Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. (2 Cor 5:17)

It may not be a manly thing to do, but consider the amazing transformation that a caterpillar undergoes to become a butterfly. I did not realize what happened until I heard a Radiolab podcast segment about it, called Goo and You. It blows the mind.

The caterpillar just eats.

That’s all it thinks about, eating, eating and eating. It does nothing but that until it reaches a certain weight. At a certain God designed point, a trigger inside the caterpillar says, “it is time to change.” It then goes on the next assignment and attaches itself to a leaf and then exudes a chrysalis. Did you hear that? It doesn’t weave one – it comes from within the caterpillar. This casing comes from within itself diffusing outward. It’s a bit gross but fascinating. From that point, it gets even more crazy-amazing.

The caterpillar basically dissolves into a mass. It is deconstructed. It ceases to be what it was. It is undone. Only then, can it be re-made into a NEW creature.

It is transformed into a creature that looks and operates different and has a completely different purpose. It emerges from its chrysalis something born into something new. Experiments have shown that although it is almost completely destroyed in the process, it retains memory. Whoa.

The Christian life calls for the same kind of transformation.

We cannot attach Jesus to our lives any more than a caterpillar can put on a butterfly suit or slap on some wings. That won’t work. We must submit to the Holy Spirit grabbing our soul from within and destroying-dissolving-undoing us in order for Christ to re-assemble us into a new creature in Him.

We therefore were buried with Him through baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may walk in newness of life. (Rom 6:4)

Once He does that, we have a new and different purpose. Just like the former caterpillar, we retain knowledge of the old self. But it makes no sense for a butterfly to act like a caterpillar when it is built for something else. Though we remember who we were before and we retain the memory of our past, we cannot just mindlessly consume this world as we did when were in sin.

You are a new creature.