angerEGchapter3

Divinely Designed
Being changed into the image of Jesus

Chapter 3
Commentary
Just because you sin by getting angry, this does not mean that you
are “lost” or “all bad.” Inside you have places that are “saved.” You
can tell this because there are times and ways that you do find
yourself acting like a “good Christian” – there is “good fruit” from a
“good root.” But as you have seen, there are also places which are
“bad roots” producing “bad fruit.” How do you know this? Because
these “bad roots” impel you to sin.

Here I will explain how that can be true of a Christian. Then it will
become clear how putting on the divine nature is a process, not a one-
time event – a process of bringing Jesus into each of those “bad
roots.”

(This web page is taken from my book “Exceedingly Great and
Precious Promises”).

Putting On The Divine Nature

Is A Process

Part of understanding how to become a partaker of the divine nature is
to realize that this transformation doesn’t all happen in an instant of
time. You may remember that in the Introduction I said that there were
two great gifts that the Lord Jesus Christ provided for us, and that the
second one (the process of being changed into the image of Jesus) is
a process, not a one-time event.

In order to understand how this works, you need to understand what
you are like inside. A subtle but profound misunderstanding of what
we are like inside, below our level of consciousness, has made it
difficult for many Christians to see how there can be sin inside us.
There is a prevalent view that implies that inside you are like a jar, a
container with a single compartment. Therefore, when you gave your
life to Jesus, He forgives your sins and you are filled with His Spirit.
Because He is in there, the jar is now clean. The implication in this
view is that now that you are pure on the inside, you should be able to
act pure on the outside.

There are several reasons this view is erroneous. First, unfortunately,
this is never the way it works. I know of no one, including myself, for
whom life has been this way. Second, it was not that way for Paul
when he wrote the book of Romans (specifically Chapter 7) for us.
Third, if all of our sins were washed away by the one-time event, the
ongoing process would be unnecessary.

The truth is that inside we are more like a honeycomb than a honey
jar. We have many compartments inside, not just one. Some of
the compartments contain Jesus, and those are like the "good roots"
referred to in Scripture, and which I referred to in the prior chapter.
These “good roots” produce “good fruit.”

"Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree

bears bad

fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can

a bad tree bear good

fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad

fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good

fruit. . . Therefore by

their fruits you will know them."

Matthew 7:17-18,

20.

And:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering,

kindness,

goodness

(Galatians 5:22-23).

After a person makes Jesus his or her Lord, some of the
compartments still contain “bad roots.” These “bad roots” produce
“bad fruit,” as I have previously mentioned; and they are still present
and continue to produce “bad fruit” even after the person becomes a
Christian. These “bad roots” are shown as dark spots in the following
honeycomb diagram.

Honeycomb Honey Jar

We need to bring Jesus into each compartment of the "Honeycomb"
that has darkness in it. Since “judging” is what has planted the “bad
roots,” the way that we bring Jesus into each compartment is to
identify that particular judgment, forgive and be forgiven, and then
invite Jesus to come into that place.

Bringing Jesus into each “compartment” is the process
of being changed into His image.

This process is the second great gift that Jesus provides for us, and it
is a miracle!

As you can see, this transformation is a process, and not a
one-time event.

“Metamorphoo”
This process of transformation into the image of Jesus is described in
many places in the New Testament, and the Apostles used a variety of
words to refer to it. Read Appendix A to see the variety. This variety of
wording could sometimes cause confusion; so in order to make sure
that you always know what I am talking about, when I am referring to
this process of being changed into the image of Jesus, I am going to
use the Greek word, metamorphoo (Strong’s #3339). It is the word
from which English gets the word “metamorphosis,” which is the word
used by science to describe the transformation of a worm into a
butterfly.

The Greek word “Metamorphoo” can be defined as follows:

“In Rom. 12:2 and 1 Cor. 3:18 the idea of transformation refers to

invisible process in Christians which takes place or begins to

take

place during this life in this age”

(Zodhiates, page 969).

Once Jesus has taken up residence in that particular place in our
"Honeycomb," He produces the “good fruit” automatically, because
Jesus can do nothing but produce “good fruit.” It is His nature. As He
takes over that part of our “Honeycomb,” His nature actually becomes
ours in that area. This event is an impartation of His character
and attributes into us. This “good root” that now resides in that
part of our "Honeycomb" always produces “good fruit.”

In that area, we are now a partaker of the divine nature,
and are enjoying the “exceedingly great and precious
promises” that Peter wrote about (2 Peter 1:4)..

For instance, if we have struggled with anger, we have found that
trying hard not to get angry hasn't worked (trying implies use of our
willpower). We find ourselves still having angry outbursts. We need to
find the “bad root.” Perhaps we realize that our father was an angry
man. We judged him for it (we sinned by judging him). This “bad root”
is causing the “bad fruit.” When we remove the “bad root” and have it
replaced with the life of Jesus (by applying the blood of Jesus), we find
we just don’t have angry outbursts anymore. There is now “good
fruit,” which is evidence of Jesus in that place in us. The “good fruit”
is now so natural and automatic that we may not even be aware that
we are different, because it is a new “us."

Does this sound too good to be true? Believe me, it is true.
Better yet, believe Jesus when He said,

"Therefore you shall

perfect, just as your Father in

heaven is

perfect"

(Matthew 5:48,

red text

is mine).

When Jesus cleanses one compartment of the “Honeycomb,” it does
not mean that all the compartments are clean. Other “bad roots” will
undoubtedly remain, and they will be causing other “bad fruit.” We
need to continue being transformed as God shows us areas in our
“Honeycomb” that need healing. This is what Paul meant when he
said to the Christians at Philippi:

. . . [continuously] work out your own salvation with fear

and

trembling; for it [continuously] is God who

[continuously] works in you

both to [continuously] will and

to do for His good pleasure

(Philippians

2:12-13,

[continuously] is mine, but is the meaning in the Greek).

We Have Had It Backwards!

"If you love Me, keep My commandments"

(John 14:15).

When we read a scripture like this, we tend to strive with our willpower
to keep His commandments, because we want to please God. We
want Him to know that we love Him, and it seems as though this
scripture is telling us that the way we can prove our love for Him is to
keep His commandments. How can one reconcile this with what we
have been discovering about our inability to keep His commandments
in our own strength (that is, with our willpower)?

Fortunately, in the context surrounding the above scripture Jesus
clearly explains what He meant. The explanation is in John 15:5,
which is sandwiched between two scriptures that talk about keeping
His commandments.

The top of the sandwich:

"He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he

who loves

Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My

Father, and I will love

him and manifest Myself to him"

(John 14:21).

The “meat:”

" I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in

Me, and I in

him, bears much fruit; for

without Me you

can do nothing"

(John 15:5, I

added the

red text

The bottom of the sandwich:

"If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love,

just as I

have kept My Father's commandments and abide

in His love"

(John 15:

10).

What could be clearer than "without Me you can do
nothing”?

Jesus loves the Father because that is Jesus’ nature. Keeping this in
mind, then this scripture (John 15:10) is saying something like:

”If you keep My commandments this is evidence that you have

been

changed into My image, because on your own you could

not do it.

When you have My nature, you love the Father in

exactly the same way

that I do."

The reason that we can be thrown into striving to keep God's
commandments is that we are confused about how we go about
pleasing God. We focus on our behavior (keeping the
commandments) rather than the cause of the behavior (the
condition in our “Honeycomb”). We try to keep the commandments in
order to prove that we love God.

That is backwards.

We can only please God by first being changed into the image of
Jesus, and then we will keep the commandments; because that is
now our new nature. The “Honeycomb” has to change first, and then
the behavior will change. Changing our behavior does not
change our “Honeycomb.”

Trying hard to obey God in our own strength is not only futile, it is sin;
because then we are under the illusion that we can do God's job. We
are subtly taking God's place. Hopefully you can now see that when
we are reaping bad things (bad behavior and the results of it) in our
life, it is the consequence of sin. Jesus is the only One who can stop
this. This tendency for us to try to keep the Law in our own strength is
a subtle and deadly trap.

1 John 4:19 says,

We love him because He first loved us.

This is the direction of the flow, from God to us, not the other
way around. If you are not clear on this, you can misread many
scriptures. I would suggest that you read the Gospel of John Chapters
13 through 17 in your Bible to get the full flow of what Jesus is saying
about this. There He was saying how it was going to be when His
work was done on earth – which is the time in which we Christians are
now living.

Let me illustrate this with a parallel. Imagine that I break my leg. It
hurts, so I take a painkiller, and it hurts less (I manipulate the
symptom). But the leg is still broken (the cause). If I neglect the
painkiller, it hurts a lot. If the doctor said that a healthy leg shouldn't
hurt, I would agree. If mine weren't broken, it wouldn't hurt. But
saying my broken leg shouldn't hurt doesn't keep it from hurting. The
only way for my leg pain to go away (the symptom, or “bad fruit”) is for
my broken leg (the cause, or “bad root”) to heal (be changed to a
“good root”). After it is healed, it won’t hurt anymore.

Similarly, when I sin, there is a wound in my “Honeycomb.” It causes
emotional pain and I have “bad fruit,” so I try to act differently (I
manipulate the symptom). But it doesn't work very well, because there
is a “bad root” inside my “Honeycomb” (the cause). When Jesus says
that I should keep His commandments, I would agree. If I didn't have
the “bad root” in my “Honeycomb,” the bad behavior wouldn't
happen. But saying I should keep His commandments does not make
it possible as long as Jesus isn’t abiding in that particular area of my
“Honeycomb” (my “heart” is “wounded”). The only way I can
consistently keep the commandments (the symptom) is for my
“Honeycomb” (the cause, or “bad root”) to be healed and for
Jesus to take up residence there (the “bad root” to be changed to
a “good root”). The symptom is not the cause.

We have had it backwards, and have focused on the symptom (the
“fruit” evident outside of us) and not the cause (the “root” inside our
“Honeycomb”).

Keeping God's Commandments
When Jesus says that we should keep His commandments He is
simply saying that is how we can tell whether there is a “bad root”
or a “good root” inside our “Honeycomb.” Be careful not to be
confused about this. The emphasis is never on the “fruit,” but is
always upon the “root.” Focusing on the “bad fruit” can set us to
striving to keep the commandments with our willpower - and thus
doom us to failure. It is a subtle but deadly trap, and we so easily
stumble on this stumbling stone.

There are many scriptures that can be misunderstood if we confuse
the “fruit” with the “root.” The book of James has some significant
examples of these kinds of scriptures, such as:

Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead

(James 2:17).

You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by

faith only

(James 2:24).

These scriptures are simply saying that if there are no "works" (no
“good fruit”) this is evidence that there is no "faith" (no “good root”).
They are not mandating "trying" with our willpower. “Good fruit” is all
about outward evidence (our behavior), whereas “good roots” are all
about the cause (conditions hidden inside our “Honeycomb”).

Then when Jesus inside our “Honeycomb” is producing the “fruit,” it
is easy for us. Thus He could say:

Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I

will give you

rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from

Me, for I am gentle and

lowly in heart, and you will find

rest for your souls. For My yoke is

easy and My burden is

light

(Matthew 11:28-30).

Can you now see more clearly the provision Jesus made for us in this
life? He did not leave us here to struggle to try to accomplish
goodness in our own lives in our own strength.

His promises and provision are not hollow or empty. The fact
that you have been stuck, as Paul wrote about in Romans 7:15, simply
says that you just haven’t known about His provision, or how to apply
it.

You are not alone. The Christian church has been robbed of
the miraculous provision of transformation into the image of
Jesus.

Commentary
If you have read this far, you now understand why you are impelled to
anger, and why you can not change this with your will power. You will
also understand that you need to bring Jesus into each “bitter root” so
that the “bad fruit” will stop. You will also now know that there is no
other way to eliminate your anger. You probably already know this,
because you have tried everything else.

Winston Churchill once said: “You can always count on the Americans
to do the right thing - after they have exhausted all of the alternatives.”
That also applies to most of us Christians.

My book “Exceedingly Great and Precious Promises,” upon which
these pages have been based, explains WHY you have not been able
to have victory over your anger.

However, you will also need detailed instructions as to HOW you can
implement this process of transformation into the image of Jesus –
HOW you can find the “bad roots,” and HOW you can then have Jesus
change them to “good roots.” Another book I have written, “I Will Give
You Rest” provides you with these detailed instructions. You can read
some of that book on this website by going to the “Home Page.”
There on the left side are many of the chapters.

Now you will already be familiar with the first three chapters of “I Will
Give You Rest,” because they are similar to these three chapters of
“Exceedingly Great and Precious Promises” that you have already
read. But feel free to read more that “I Will Give You Rest” has to say.

There is also a free Workbook the parallels “I Will Give You Rest.” Its
purpose is help you to apply to your life what the book teaches. You
can read and download this Workbook by going to the “Home Page”
and clicking on the “Free Workbook” tab at the top of the page.