“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
Some words mean exactly what they imply. There are no secret messages, no deep profound truths, no esoteric hidden meanings. “What part of the answer ‘No’ don’t you understand?” a frustrated dad once asked his teenager. It’s hard to misunderstand such bluntness. That’s much the way it is with a statement that Paul made when he wrote to Roman believers who felt caught between the pressures of their culture, pressures to conform and be like everyone else—a cookie-cutter copy of emptiness and failure, or—and this is the turning point—to be transformed by the renewing of their minds so they could demonstrate what is God’s good, acceptable, and complete will.
A paraphrase put it pretty graphically. It says, “Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you” (Romans 12:2, The Message).
Transformations are always exciting. The butterfly comes out of the cocoon; the ugly duckling becomes the beautiful young woman, and the scrub girl becomes a princess, the pumpkin a golden carriage. But do such things happen only in story books? Or can people be completely changed?
Years ago I sat down with a successful businessman and his wife. He’s well respected, a lay-leader in his church, the father of several children. “How did you find Christ?” I asked. And, as he told the story, I tried not to register surprise, hoping my eyes didn’t betray the surprise I really had. Why? The man I know and the story he told were as different as light and darkness. He began by telling me that he took a gun and shot his first antagonist at age 12. I said first, because there were more incidents to follow. As a troubled teenager with no dad to show the way, and a mom who was too busy to be there for him, he became involved in drugs, rackets, and petty crime.
When he began dating the woman he eventually married, he said, “She couldn’t understand why I always had money. I would stop at a gas station and come out with a roll of bills.” He remorsefully told how he was pimping, hooking up businessmen with girls on the street—for a cut of the take, of course.
He married, but all of the turmoil was destroying his marriage when a friend led him to Jesus Christ, and a marriage seminar sponsored by Guidelines, helped him learn skills that he desperately needed to change.
The transformation that I just described is the work of God’s Holy Spirit—it affects your will, your body, and your thought life. In simple terms, that’s what
conversion is all about. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ,” wrote Paul, “he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
The very good news is that God is still in the business of transforming men and women who will turn their backs on their culture, their sins and failures, and ask Jesus Christ to forgive them, to change their lives, and to give them a purpose in life. It happens every day of every year. If you are a candidate for this kind of change, go to our website at guidelines.org for encouragement and help.
Resource reading: John 3:1-21.
