Christosis

God’s plan with us is radically simple: to become like Christ. And so this is also our calling and aim: to become increasingly conformed to his image (Romans 8:29). To exist and work like him (1 John 2:6; 4:17). He was primarily making disciples who, when trained, will become as Him (Luke 6:40).* Our goal in discipleship is therefore the same: by the power of God, we must “make” people who will be like Jesus. And of course before that and in doing that we ourselves must be growing into it. In doing this, we may have different tools that represent different steps towards this goal, but we must never lose sight of the goal. Seen from this perspective, the whole New Testament becomes extremely clear, simply focused on the one goal.

The only commandment that Jesus explicitly gave to his disciples points in the same direction: love as I have loved you (John 13:34). This love of Christ transcends all other experience and knowledge and fills us with the fullness of God himself (Ephesians 3:16–20). And this commandment is already a typical discipleship instruction: we must imitate Christ, practically learn from his example, to become “like him” in this crucial activity. From here follows all the rest of the discipleship – as a diverse application and concretization of this one Christ-making commandment.

This basically confirms the intuition of our Orthodox brothers, who developed the doctrine of deification (theosis). The difficulty with this doctrine is merely in the details: it is not that we are to be transformed into God in general, neutrally, abstractly, but into God-in-incarnation, the Son of God, Christ. Christ was a missionary, the transformation into his image, as we have seen, therefore necessarily involves spreading the gospel, serving people with the powers of the Spirit, teaching, and above all making disciples, establishing simple communities that make new disciples. As a rule, mystical spiritual practices do not include this, at least not as a priority, since it seems too “activistic” to them (we might find some exceptions in certain monastic movements). We are supposed to imitate Christ in all that he is, in all that he was doing, in all that he has commanded us (Matthew 28:20). The apprentice learns from the master his work, which in this case is primarily the work of love. When he knows how to work and act like the master, he becomes as him. The transformation of the soul, liberation from inner bonds, from blindness and deafness, therefore takes place hand in hand with the work of the gospel. It is precisely there, it seems, that God sends the power for inner transformation, which is otherwise difficult to achieve without this harnessing into the yoke on Jesus. Christification is not just for its own sake, just for the individual, but for the world. The love of Christ is manifested in the service of the sick, sinful, unworthy; only there can we learn it. As Him, so we.

* It is no exaggeration to say that apart from his death and resurrection, the main work of Jesus’ life was that he made twelve disciples who were capable of continuing his work and make new disciples; undoubtedly, it was to this that he devoted most of his ministry time. See Robert Coleman’s classic The Master Plan of Evangelism.