Transformation

God offers us the means to become reconciled with him and to become a new person who will want and love and do what is pleasing to him because the Spirit of his Son will live in you and change you. The result of God’s kindness and activity is that we will live a new kind of life now and, after death, live forever with him.”

Paul uses several metaphors to help us think about the task and process of transformation. He uses the language of a former self and a new person. He uses the language of laying something aside like a dirty set of clothing and putting on something fresh like a set of clean clothing. He speaks most radically about dying to something old and rising to something new.

Now this I affirm and insist on in the Lord: you must no longer live as the Gentiles live, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of their ignorance and hardness of heart.… You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. Eph 4:17–24 

In texts like these Paul expands on what it means to be a “new creation” and how this new creation takes shape out of the chaos of our old selves, over which God’s Spirit is brooding afresh.

This process of change is one that depends both on God’s active investment and on ours as we continue to respond to the favor and the help he has given us. It requires ongoing attention, discernment, and commitment to continue to lay aside what is not from the Spirit and to take up what is. Paul himself was quite aware of how strenuous this process was in his own life and how constant he needed to be in attending to making progress:

Don’t you know that, while all runners compete in a race, only one receives the prize? Run in such a manner that you may attain it. Everyone engaged in an athletic competition exercises self-control in regard to everything. These people do so in order that they might receive a wreath that will wither, but we do it to gain a wreath that will never wither. So I don’t run without purpose, neither do I box as one who beats the air; but I pummel my body and subdue it, so that after proclaiming the good news to others I should not be disqualified myself. 1 Cor 9:24–27

We are generally aware of the commitment, endurance, and self-discipline that programs of physical exercise involve and how easy it is to slack off or give up altogether. Paul tells us that we need to be prepared to give the same kind of commitment and investment of ourselves to God’s program of “training us to live justly and in a god-fearing manner during the present age, saying “No” to ungodliness and worldly desires” (to borrow again from Titus), and to persevere in this to the end, since we’re not doing it merely to lose weight or fend off heart disease but to make the full and appropriate use of God’s gifts that lead to our salvation.

I believe in eternal security but wonder how in this text even Paul acknowledges the danger to his own soul of failing to engage the contest God has set before him—“so that after proclaiming the good news to others I should not be disqualified myself.” I wonder if he's concerned about becoming puffed up and turning into a false teacher.

In his letter to the Christians in Colossae, Paul paints a helpful portrait of the life of the “old person” and the life of the “new self”—one that provides an ever-helpful diagnostic tool, as it were, for the task of self-examination:

Put to death, then, those parts of you that belong to the world: fornication, impurity, passion, selfish desire, and greed, which is idolatry. God’s wrath is coming upon the disobedient on account of these things. You also used to walk in these things, when you were living that life. But now put them all aside—anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth. Don’t keep lying to one another, since you stripped off the old self with its practices and clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of the One who created it. In this renewal there isn’t Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free person. Rather, Christ is all things and in all!

Clothe yourselves, then, as God’s chosen, holy, and loved ones, with deeply felt compassion, kindness, humility, forbearance, and patience. Bear with one another and be gracious toward one another, if anyone has a complaint against another. In the same way as the Lord was gracious to you, so be gracious yourselves as well.

On top of everything else, clothe yourselves with love, which holds it all together perfectly. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Col 3:5–17

This text provides a fairly detailed picture—with some good, nitty-gritty examples—of what it means to die with Christ and to “put on Christ,” or to walk in newness of life. Along with similar passages among Paul’s writings, it also suggests a particular and different sort of agenda for Christ’s followers day by day—every day. It is an agenda that ought to lie beneath every other agenda and that every other agenda should serve to advance within us. This agenda has to do with taking off, laying aside, and dying to some familiar ways, and with putting on, draping over ourselves, and coming alive in new ways.

Several spiritual disciplines are necessary to accomplish this. I would especially highlight Scripture reading, prayer, self-examination, and holy conferencing. As we immerse ourselves in Scripture, we encounter images of the many symptoms that help us diagnose when our old self, the self from which Jesus died to deliver us, is asserting itself. We read of the internal and relational qualities and the practical fruit that show us what it looks like when the Spirit is leading us, when Christ is taking fuller shape within us.

As we pray and examine ourselves before God, practicing openness, vulnerability, and silence before God, his Spirit brings the Word to bear on us as we are in that moment, sometimes convicting, sometimes affirming. As we band together with other Christians similarly committed to transformation, we share insights into one another and help one another see the blind spots, see from outside our own perspective on ourselves.

All of these practices are essential. We need to ask ourselves regularly: Is what I am about to do, or the way I am relating to someone, or this particular practice in which I am engaging the result of my offering my mind, heart, and body to God?

Or is something that I have been doing, am doing, or am thinking about doing the result of my offering myself to do my own bidding—the bidding of self-centered, self-gratifying impulses? We can’t fool God’s Spirit within us with our answers; if we immerse ourselves enough in Scripture, in prayer, and in conversation with people who are seeking to live for God, we can’t fool ourselves with our answers for too long, either.

And, as soon as we know the answer to these questions, we know what we need to do. This is where commitment and self-denial come into play. To return to Paul’s analogy: the athlete has to say “no” to a lot that he or she would prefer to enjoy or to do if he or she is to become better in the area in which he or she would compete.

So we also have to die to a lot that is almost hardwired within us, to responses and impulses that are as automatic as instinct, if we are to arrive at the life God desires for us. We will make it because God's not done with us yet. He's the Potter and we're the clay.