Christ in Gethsemane, Carl Heinrich Bloch
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Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. Simon Peter and his companions went to look for him, and when they found him, they exclaimed: “Everyone is looking for you!”
—Mark 1:35-37, NIV

• healing the sick;

• raising the dead;

• throwing the money-changers out of the House of God;

• having mercy on the woman caught in the act of adultery;

• feeding the multitude from a few pieces of bread and a few fish;

• performing many miracles

Jesus Praying in Gethsemane

From the Shadows to the Substance
^6-7My counsel for you is simple and straightforward: Just go ahead with what you've been given. You received Christ Jesus, the Master; now live him. You're deeply rooted in him. You're well constructed upon him. You know your way around the faith. Now do what you've been taught. School's out; quit studying the subject and start living it! And let your living spill over into thanksgiving. —Colossians 2:6-7, The Message

We see Him as one who not only carried out the will of God, but one who sought God's Will during times of solitude in prayer. Jesus sacrificed Himself to carry out the will of God. He could have stopped it at any time, but He allowed it to happen because it was God's Will and because He loves us that much.

Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will."
-Matthew 26:39

Conformed to the likeness of Christ

¹⁹ The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; ²⁰ idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions ²¹ and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. —Gal 5:19-21

^26-28Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God's Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don't know how or what to pray, it doesn't matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That's why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.

^29-30God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him. After God made that decision of what his children should be like, he followed it up by calling people by name. After he called them by name, he set them on a solid basis with himself. And then, after getting them established, he stayed with them to the end, gloriously completing what he had begun.

-Romans 8:26-30 —The Message

Believers have been brought into a state of safety; but their comfort consists rather in hope than in enjoyment. From this hope they cannot be turned by the vain expectation of finding satisfaction in the things of time and sense, of money and things. What we need, friends, is patience... our course, here, is rough and long and often difficult; but Jesus who defeated Satan once and for all shall come... although he continues to wait until that time which is known only to the Father.

Life on God's Terms

^1-2With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ's being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.

^3-4God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn't deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that.

The law always ended up being used as a Band-Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. And now what the law code asked for but we couldn't deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us.
—Romans 8:1-4 —The Message

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¹Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, ²because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. ³For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, ⁴in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.
-Romans 8:1-4 —NIV

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¹There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.

²For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.

³For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:

⁴That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.

—Romans 8:1-4 —KJV

You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ.-Romans 8:9 —NIV

¹⁰Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, ¹¹inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories

—1 Peter 1:10-11

Becoming like Christ

• ²⁶Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." —Genesis 1:26

• ⁹These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God. —Genesis 6:9

• ¹³For you formed my inward parts;    you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. ¹⁴I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works;    my soul knows it very well. ¹⁵My frame was not hidden from you,when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. ¹⁶Your eyes saw my unformed substance;in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. —Psalm 139:13-16

• ⁹With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. —James 3:9

• ⁴In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. —2 Corinthians 4:4

• ¹⁵He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. —Colossians 1:15

• ³He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, —Hebrews 1:3

• ²⁴and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. —Ephesians 4:24

• ⁵For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." —Genesis 3:5

• ²²to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, —Ephesians 4:22

• The Sermon on the Mount
   ¹Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. The Beatitudes
  ²And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying: ³"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. ⁴"Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. ⁵"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. ⁶"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. ⁷"Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. ⁸"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. ⁹"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. ¹⁰"Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. ¹¹"Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. ¹²Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. —Matt. 5:1-12

• ²²But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. —Galatians 5:22-23

• ¹If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ²And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. ³If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

  ⁴Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant ⁵or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ⁶it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. ⁷Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

  ⁸Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. ¹¹When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. ¹²For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

  ¹³So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. —1 Corinthians 13

• ⁵For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, ⁶and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, ⁷and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. ⁸For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. —2 Peter 1:5-8

• ¹⁰The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. ‐John 10:10

• ¹⁸And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. —2 Corinthians 3:18b

• ¹³for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. —Phil. 2:13

• ¹²And after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire the sound of a low whisper. —1 Kings 19:12

• ²⁷To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. —Colossians 1:27

• ¹³And when the soles of the feet of the priests bearing the ark of the LORD, the Lord of all the earth, shall rest in the waters of the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan shall be cut off from flowing, and the waters coming down from above shall stand in one heap."

  ¹⁴So when the people set out from their tents to pass over the Jordan with the priests bearing the ark of the covenant before the people, ¹⁵and as soon as those bearing the ark had come as far as the Jordan, and the feet of the priests bearing the ark were dipped in the brink of the water (now the Jordan overflows all its banks throughout the time of harvest), ¹⁶the waters coming down from above stood and rose up in a heap very far away, at Adam, the city that is beside Zarethan, and those flowing down toward the Sea of the Arabah, the Salt Sea, were completely cut off. And the people passed over opposite Jericho. ¹⁷Now the priests bearing the ark of the covenant of the LORD stood firmly on dry ground in the midst of the Jordan, and all Israel was passing over on dry ground until all the nation finished passing over the Jordan. —Joshua 3:13-17

• ²⁴"Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. —Luke 13:24

• ¹⁹So then let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding. —Romans 14:19

• ³eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. —Ephesians 4:3

• ¹⁵Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. —2 Tim. 2:15

• ¹¹Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. —Hebrews 4:11

• ¹⁴Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. —Hebrews 12:14

• ¹⁴Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace. —2 Peter 3:14

• ²²to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, ²³and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, —Ephesians 4:22-23

• ²Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. —Romans 12:2

• ²⁴and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. —Ephesians 4:24

• ¹³until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, —Ephesians 4:13

• ²Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. —1 John 3:2

• ³¹So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. —1 Corinthians 10:31

• ¹⁴Let all that you do be done in love. —1 Corinthians 16:14

• ¹⁷And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. —Colossians 3:17

• ²³Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, —Colossians 3:23

• ²Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. —Romans 12:2