You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self - Ephesians 4:22
Who doesn’t like butterflies?
I’m sure someone on the planet, somewhere, at sometime has turned their nose to these beautiful creatures, I just don’t know them. I know a lot of people, several in my own household, that are very afraid of insects - bugs. But not butterflies.
We learned when were little that these underdogs of nature, these crawly, furry, inch a long caterpillars have something within them, something that one day will struggle through, change, and become more.
Metamorphosis!
It means,
The process of transformation from an immature form to an adult form in two or more distinct stages. A change of the form or nature of a thing or person into a completely different one, by natural or supernatural means.
No wonder we marvel at these little colorful winged beauties! C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity tells of another metamorphosis, a transformation some human beings undergo ...
When we come to man, the highest of the animals, we get the completest resemblance to God which we know of. Man not only lives, but loves and reasons: biological life reaches its highest known level in him.
But what man, in his natural condition, has not got, is Spiritual life—the higher and different sort of life that exists in God. We use the same word life for both: but if you thought that both must therefore be the same sort of thing, that would be like thinking that the ‘greatness’ of space and the ‘greatness’ of God were the same sort of greatness. In reality, the difference between Biological life and Spiritual life is so important that I am going to give them two distinct names. The Biological sort which comes to us through Nature, and which (like everything else in Nature) is always tending to rundown and decay so that it can only be kept up by incessant subsidies from Nature in the form of air, water, food, etc., is Bios.
The Spiritual life which is in God from all eternity, and which made the whole natural universe, is Zoe. Bios has, to be sure, a certain shadowy or symbolic resemblance to Zoe: but only the sort of resemblance there is between a photo and a place, or a statue and a man. A man who changed from haying Bios to having Zoe would have gone through as big a change as a statue which changed from being a carved stone to being a real man.
And that is precisely what Christianity is about. This world is a great sculptor’s shop. We are the statues and there is a rumor going round the shop that some of us are some day going to come to life.
Butterflies indeed!
Strip yourselves of your former nature [put off and discard your old unrenewed self] which characterized your previous manner of life and becomes corrupt through lusts and desires that spring from delusion; - Ephesians 4:22 (AMP)
The Daily Prayer - Paragraph 4
Jesus, thank you for coming for me, for ransoming me with your own life.[15 ] I honor you as my Lord, I love you, worship you, trust you. I embrace[16] you as my redemption, and I receive all the work and triumph of your Crucifixion, whereby I am cleansed from all my sin through your shed blood,[17] my old nature is removed,[18] my heart is circumcised unto God,[19] and every claim being made against me is disarmed. [20] I take my place in your cross and death, whereby I have died with you to sin and to my flesh,[21] to the world,[22] and to the evil one.[23] I take up my cross and crucify my flesh with all its pride, unbelief, and idolatry. I put off the old man.[24] I now bring the cross of Christ between me and all people, all spirits, and all things. Holy Spirit, apply to me the fullness of the work of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ for me. I receive it with thanks and give it total claim to my life.
An excerpt from The Daily Prayer Memory Verse Cards.
