WHAT DOES METAMORPHOSIS HAVE TO DO WITH BECOMING “TRANSFORMED” IN ROMANS 12:2?

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People familiar with Romans know it’s arguably the most doctrinal book in the New Testament. But beginning with chapter twelve through the rest of the book, Paul switches from doctrine to application. In verse 12: 2, he writes:

Do not be conformed any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. (NIV)

Paul’s teaching for us to become transformed by renewing our mind is not a suggestion. It’s a compulsory—but life changing—directive. And the Greek word he uses can be applied as a marvelous biological world picture.

The word “transformed” in the Greek is Metamorphoo, from which we get the English word metamorphosis—the process of a caterpillar changing into a butterfly. The only other place in the Bible where this word is used is in the transfiguration, when Jesus showed His glorified body to James, John, and Peter (Matt. 17: 1-3; Mark 9: 2-4; Luke 9:28-31).

Metamorphosis is a beautiful illustration of being transformed by the renewing of our mind. When a caterpillar (an insect larva) changes into a pupa, all of its organ systems dissolve into a literal soup of fragmented cells and tissues, which later reassembles in the cocoon to become an entirely different looking organism: It emerges as a beautiful butterfly.

This is a wonderful word picture of what happens to us when we become “transformed by the renewing of our mind.” Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old has passed away and new things have come.” When we become transformed by growing in knowledge of Jesus Christ, we change from (metaphorically speaking) an ugly worm to a beautiful butterfly—a “new creature” in Christ.

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