Understanding Change Through Jesus

Explore personal transformation and faith in this post about understanding change through Jesus, which is a guide to finding hope and identity in Christ.

Have you ever found yourself wanting someone else to change? This happens in parent-child relationships, marital relationships, and even friendships. Change isn’t easy. Even more difficult to accept is the reality that we can’t change other people.

Before we can look deeper into what change is and how we change, look at what the Apostle Peter says concerning Jesus. Understanding who we are depends on first recognizing who Jesus is.

Peter says two things in 1 Peter 2:4–10.

Jesus, a Treasure

First, that Jesus is treasured by some and rejected by others. Maybe you’ve noticed it before in your reading.

Verse four says he was rejected by humans, then, “Now to you who believe, this stone is precious.” If you’re a believer—if you would self-identify as rescued, forgiven, and called by God in Christ—then Jesus is everything. But for those of us who are not there, who have gone the other way, who have chosen the route of self-rule and being our own God, then Jesus is repulsive. He threatens everything.

I ask myself sometimes—and perhaps you ask yourself this too—Why am I so unchanged after all these years?

After all that God has done, after the many times I’ve prayed, “God help me,” and he has, after all those people he has sent me to encourage me and teach me truth: Why am I not more different? After everything God has done, after all we’ve been through, why are we still not the people we know we should be? Why are there so many broken places remaining in my life?Why is my faith so weak and my holiness so anemic and my zeal so shallow?Why do I seem so hopeless?

We’re afflicted with identity theft, and we don’t know who we are.

I think it’s partly because we’re all afflicted with identity theft. We don’t know who we are. We don’t know who Jesus is at times, and we build our lives on stones that are anything but solid.

Jesus is called a stone in that passage, meaning firm, secure, and unshakable. If Jesus is not the true foundation of our life, we might as well be walking on quicksand. If you feel like your life is a perpetual earthquake—one drama, one chaos, one storm after another—it may not be the circumstances you’re in. It may be the foundation you’re walking on.

We can say the name of Jesus without embracing his call to take up our cross and follow him, without dying to ourselves. We can sing his praises without relying on his power. Scariest of all, we can identify with Christianity as a religion while still, if we’re honest, worshiping the gods of our age: comfort, cash, success, and self-expression.

Living hope can’t be faked.

It’s quiet and gentle.

Dead hope, on the other hand, is loud and sneaks along any chance it gets. It’s an excellent imposter, and we’re too easily wooed into its embrace. You will realize you’ve let your living hope become temporarily trampled by the state of your heart, your spirit, and your behavior.

Look at your life honestly.

How do you respond to difficulty? What do you treasure? Where do you place value? Are you treasuring Jesus or rejecting him? There is no middle ground with Jesus. He is either Lord of all or Lord of nothing. He either motivates allegiance and heartfelt praise or provokes ridicule and rejection.

Jesus, the Living Stone

The second thing Peter says about Jesus is that he is actively building his people—present tense, meaning ongoing action. In verse five, Jesus is the stone, and we are like living stones, being built into a spiritual house. Peter uses an architectural image to communicate something deep and perhaps mysterious, even a little surprising, about Jesus and his church.

Let me repeat myself: It is his church. It is his church globally, and it is his church locally. Peter communicates here that the church is the house of God.

We are to be a dwelling where God lives—not a rectangular building with clean lines, but a shapeshifting, ever-morphing, supernatural, unpredictable, untamed, undomesticated, powerful organism that Jesus himself is building right here, right now.

You are a part of it. We all are. And Jesus is going to use you. He is using you right now to build the church for his glory and for generations to come, just as he did with the original audience of Peter’s words.