I had a very nostalgic experience this month. I went into a farm supply store and saw something I hadn’t seen since my childhood. There on the floor were some feed troughs with lamps attached to them. I had to go look, to see if I was really seeing what I thought it was. As I leaned over to look into the trough, there were the representatives of new life basking in the warmth of the light.
A huge smile came to my face. I instantly was transported hundreds of miles to the south of here, and several decades into the past. One of the wonderful experiences I had each spring was to see my dad bring home a couple of boxes of baby chicks, carrying them in cardboard boxes with straw in the bottom. We would set them up in a place where we could put electric lights near them, shining the heat into the boxes. Their excitement with life, their cheeping, their hunger to grow and live, all were evident in these little chicks.
It is an amazing process, when you think about it. Fertilization occurs, a chick embryo begins to form and develop in the yolk sac. Heat keeps the process going. The yolk sac provides nourishment for the chick’s development within the shell. When the chick is ready to emerge from the shell of the egg, it eats the last of its yolk sac and has food for the transition. It then breaks through the shell, and rests to regain its strength and dry out. Then the little chick begins to develop further in its life cycle, growing quite quickly and developing feathers that can keep it warm without the lamps.
About the same time as I encountered this nostalgic event, I read a little devotional by F.B. Meyer where he commented on Galatians 4:19 (HCSB), which says: “My children, again I am in the pains of childbirth for you until Christ is formed in you.” He said that a person becoming more like Christ follows a process similar to the development of a chick in an egg. When the process begins, the yolk sac is the greater percentage of the substance present there. But as the embryo grows, the chick becomes a greater portion than the yolk. The yolk decreases, while at the same time the embryo is growing.
In a similar way, when a person first receives Christ, our old nature makes up the major content and force of our lives. But the more Christ is formed within us, the more the life of Christ becomes the dominant presence in our lives. Christ being formed in us is a process whereby everyday our lives are becoming more like Christ, and less like our old life.
Paul was concerned that the life of Christ be formed inside every person who becomes a believer in Christ. The Christian life is not just to be ascription to propositional truths about Jesus. The Christian life is inviting Christ to enter our lives and be dynamically formed within us. It is the process of Christ growing inside of a person until Christ is the major substance of our lives, and our former self-centered, destructive life diminishes. The Christian life is allowing our thoughts to be transformed into thinking the kinds of things that Jesus thinks, our values to become the kinds of values that Jesus has. It is being concerned about the kinds of things Jesus is concerned about, and relating to others the way that Jesus relates to us. The Christian life is “Christ living in us,” and this is a process.
Jesus came to give us a new kind of life where He comes inside us to grow and be formed in us. We were like living yolk sacs, full of potential, but in practice just shell-bound blobs. Then the life of Christ begins to grow in us, and our old static life begins to be replaced with the exciting, joy-filled, mobile life of Christ. He begins transforming us to become more and more like Christ both internally, and in our external interactions.
Spring is about new life, new beginnings, and transformation. Is the life of Christ being formed within you? Is Christ or your old self-obsessed life the most dominant influence in your life?
No comments:
Post a Comment