Transformers – robots in disguise.
I liked the cartoon series back in the early 1990s. (Yeah, the 1990s – the 20th Century, I’m old). I didn’t bother with the later movie franchise. It was enough for me to be cool with cartoon series that saw Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots, engage in conflict with Megatron, leader of the Decepticons. It was cool to see vehicles and weapons with that lovely sound effect turn into robots who would sometimes, ironically, require vehicles and weapons. The gimmick was cool, though. We thought they were one thing, but they were another, and to be who they were to gain power, they had to turn into their true form.
Before an encounter with Jesus Christ, the human experience is shaped by the world. The world is the collective force that informs and shapes life without due acknowledgement to the Creator of the universe. Even religions operate by different expressions of a worldly mentality as it displaces God as the source of what’s right, true and good.
At an individual level, the Bible talks about the flesh, which is the sinful nature that opposes God. It’s a wonder and a miracle that under these circumstances, people can have life-changing interactions with God through the power of the gospel and experience what it is to be born again. It’s a wonder and a miracle – but that’s the realm in which God excels, which is why He alone is worthy of glory and praise.
Nevertheless, this miracle and wonder are essential to know what it is to live. It is not just what it is to survive or keep churning over and making ends meet. If we are to learn what it means to live, we must be born again and born not of the flesh but of the Spirit. This necessary rebirth also comes with an understanding that everything has changed. Where once the world had total sway in shaping and directing our lives, now we’re being formed by something greater, something better – the will of God.
This sweet will of God helps us to be transformed. It is as we pursue this priority of the will of God through the renewal of our minds that we live out the new life we have in Christ. As we set before us the ever-growing desire to know and please God, we fulfil what it is to be His children. Children of God rather than children of the devil. Offspring of the Most High rather than offspring of the world. There are distinctions; there is a difference.
What helps us in this transformation process? The renewal of the mind to take delight in the things of God, does wonders to our appetite, actions, beliefs and behaviours. The constant and consistent love for the word of God, the way of God, and the will of God are things that generate something different in our thinking and our approach to issues. The contrasts between the transformed and the conformed are littered throughout scripture. There’s Paul and his word to the Galatians contrasting the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit. There’s James and his word to the saints about the difference between worldly wisdom and godly wisdom.
These and other references outline the process we undergo as we go from the conformed to the transformed. They find their base in Jesus’ initial words of teaching on the mountain as He points to the blessed man. As Matthew’s perspective highlights those attributes, Luke’s record points to the comparison between the blessed man and the prevailing preferences of the day. Jesus, in His teaching, knew that to be right and get right with God, it wasn’t enough to make practices of piety merely. To be right and get right with God was about lives totally dedicated to being shaped by God from the inside out.
This is how those who take up their crosses to follow Jesus realise that the all-things-new style of life changes them from citizens of the world to members of the family of God, from servants of the system to ministers of the Lord Jesus, from spouting the lies of the wicked one to being messengers of the good news of Jesus Christ; from merely settling for what the world offers to be missionaries for the glorious Kingdom of God.
This is not the transformation experience that sees us go back and forth from one to the other as the mood takes us as though we’re robots in disguise. The renewing of the mind takes on the journey to complete the work of transformation. We are children of God being made into children of God. It’s out with the old and in with the new as we commit to travelling with Jesus and navigating the obstacles and barriers to growth in being the transformed.
For His Name's Sake
C. L. J. Dryden
Shalom
