God predestined us to be conformed to the image of his Son Jesus Christ. In today’s First Reading, Paul reminds us of the life expected of us as those who are beneficiaries of God’s saving love. The epitome of such a love, the Scriptures tell us, is God sending his only begotten Son to live as one of us so that he might lead us to that life that God has predestined for us (cf. John 3:16). In the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, we have been adopted by God and given a new life.
Life in Christ changes not only what we do but who we are. This is because in Jesus Christ, we have been presented with an example of who we should be as well as how we should live. When God made the “public unveiling” of Jesus as God’s beloved during the event of the transfiguration (cf. Matthew 17:1-8), God urged/commanded us to ‘listen’ to Jesus. It was a command that was to be carried out for our own good, for the words of Jesus are spirit and life (cf. John 6:63). Consequently, those of us who are living after the great event of the Incarnation have no excuse but to attain our full potential as sons and daughters of God. St. Paul makes it very clear that the Incarnation happened so that we could conform ourselves to the image of Jesus Christ who is himself the image of the invisible God (cf. Colossians 1:15).
St. Paul refers to Jesus Christ as the ‘second Adam’ (cf. Corinthians 15:45) because Jesus Christ achieves what the first Adam had failed to do. Or to put it in another way, it is in Jesus Christ that we, descendants of Adam, become fully alive. Adam, as our first parent, had been given the responsibility of leading us to the source of life. Instead, Adam led his descendants away from that life without end which God had planned for creation. It was a life of living perpetually in the presence of the Lord, a life of gazing upon the loveliness of the Lord for eternity (cf. Psalm 27:4).
The image of Jesus Christ after which we are to be conformed is the image and likeness of God which we lost due to Adam’s sin. It is an image characterized by obedience to the Word of God as well as the willingness to carry out God’s commands. Jesus retained the image of the Father because he remained united to him. It is this conformation that made it easy for him to recognize God in those to whom he ministered. We can say we have been conformed to the image of Jesus when we too begin to live as Jesus did. Only then will we be on our way towards realizing God’s purposes for us: the salvation of our souls.