Being Remade

Repentance and conversion isn’t simply “being ok” with changing a few things in your life. Conversion is deciding to be remade. For many, repentance is deciding to fight a losing battle – to reform what cannot be reformed; because a life of sin must be destroyed, not reformed. Too often the expectation of repentance is such that man thinks that God will change the life he already has. That’s like trying to change the shape of a hardened piece of pottery without making a crack in it.

On the contrary, man must put his present life to death and let God give him a new one. God finds us imperfect. We are as clay pots with defects. To repent, to be remade, to be converted, we must decide to be broken, to deny ourselves, to be put to death. Isaiah declares, “But now, O LORD, You are our Father; we are the clay, and You our potter; and all we are the work of Your hand” (64:8).

As an imperfect vessel, you must be broken into pieces, ground into dust, and made into new clay, so that a new, better pot might be made. It doesn’t consist of just becoming a “Christianized” version of yourself. It doesn’t consist of scheduling God into a fraction of your week. It means starting over. It means changing your desires to match His. It means letting Him mold you into the shape perfectly suitable for the work He has set before you.

In describing the transformation from the physical state of being to the spiritual state of being, Paul gives a principle that parallels any true conversion. He says, “Foolish one, what you sow is not made alive unless it dies. And what you sow, you do not sow that body that shall be, but mere grain--perhaps wheat or some other grain. But God gives it a body as He pleases, and to each seed its own body” (1 Cor. 15:36-39).

If this is something you haven’t experienced, then you haven’t repented – true conversion hasn’t taken place. If you are but a mere shadow of your old self, then you must die. In order to get an apple, an apple is not planted, but a seed. Our previous life is only a seed – a seed that must be planted and die. Only in its death will the growth of the new life start. Only in the death of what you are can you become what God intends.

Cary Gillis D.Min.

September 30, 2020