Oh Foolish Galatians

In Romans Chapter 12 Paul writes, “Be no longer conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so you may know the will of God, that is what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Conformed here means “to be pressed into the likeness of” or living according to the pattern of the world.  Transformed comes from the Greek word from which we get metamorphosis – a change in form and habits.  (Caterpillar to Butterfly).  Renewing means “to be made new again” and mind is as you would imagine, “the intellect.”

So basically Paul is saying, stop living like caterpillars because the truth of the Gospel has changed your form and habits into those of a butterfly and you need to begin thinking and acting like a butterfly. Caterpillars are eating machines, devouring more food than they can actually contain within their bodies.  They selfishly destroy the leaves and trees that support them as they eat voraciously causing them to shed their skin four or five times in order to grow large enough to contain their appetites.  Caterpillars predominately eat leaves and are not able to drink, so all water that they require for life is contained within the leaves they eat.

Once a caterpillar receives the internal signal that metamorphosis is at hand he attaches to the branch (“I will raise up for David a righteous Branch……”Jeremiah 23:5) and through a process of literally dying to itself the caterpillar is metamorphosed into a butterfly.  Once a caterpillar has become a butterfly it has changed form and habits.  A butterfly has wings to fly and no longer lives off of eating leaves.  In fact, whereas a caterpillar has no ability to drink anything, a butterfly can only survive by drinking.  Butterfly’s ingest everything they need for life by sipping nectar, fruit juice or water.  They have no ability to eat like a caterpillar because they have been transformed.

When Paul wrote his letter to the Galatians, he was astonished that the butterflies he had left behind had foresaken flying by the power of the Spirit and drinking in the nectar of the Spirit.  They had abandoned new life because caterpillars or butterflies living like caterpillars had come behind Paul and “bewitched” them.  Paul reminds them that they do not need to eat leaves in order to survive, in fact trying to eat leaves through the straws they now have to sip in life will ultimately destroy them.  The wings they now have to fly will make crawling like a caterpillar difficult if not impossible as well.  In fact trying to live like a caterpillar once you’ve become a butterfly will only condemn you and fill you with guilt while negating the transforming work of metamorphosis.

You see, as Paul points out to the Galatians, the law was given as a guardian for the caterpillar state of the believer.  In the fullness of time, God sent His Son to fulfill the law and to redeem us from the penalty of sin so that we could become butterflies and live in a new way – by the Spirit.  We now have everything necessary to drink in Life and thereby we are changed into His image.  Paul says we do not need to rebuild the leaves of the law because the law has done its work in our lives – we know we are sinners and in need of a savior.  Now that we are butterflies we need to learn to think like butterflies with a new mind. We need to sip in the Life of the Spirit and we need to soar on wings like eagles.  In our new nature we cry, “Abba (Daddy) father” because we are no longer slaves (caterpillars) but we are heirs (butterflies) through God. (Metamorphosis while attached to the Branch).