Living a Transformed Life
Sermon Series: “PBC @ the Core”
2 Corinthians 3:17-18
Rev. Brian Bill
2/10/13
I want to begin with a brief excerpt from a book by Mark Buchanan called, “Your Church is Too Safe.” This appeared in the March 2012 issue of Christianity Today.
Historian Daniel Boorstin documents a momentous shift that occurred in North America in the nineteenth century: we stopped calling people who went on trips travelers and started calling them tourists.
Traveler literally means “one who travails.” He labors, suffers, endures…To get there, he immerses himself in a culture, learns the language and customs, lives with the locals, imitates the dress, eats what’s set before him. He takes risks, some enormous, and makes sacrifices, some extravagant. He has tight scrapes and narrow escapes. He is gone a long time. If ever he returns, he returns forever altered ….
A tourist, not so. Tourist means, literally, “one who goes in circles.” He’s just taking an exotic detour home. He’s only passing through, sampling wares, acquiring souvenirs… He retreats each night to what’s safe and familiar. He picks up a word here, a phrase there, but the language, and the world it’s embedded in, remains opaque and cryptic, and vaguely menacing. He spectates and consumes. He returns to where he’s come from with an album of photos, a few mementos, a cheap hat. He’s happy to be back. He declares there’s no place like home.
We’ve made a similar shift in the church. At some point we stopped calling Christians disciples and started calling them believers. A disciple is one who follows and imitates Jesus. She loses her life in order to find it. She steeps in the language and culture of Christ until His Word and His world reshape hers, redefine her, change inside out how she sees and thinks and dreams and, finally, lives ….
A believer, not so. She holds certain beliefs, but how deep down these go depends on the weather or her mood. She can get defensive, sometimes bristlingly so, about her beliefs, but in her honest moments she wonders why they’ve made such scant difference ….
You can’t be a disciple without being a believer. But—here’s the rub—you can be a believer and not a disciple. You can say all the right things, think all the right things, believe all the right things, do all the right things, and still not follow and imitate Jesus.
The kingdom of God is made up of travailers, but our churches are largely populated with tourists. The kingdom is full of disciples, but our churches are filled with believers.
After watching all these people get baptized this morning, I’d say that PBC has a lot of people serious about traveling with Jesus instead of just being tourists. Today we’re celebrating another value that we have as a church: “We value life transformation, not just information -- our learning must lead to Christ-like living.”
The word “transformation” means to change into something different and implies a major reformation in form, nature or function. It also suggests something abrupt or startling. We get the word “metamorphosis” from this Greek word, like when a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. There are two different ways the word is used in the New Testament.
• Be transformed. This is in the active voice, meaning I am responsible to make it happen.
• Are being transformed. This is in the passive voice, meaning that transformation is being done within me.
We’re responsible to change on the one hand but without the Spirit changing us, we’ll never be transformed. Spiritual transformation is both intentional on our part and the result of the work of the Spirit.
Let’s flesh this out…
1. We must take responsibility for our transformation. This is the command to “be transformed.” It’s an active expectation. This is similar to 2 Peter 3:18: “But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ…”
Turn to Romans 12:1-2: “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God - this is your spiritual act of worship.” This verse calls for a decisive commitment. Too many of us are spiritual sluggards when God is calling us to full surrender. Life change happens not by spiritual inactivity but by spiritual activity.
The first part of verse 2 tells us how we can maintain that commitment: “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…” The tense of this verse indicates that we must stop conforming, implying that this is something that we’re prone to do. The word “conformed” is the word that we get our English word “scheme” from. It’s sometimes translated “fashioned.” Paul is urging us to stop being pushed into the fashion of the world. J.B. Philips offers this paraphrase: “Don’t let the world squeeze you into its mold.”
Some of you are facing some incredible temptations right now. You feel yourself being pulled to conform, to go along with the way your friends are leading you. Don’t give in! Unfortunately, some of us have internalized the world’s values and fashions so much that we don’t even recognize it anymore. It’s like walking into a dark theater in the middle of the day. When you first go in, everything is really dark. But after a while, you can see normally, that is, until you walk back outside. If you spend enough time conforming to the world, you become so accustomed to the darkness that you think it’s now normal.
In this passage we see that we have a responsibility to become travelers in order to be transformed. We need to stop being conformed so that we can start to be transformed. And we’re transformed by the renewing of our minds. Listen. Every one of us is in one of two categories -- you are being conformed to the world by living as a tourist or you are being transformed by the Word and you’re a traveler. Are you conforming or transforming?
In our next passage we will see that becoming transformed into the likeness of Christ is the work of the Holy Spirit. We have a part to play but He is the one who makes the changes.
2. The Holy Spirit is transforming us. This is the “are being transformed” side of the equation. Let’s look at 2 Corinthians 3:18: “And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”
Here are some observations…
• Paul is referencing all truly born-again believers through the use of the words “we” and “all.”
• In contrast to Moses, we don’t have to cover up when faced with God’s glory or cower because of shame. I’m reminded of Psalm 34:5: “Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame.”
• The word “reflect” means “to behold oneself in a mirror.” It’s helpful to think about what kinds of mirrors they used back then. Made from a piece of circular flat metal, these mirrors had to be polished continuously to make the image clear and to keep away corrosion. Likewise, as believers we must do all that we can to remain in a continual state of polishing so that we can accurately represent “the Lord, who is the Spirit.”
• We are “being transformed,” which means, “to take on a different form or appearance.” The present tense indicates that this is a change in progress. It could be translated like this: “We are constantly being transformed.” This is not a one-time deal. We are being transformed into His likeness with “ever-increasing glory.”
Philippians 3:21 reminds us that the task of transformation in our lives will be complete when we meet Jesus face to face: “Who, by the power that enables Him to bring everything under His control, will transform our lowly bodies to that they will be like His glorious body.”
Have you seen the bumper sticker that reads, “Please be patient with me…God is not finished with me yet?” There’s a lot of truth in that. We are responsible to do our part to be transformed and at the same time, the Holy Spirit is transforming us. We’re on a journey. We’re fellow travelers. We’re in process as we make progress.
Philippians 2:12-13 captures our responsibility to be transformed and the Spirit’s role in our transformation very clearly: “…Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling [that’s our part] for it is God who works in you [that’s God’s part] to will and to act according to his good purpose.”
The New Normal
Friends, do you know that it’s normal for a Christian to be transformed? Christians are supposed to change. Transformation should be typical. Unfortunately we’ve made it almost expected and normal for a Christian to stay stuck in their sins and not change. Some of us have settled for a soft spirituality, content to soak up more information while avoiding transformation.
What we might consider “radical” today is simply normal Christianity. Arthur Wallis, in his book called “The Radical Christian,” says: “If any man professes to call himself a child of God, a disciple of Christ, or a citizen of the kingdom, and yet is bereft of this radicalism, he would be well advised to take a long hard look at his Christian profession…The radical Christian is not a special Christian. He simply qualifies for New Testament normality.” The Bible knows of no other Christian than a “radical” one.
I’ve been helped in this regard from a book called Not a Fan by Kyle Idleman. He makes the great point that there is a distinction between fans of Jesus and followers of Jesus: “Many of our churches in America have gone from being sanctuaries to becoming stadiums. And every week all the fans come to the stadium where they cheer for Jesus but have no interest in truly following him. The biggest threat to the church today are fans who call themselves Christians but aren’t actually interested in following Christ. They want to be close enough to Jesus to get all the benefits, but not so close that it requires anything from them.”
Interestingly, today is known as Transfiguration Sunday in some churches. Are you ready to make today your transformation day? If so, lock into these action steps.
1. Make sure that you’re saved. You will never have lasting change or freedom from bondage until you turn to the Lord. 2 Corinthians 3:16-17: “But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”
2. Make sure you’re surrendered. Are you all in? Or are you living for yourself?
3. Make sure you’re in the Scriptures. This is the only way to renew your mind. As a way to get in the Word during Lent, I recommend you use this free e-resource called, Who Is This Man? by Ray Pritchard.
4. Make sure you’re allowing the Holy Spirit to sanctify you.
I really like what Tim Challies says in his review of David Platt’s new book called, “Follow Me.”
“The fact is that there are multitudes of people who profess faith in Jesus Christ but who are not truly his followers…As we follow Christ, ‘he transforms our minds, our desires, our wills, our relationships, and our ultimate reason for living.’ Once Christians have been transformed, they will inevitably begin to multiply, to make more disciples, both in their local context and across the planet.” May that continue to be true of the people of PBC.
Will you make the decision right now to stop being a tourist and start being a traveler?
