Act naturally

The caterpillar is transformed into a butterfly through a process we call metamorphosis. It's a natural process that involves the caterpillar digesting itself into an ooze. The parts needed to make a butterfly are formed from this ooze. It happens with no effort on the part of the caterpillar and will inevitably result in a butterfly unless some catastrophe interrupts it.

It is nothing like the transformation Paul talks about in Rom 12.1-2.

Arbeit macht frei: Work makes you free. The gate of the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau.

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Romans 8.5-7

Those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. The mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

Romans 12.1-2

Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.

We are born in the current of Adam. We need do nothing to be swept along. Just relax. It happens naturally.

What is not natural is to head the opposite direction. Becoming a Christian does nothing to change your direction. Unless you stop, turn around and swim against the current you will continue heading downstream. It takes effort to live unnaturally. You have to do things you don’t want to. And you have to be told what things you need to do, because your natural mind cannot know unnatural things. But then you have to do them.

Contrary to what you may have been told, God is not going to let you coast along and through some unconscious, subconscious process metamorphose into something you’re not. If you think you can stretch out in your inner tube and float along with the current you’re very wrong.

Adam’s life of disobedience was easy. All he had to do was do what he wanted. Jesus’ life of perfect obedience was excruciating. Starving in the wilderness, hated by his people, doubted by his own family, abandoned by his followers, arrested, savagely beaten, nailed to a cross, forsaken by the Father...

If you think Christ’s life of perfect obedience makes your obedience unnecessary—or even easier—you are badly mistaken. His life is the pattern. His life shows us how to not live like Adam. His live was completely unnatural—and difficult beyond comprehending.

You cannot live naturally and leave the unnatural part to God. If anyone should have been able to coast through life, it was Jesus. But if Jesus suffered to be obedient, how do you expect to be like him by avoiding him?

You’re certainly no better than Jesus. You’re in the church? Great. Christ is the head. You have the righteousness of God. Great. Christ is God. The Spirit is at work in you? Great. And of course Jesus didn’t have this advantage.

Whatever break you give yourself, whatever self-justification you have for relaxing, whatever Scripture you use to convince yourself that it is God’s job to transform you, know this: in comparison to Christ, you’re nothing. God has no intention of making things easy for you. Christ lived a horribly difficult life, in total obedience. If Christ is the pattern, then he’s the pattern for you. The expectation—the requirement!—is that you do it.

Obedience is tough. Really, really tough.

We are not being transformed into the image of the pre-sin Adam. That would be tough enough. But we’re being transformed into the image of Christ. Adam’s sin was disobedience to the simplest command. Christ’s perfection was obedience to the toughest commands. Full obedience in everything. More than full obedience: obedience as the source of nourishment. Your joy. Your reason for being born.

Our journey is not just returning to a point of pre-sin but of traveling from one pole to the other. Our course is away from God. Our impulse is to hide from God. All this has to be reversed. It’s not easy. The requirement isn’t just to become something better, but to become something different. Something we don’t know how to become; something we don’t even want to become! It takes effort, work, pain.

To claim the transformation is automatic, easy, spiritual... how absurd! How lazy. How selfish. You say you see. What? What do you see? How is this transformation supposed to take place when you see the demand of Christ and say, “that can’t be right”?

You say you are being transformed. How? Into what? What magic is making this happen? God is doing something for you he wouldn’t do for Christ? Christ couldn’t avoid the suffering but you can? Christ couldn’t avoid the cross but you can? How is it that you can avoid Christ and become like him?

If you want to be like Jesus, you have to stretch and strain, tug, contort, grimace: you have to decide, on purpose—against everything you would naturally do and against how you would naturally think—to do something completely abnormal.

Because the point to obedience is this: When we do what comes naturally we inevitably do the wrong thing. To think that we leave the transformation to God is absurd. It is his power that transforms us, but when we discard the tools he has given us to make this happen, then it won't happen.

But we have the Spirit!

Not if you live according to the flesh.

Christ lived in obedience. Christ left the example of how we are to live. We like the example he gave on how to pray. Why don't we like the example he gave on how to live?

It doesn’t happen naturally. Sin happens naturally. Transformation happens when we live like Christ. It’s a very unnatural, difficult thing.