at the greatest human being who ever lived. You’re looking at perfection of character. And that’s what God wants for us. He wants us to become like Jesus—”to be conformed to the likeness of His Son.”

And God wants to begin this work in us here and now—the moment we become followers of Jesus Christ. He wants to shape our character. That is his purpose.

But it’s not all up to God. The neat thing is that God invites us to work along with Him in building a character that resembles Jesus.

Turn to Philippians 2. God’s purpose is to make us like Christ.

2. And the pattern that he uses is Jesus Himself. Look at what he says in verse 3:

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:

Literally that phrase means that “you should be thinking the same way that Christ was thinking”. We should be modeling own thinking after Christ’s thinking. We should be following Jesus as our pattern.

When the guys laid the floor for our Family Life Center this week, they were following pattern. They knew that they had to put the athletic lines in a certain place or they wouldn’t be right. They had a sheet of paper that told them exactly where every line should go—what color it should be, how long it should be, and so forth. And so they laid those lines down according to the pattern.

And that’s what God wants us to do. Follow the pattern. And the pattern is Jesus. He’ll do His part to make us like Christ; but we’ve got to do our part.

Now what does the pattern tell us? What did Jesus do that we ought to do?

1. He renounced his own rights. Look at verse 6…

Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped…

The Living Bible puts it this way…

Though he was God, he did not demand and cling to his rights as God.

We hear a lot about rights these days. There are all sorts of special interest groups out there demanding their rights, demanding to be recognized and respected. And everybody’s demanding equal access and affirmative action and special treatment.

And yet here, right at the very beginning of God’s pattern for our character, He says “Don’t fight for your rights. Put others first. Let other people step in front of you in line. Don’t grasp for position or appreciation or recognition—even if you deserve it.”

Why not? Because Jesus didn’t do it. Of all the people in the world who had a right to be recognized, who had a right to be treated with respect, who had a right to go to the head of the line, Jesus did. As the second member of the Trinity, Jesus is God Himself.

And yet what does it say? It says he “did not consider equality with God something to be grasped…” He did not cling to his rights. He renounced them. He turned his back on them, and humbled himself, and deliberately chose to walk a harder way.

Why did He do that? He didn’t have to do that. But he did it because he trusted in the sovereign will of his heavenly Father. His attitude was “If my Father wants it, then it must be right for me.”

How often do we have that attitude? Not very often I’m afraid. When I am confronted with a difficult situation—a situation where perhaps there is some unfairness involved, where I am being treated with less respect or courtesy or deference than I think I deserve—how do I react? I say “This is wrong! This is not fair! I protest this treatment! I must stand up for my rights!” And when I do that, I am not following the pattern, am I?

I fail to realize that God has brought me into those situations for the precise purpose of developing Christ’s character in me. But rather than cooperating with him in that process, I push him away. I say “Get me out of this situation. I don’t want to have anything to do with this.”

Jesus renounced his rights. Look at what else he did. He regarded himself as nothing. Reading from verse 7…

“…but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.”

The phrase “made himself nothing” translates a single Greek word—the word is “ekenosen”—which means “to empty”.

For 2,000 years, theologians have debated what exactly that might mean. What did Jesus empty himself of? Well, it wasn’t his Deity, because God cannot stop being God. Even though he became a man, Jesus was still God.

But there was something that he did empty himself of. He gave up his glory to come here to earth. When you think of his position in heaven as the Lord of the Universe, the Creator and sustainer of all things; the Power behind all powers—how far down did he have to come in order to become a helpless little baby lying in a dirty little manger in a forgotten little town in a backward little country in a corrupt little empire on a sordid little planet in an insignificant little solar system in an ordinary little galaxy?

He made himself nothing. He put himself down.

You hear a lot these days about self-esteem. About the importance of having a positive self concept. People go to counselors and conferences; they buy a lot of books in order to help them feel better about themselves—in order to build up their image of themselves.

But here in the Bible, it says that if we’re going to develop the kind of character that God wants us to develop; if we’re going to truly become all that human beings ought to be; if we’re going to follow the pattern laid out by Jesus Christ, we’re going to have to go down before we can go up.

Philippians 2:7 says that Jesus took upon himself the very nature of a servant. What is a servant? A servant is someone whose whole life is directed away from himself; away from getting his own needs met, in order to meet the needs of others.

Jesus told some parables about servants. In one of them, which is found in Luke 17, he said to his disciples…

“When a servant comes in from a long hard day of plowing or taking care of the sheep, he doesn’t just sit down and eat. He first prepares his master’s meal and serves him his supper before he eats his own. And his master doesn’t even thank him for doing this, because he’s merely doing what he is supposed to do.

In the same way, as my disciples if you do everything you are commanded to do, don’t consider yourselves worthy of special praise because you have simply done your duty.”

That’s what it means to be a servant. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sound real appealing to me! And yet God says that this is the way to Christlike character. Learn to be a servant.

Someone has said that you’ll know whether or not you are really developing the heart of a servant by how you respond when someone treats you like one.

And that is very true, because our pride, our stubborn self-will, our innate selfishness raises its ugly head whenever we are imposed upon—whenever we are asked to place someone else’s good above our own, whenever we’re treated like a servant.

Jesus renounced his rights. He regarded himself as nothing. He took upon himself the form of a servant. And he was ready to die. Look at verse 8

And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross!

In John 12:24, Jesus was speaking of his own upcoming death when he said…

I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.

Suppose you took a single kernel of corn and decided that you were going to preserve and honor that kernel of corn in a very special way. So you carefully lacquered it and polished it and then mounted it on a beautiful silver stand and placed it under a glass container. You put that container on the mantelpiece where a nice spotlight would shine upon it, highlighting the deep rich golden color.

What good would that kernel be? It would be no good to anyone. But suppose you took that kernel of corn and buried it in the ground, several inches below the surface where the sun doesn’t shine and the birds don’t sing—where it is dirty, dark, cold and damp. What would happen?

That kernel would sprout and grow into a majestic tall corn plant, with hundreds and thousands of new kernels on it which in turn would be able to produce more and more until there was a great harvest of corn.

But it wouldn’t happen unless you buried the kernel.

Jesus became obedient to death, even to the most ignominious and horrible death possible—death on a cross. Because he knew that that was the key to great blessing.

And look at what happened…

God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

As the pattern for our character, he renounced his rights, regarded himself as nothing, and was ready to die. And he was willing to let His sovereign Father take care of the results. He said “The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”

The key to Christlike character is to turn your back on yourself in order to follow a better way—the way of Christ.

What is that going to look like in practice? Look at verse 14

Do everything without complaining or arguing…

What are you doing when you are complaining or arguing? You are standing up for your rights, aren’t you? You are crying out that you are being imposed upon, that you have been wronged. You are trying to rid yourself of the circumstances or the people who are bothering you. And it all shows that you are not following the way of Christ.

Ultimately when you are complaining and arguing, you are just showing that you are not happy with the way God is treating you, because after all, God is the one who has allowed you to be in this situation. He could have prevented it if He had wanted to. So you are really complaining and arguing against God.

And that is not the foundation for Christlike character.

In verse 12, Paul says…

Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.

Do you notice the two emphases? We are to work out our salvation—we are to give ourselves to the development of Christian character, but God is also at work in our lives to will and to act according to his good purpose.

Now it’s time to rate ourselves on how we’re doing in this area. Take your brochure and turn to page 2. At the bottom, where it says “The Character of a Disciple”, you’ll see a list of nine items dealing with character. Rate yourself on how you’re doing in each of these areas. Use a scale of 1-10; 1 being weak and 10 being strong.

No one needs to see this; it’s not a test. It’s just between you and God. Take a moment to do this right now.

Pray. Make us more like Christ.