SALVATION,
NATURE OF

WHEN a woman is pregnant, she is carrying a seed. Her husband’s sperm has fertilized her egg and now she has a unique life growing within her. The life in her is not her own. That life in her has its own DNA. The seed from her husband that fertilized her egg has produced a brand-new life. Her job is to allow the life inside of her to express itself. When that life expresses itself, she is going to get really big and that new life is going to show up.

She will have to change because of the growth within her. She’ll have to get maternity clothes. She will probably have to adjust as her taste buds change. She’ll have to accommodate new sleeping positions. She’ll even have to adopt a new walk.

When you receive the new life of Christ, it is a different life. It’s not the same life. It is a brand-new life operating in an old shell, the body. And when that new life operates in the body, it operates based on a different set of laws. The new life is righteous; the body that this new life is in is called the flesh. The body of the flesh works against the new life now within. What Satan wants to do is get the outer life to keep the inner life from expressing itself.797

[Christian Living, New Life; Flesh; New Life in Christ; Satan, Strategy of]

Rom. 7:23; Phil. 3:17–21; 1 John 2:15–17

BUTTERFLIES are caterpillars that have been transformed. Caterpillars are ugly, slimy, and slow. I don’t find much redeeming value in caterpillars. Most of the time, I find myself stepping on them.

But once the caterpillar converts to a butterfly, all of a sudden, something new is born. Something old and ugly, something that was rejected, something that deserved to be stepped on, now begins to change. The process of change is a little uncomfortable and a little inconvenient. For a while, it looks like things are getting worse rather than better. That’s because something is changing on the inside. After the cocooning process is over, and the shell flips open, all of a sudden the thing that used to be grounded can now fly. The thing that used to be a parasite now pollinates. Something beautiful has come out of something that was ugly. The seed was already there for it, but it just had to wait for development.

Now, a butterfly is not a fixed up caterpillar. A butterfly is a totally new creature that was birthed out of a caterpillar. But it’s not a caterpillar. It is a brand spanking new being.798

[Spiritual Transformation; Transformation]

2 Cor. 5:17