You know, within the natural world, there is a physics law that is known as the second law of thermodynamics. The short version of that is, it's called the law of entropy. And what that law simply states is that the universe and everything in it is running down, that all of matter and energy, everything that makes this universe function, is trending towards disorder, and that sooner or later, what is going to happen is that this universe is going to burn out. It's going to eventually come to an end. Everything is running down. And it is also a fact that unless there is some kind of an intervening process that takes place within that context of this, this physical phenomenon known as entropy, then that which makes up our universe is going to come to an end, and there is no question about that. Now, of course, as people of faith, we understand that it's going to come to an end, and that it's going to come to an end, as the Apostle Peter describes it in Second Peter, chapter three, when God intervenes and he comes and brings this entire old creation to its end as it is consumed in fire. When a person becomes a Christian, he is given new life in Christ. We now take a different a different posture or a different position as we stand before God, no longer as people who are sinful people, but people who are now in a right relationship with God because of Jesus and what He has done for us. And because of the new life that we now have in Christ, Jesus, we have begun a process, a process that is known as transformation, that demonstrates the new life that we have designed for the purpose of bringing honor and glory to God. The Apostle Paul said in Second Corinthians, chapter five and verse 17, that if you are in Christ, you are a new creation. Old things have passed away and new things have come.
In the passage that our young brother just read for us a few minutes ago in Romans, chapter 12, verses one and two, particularly verse two tells us that we are no longer to be conformed to this world, but because we are people of God, we are to be transformed, transformed by the renewing of our minds. Now we're going to talk a little bit about that this evening. Just exactly what is that renewal of the mind that is being addressed there. But what I want us to see from the start of this lesson is the fact that we are called upon to be different, to change, to be transformed, to no longer be conformed to the world in which we live. The Apostle Paul spoke about it this way in the Ephesian letter in Ephesians, chapter four, in verse 22 where he says that we are to "put off the old self, which belongs to the former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires and to be renewed in the spirit of our minds and to put on the new self created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness." By grace, we have been forgiven. We have been forgiven of our sins, and so God, now, because of his grace, has demonstrated mercy to us, and we now have life. New lives that have been given to us through Jesus Christ. And when this new life begins, there is now this transformation process that also begins, and we are therefore, as Paul said in Second Corinthians, chapter three and verse 18, we are being transformed, as he said, "from one degree of glory to another," until we are eventually transformed into the very image of Christ himself.
But unless we continue to allow God's intervening work to go on in our lives, then like the physical law of entropy, our transformation process is going to run down, and perhaps it might even come to a stop. The apostle Paul in the Philippian letter in Philippians, chapter two said in verse 12, "therefore, my beloved is you have always obeyed, not only is in my presence, but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God in you who works both to will and to work that which is to His good pleasure." And what that is telling us, among many things, is the fact that there is this intervening work of God that is now in our lives because we have new life. We're now children of God, and God is working in us. And as the Apostle Paul points out, we have the responsibility to allow that to go on, to allow that to be something that is he says there in verse 12 that we are thus working out our own salvation with fear and trembling, as God is now intervening in our lives and thus making it possible to be transformed into the image of His Son. But there is one truth that is clearly revealed in the scriptures and that is that the life of a Christian, in the life of a Christian, the possibility, and I would even go so far as to say the reality, is that there are times in our lives when this process of biblical transformation begins to stall out. In other words, our transformation process begins to either slow down. And I would submit to you, in some cases, in the lives of some children of God, it's actually come to a screeching halt. Well, that's what I want to talk to you about this morning. I want to talk to you about this concept of stalled transformation, just exactly what is involved in all of that.
And I am really thankful that I've had this opportunity, both yesterday and today, to be able to be here and to stand before you and deliver these lessons, and I really do hope that they have been encouraging to you as we try to come to a better-- a better grasp, a better understanding of what biblical transformation is all about, because as children of God, we have been called to be transformed. Well, if that's going to happen, we need to know exactly what it is and to know how it is that we can go about accomplishing this with God working in our lives. You know, as children of God, we have this new standing before God as I suggested to you. No longer are we people who are outside, if you will, but we are people who are now inside. We are in Christ, and as a result of that, our position before God changes, our posture before God changes in that respect. But even though that's true, what happens oftentimes, it seems to me, at least I've experienced this in my life, and I don't think I'm unusual in this, I would submit to you that probably all of us who are children of God, particularly those of us who have been Christians for any length of time, we have come to see that there is sometimes in our lives that it becomes evident that our lives do not always reflect the posture or the position that we have in Christ. We live in a fallen world, and living in a fallen world means that we are continually involved in a spiritual war, a conflict, if you will. It's what Paul refers to in Ephesians chapter six, when he talks about how that we are not "wrestling against flesh and blood, but we are wrestling against the principalities and powers, the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places." And it's what Paul talks or Peter talks about over there in second Peter, chapter three, or First Peter, chapter five. I can't remember exactly where its address is right now, but it's the passage that actually tells us that Satan is going about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. That's what we experience as we live in this fallen world in which we now obviously are finding ourselves to be in. And so sometimes what happens is that we wind up losing these spiritual battles that we are involved in, because Satan indeed is a powerful, powerful enemy.
In the book of Galatians, in the fifth chapter, in verses 16 and 17, the apostle Paul encourages us when he says, "But I say, walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh, for the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things that you want to do." And so there is this conflict that is going on between the flesh and the Spirit, so that we oftentimes find that we're not doing what we want to be doing, that we're not doing what God wants us to do. And as we continue to mature in the faith, perhaps those times become less a part of our life. But nonetheless, we still experience it. Over in first John in the first chapter, in verses eight through 10, John tells us that we have this wonderful confidence in knowing that if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with Jesus. But he says in verse eight, "if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us." And I believe that both the passage in Galatians chapter five and First John chapter one, tells us about this conflict that we are involved in, this spiritual war, this battle, if you will, in which sometimes we lose some of the conflicts. Sometimes what also happens is our growth, or our maturity, may slow down and maybe even come to a stop.
You know, I would submit to you, that the apostle Paul not only knew this possibility of this stalled transformation, but the fact is, is that he recognized that this could even be the way his life might turn out if he did not discipline himself the way he knew to discipline himself. He himself wrote in First Corinthians, chapter nine in verse 27 where he said, "but I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others, I myself should be disqualified." So the Apostle Paul recognized that this was a reality in his own life. And in fact, Paul was very much aware of the fact that the transformation process that often times is stalled in the lives of many Christians with something that was being a problem at the church at Corinth. In response to this, he wrote him a letter, and I believe that as you read through First Corinthians, one of the most basic things that you get out of it is that he is trying to first of all, identify the very nature of the gospel message itself, but then perhaps in a much more significant and a practical way, what he is trying to do is to help these Corinthians understand how this new relationship with God through Christ is to be lived out in the natural course of their lives. And within this letter Paul addresses this idea of stalled transformation of these believers. In fact, he lists three main factors in first Corinthians three that we're going to go to in just a minute, three factors that cause their transformation process to come to a stall. Now there are perhaps many things that we could look at that you might be able to identify that would be, indeed be reasons why people oftentimes have this problem of the of their transformation not going is what they would like for it to go, or perhaps not being as far along in the process as they might like to see it be. But I would submit to you that the verses we're going to be looking at deal with three things that I believe you can use, kind of it as an umbrella, that everything else that you can come up with is going to fall into one of these three categories that we're going to be looking at.
And so that's what I want us to do, is to think about this concept of stalled transformation and I would invite you now to turn your Bibles to First Corinthians chapter three. And I want to read the first three verses. And it will be primarily from this text that we're going to look at how stalled transformation does, in fact, occur in the lives of people. First Corinthians chapter three, beginning there in verse one, Paul says, "But I brothers could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you are not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way?"
Now, before I begin the process of unpacking the things that I want to say taken out of these three verses, I want to spend just a few minutes doing a little bit of review. I know many of you were not here yesterday, and so therefore you didn't get to hear what is kind of the building of these series of lessons. And for those of you who were here, it's going to be a review for those of you who weren't here, it's going to be something that is not, hopefully not going to be anything new, but it'll be something that just continues to remind you of things that we need to be aware of. So I want to begin by simply reviewing the concept of the process of transformation itself. Transformation, as we pointed out, starts with new life that is given to us as a free gift by the grace of God. As Paul said in Ephesians chapter two, beginning in verse eight, "For by grace, have you been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast." And so we receive new life. And as a result of this new life, as we come to God through faith in Jesus Christ, we do this in obedience to the gospel. And that brings us then into a different position, where we are no longer looked upon by God as sinful people who are dead, but we are looked upon as spiritual people, his children, who are now alive in Christ. As Paul said in Galatians, three verses 26 and 27 he said that you are "all the children of God through faith in Jesus Christ. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ, did put on Christ." And from that passage that I quoted in Second Corinthians, chapter five and verse 17, "if you are in Christ, then you are a new creation." And being a new creation, he goes on to say that the old things have passed away, and the new things have come. And as we saw from Ephesians four, what that means is that the old man, the old self, is to be put off, and the new self, or the new man, is, in fact, to be put on. And so because of the new life that we have in Christ, biblical transformation is now possible. As I pointed out in the first lesson that we talked about yesterday morning, new life does not come because I think I can become a better person if, in fact, our. Whole concept of transformation is, is this idea, this idea that I'm just going to change and I'm going to do what I can to kind of pull myself up by my bootstraps, I'm going to turn over a new leaf, and I'm going to become a better person. That is not biblical transformation. Biblical transformation begins first with new life. And if you do not have new life, then you do not have even the capacity or the capability of actually being transformed into what God wants you to be, because you're still spiritually dead. So there has to be this new life that is given to us. We need to get in our minds that we are not saved by our works, we have to understand that moralism is never going to change us. And I would submit to you that neither of those two things, the idea of moralism just being a good moral person, or the idea that I can save myself by my works, neither of those two things are the message of the gospel. The message of the gospel is Jesus Christ. And the message of the gospel is that by coming to God, through Jesus Christ, we now receive new life by His grace, and now we have the capacity, as well as now having the reason for transformation. As Paul said in Ephesians two verse 10 after he says, you're not saved by your works, he goes on to say, but we are His workmanship, created in Christ unto good works. So we just can't sit back on our laurels and think everything's okay. I'm now saved. God has saved us for a reason, and that is to bring glory to him by the way that we change our lives. And now allowing God to be the one who controls us in all of this.
And so through the new life that we have received in Christ, we now begin the process of transformation, allowing God to work in us, shaping our lives so as to be transformed into the image of Jesus, as Paul, again, says in Second Corinthians, three, verse 18, from one degree of glory to another. And as I pointed out to you in our studies yesterday, this is a process that is indeed a lifelong process. It is something that is never completed in this life. And if we think that we have arrived, and I'm going to talk about that a little bit this evening, if we think we have arrived, we are perhaps, perhaps the most blinded by what is the reality, and that is that in this life, we are yet continuing in this process until finally at the consummation, when everything is brought to its end and the new creation is now brought into existence. That's when we will be finally conformed to the very image of Jesus himself. So going through this life, engaging process, and indeed doing it as we seek to bring God into this process, as we have become his children, we learn this part, and that is that man, this is difficult. It is an extremely difficult process, because we still live in a fallen world. And although we are saved from our sins, we still struggle with sin. And as John wrote in First John chapter one, if you say that's not the case with you, then you are a liar. If that is not the case with you, at least if that's what you think in your mind, not only are you a liar, but you're making God a liar. So we struggle with this. There is this, this conflict, this spiritual conflict, that is going on in each one of us. The flesh is lusting against the Spirit, and the spirit is against the flesh. And if we are going to succeed in this transformation process, then we need to be fully aware of the reality of the spiritual war that is within each one of us, almost a civil war, if you will, within each one of us, as we are fighting ourselves, the old self, fighting the new self, the spirit, fighting the flesh. It is a conflict that we all engage in, and it's going to continue until we no longer are part of this life, but we enter into eternity.
And so this transformation process becomes something that is difficult, and it is this difficult nature of the transformation process, then that creates the condition that causes transformation to become stalled out in the lives of many people. And unless it's recognized that this transformation process can stall out, then we will not be on our guard to prevent it from happening in our own lives. And I think a good example of that is this group of Christians at Corinth that Paul addressed here in this letter that he wrote and the things that he said to them. So with that, I want us to look again at First Corinthians, chapter three. And as we look through this, we see, first of all, that the church at Corinth, they were a people -- they were made up of a group of people who had placed their faith in Jesus. These were people who had moved from spiritual and moral darkness to spiritual and moral light. And in fact, Paul addresses them in First Corinthians, chapter one and verse two, he says "to the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ, Jesus called to be saints, together with all those who in every place, call upon the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours. Paul identifies these people as you're my brothers and sisters, you are people who have been saved. And then in First Corinthians, chapter six, he kind of identifies the manner of lives that they had lived prior to becoming children of God, in which he points out in verse nine, he says, "or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived, neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. "Now that's quite a litany of things, but listen to what he says in the next verse, and he says, "And such were some of you." Such were some of you. "But you were washed, you were sanctified. You were justified in the name of Jesus, the Lord Jesus Christ, and by the Spirit of our God." And so what Paul is telling them is that you were once these very people, these people who engaged in these kinds of sinful activities. But you have been washed, you have been sanctified. You have been set apart. You have been called by God through Christ, and you have responded, and you, as a result of that, have become Christians. So he understands that these are people who are Christians. But what he also understands is that at least many in this group had experienced this problem of this transformation process being stalled. As he says there again in First Corinthians, three, verse one, he says, "Brothers, I cannot address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ." Now I want to submit to you that Paul is not saying here that he believes they've lost their salvation, at least not yet. But there is no question that these were people who had lost the forward momentum in their daily lives of being transformed.
And the question is, is why was this the case? What caused all of this? Why had they lost this forward this forward momentum that they had begun with? Why did the transformation process stall in them? Well, I want to suggest to you three things that you can find within this text, at least, that I have found within the text that I believe, as I said, serves as kind of an umbrella that you can put everything else under. So let's look at those three things that I want to suggest to you. Number one is this, and that was the fact that they simply were people who failed to grow up and mature in the faith. Again, reading verses one through the first part of verse three, he says, "Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ." Some translations will say babes, but the idea is infancy. And he says, "I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready for you are still of the flesh." These Corinthians were acting like spiritual babies. They were failing to grow as they should. Paul says By this time, they should have been eating solid spiritual food, but instead he is saying you are still needing to stay on the spiritual milk because they had not matured as they should have been maturing. Interestingly enough, this is the same problem that the audience of the Hebrew writer was addressing. You see this in Hebrews chapter five. We're beginning in verse 11, writing to these Jewish Christians who were very, very much in danger of going back to the old system of Judaism, for which there was absolutely no means by which God could save people, although it was used to identify the fact that they needed a Savior, could never save. And he says to them, in Hebrews five, beginning in verse 11, "about this, we have much to say," speaking about the Melchizedekian priesthood, which is one of those kind of things, that even if you can pronounce the name right, you're doing good. And these people had no concept of this, at least not a proper concept. And he said, I have much to say. It's hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. "For though by this time, you ought to be teachers. You need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk and not solid food. For everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is child, But solid food is for the mature, for those who have the powers of discernment, trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil." So you see, this was not just a unique problem with the brothers and sisters at Corinth. It was a problem for these Jewish Christians wherever they were, and I suspect it had to deal with the these Jews who had gone through what was called the diaspora, who had been dispersed. But whatever the case, there was always this ubiquitous problem of spiritual immaturity. They had not grown. And the fact is that when Christians fail to take seriously the need to continually mature in the faith, whether it be by neglect or whether it be by thinking that they've already arrived, then they have set themselves up for the transformation process to become, to come to a standstill.
Number two is this, these were people who continually were experiencing the problem of jealousy and strife, as he says there in the latter part of verse three, he says, For while there is jealousy and strife among you. Are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? These Corinthian Christians are in competition with each other, so to speak. And the reason for that is because they were debating as to who was the best teacher, who were they going to follow? As he pointed out in the first part of the first chapter, he said, there are those among you. There's divisions among you. And he said, there's some of you are saying, I am of Apollo, I am of Paul. Some, I am of Peter. Some, I am of Christ. Some, I am of Apollos. So they have this, this running debate as to who's the best teacher. And the result of that was they became envious of one another, causing them to take their focus off of the very one who had brought them into the position of being saved before God Almighty, and that is Jesus. They had taken their focus off Christ, even those who said that they were focused on Christ were not really focused on Christ. They were focused on division, on who is the best here. Jealousy and the strife that results is an extreme form of selfishness, and what it does is it causes us to obsess about our lives, or perhaps obsess about the lives of others, which then causes us to obsess about our own lives, which causes us then to take our focus off of Christ. And that's one of the things that James spoke about over in the book of James in the fourth chapter, when he is addressing what is it that is causing conflict among these people? Listen to what he says here in James chapter four, in verses one and two, where he says, "what causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this that your passions are at war within you? You desire and you do not have? So you murder, you covet and cannot obtain? So you fight and Quarrel." This was again a ubiquitous problem among the early Christians, and I would submit to you, it continues to be a problem among children of God, even today. This is one of the reasons why people's transformation begins the process of stalling out. And I would submit to you that when jealousy prevails in a person's life, this is something that leads to wanting what others have, instead of wanting Jesus, and it moves a person away from being transformed into the image of Christ, and it moves him towards things like personal promotions, personal ego, which inevitably is going to wind up creating strife, and it's going to bring transformation to a standstill. So that's the second thing that caused it, their jealousies and stripes, the pettiness that existed among the group. And then the third thing is the fact that these were people who were living like the world lives. And that's basically the whole context of these verses in chapter three.
I want you to note here that there are three times within these three verses that Paul accuses these Corinthian Christians as being people who are carnal. Now, if you're using a more modern translation, it'll use of the flesh, something of that nature, and that's essentially what this is talking about. These Christians were people of the flesh. These Christians were not acting like people with new lives, being controlled and being changed by God, but instead, they were acting like people who are controlled by the fallen world in which they live, and the way people of this world act is by being controlled by their animal appetites, by being governed by their sensual nature, instead of being governed by God's Holy Spirit. And this way of acting is the way of the old self that Paul says in Ephesians four is to be put off, and it should go without saying, therefore, that transformation is going to come to a complete. Up when the old self of sin, once again takes control of the way a person is living his life. So these are the three things that I want to submit to you are like an umbrella, and you can put them all up there, the failure to grow up, this problem of jealousy and strife and living like the world lives, these are the things that will invariably cause people's transformation to stall and maybe, in fact, even come to a stop.
Well, how do we deal with that? How do we prevent this transformation from stalling. Or perhaps maybe it'd be better to ask the question, What can we do to get it started back again if it's already come to a kind of a to a stall or to a stop? Well, I want to suggest to you, I think I have four things here that we're going to look at, A, B, C, nope. Three, three things that we're going to look at. Number one is this, there has to be the willingness to exercise spiritually. Now, what does that mean to exercise spiritually? Transformation will always come to a stop when Christians fail to grow and to mature as they're supposed to, as we noted from what was written in the Hebrew letter, the failed to mature is, in essence, a result of failing to spiritually exercise. Now you look around you, let's let's use the metaphor of physical exercise. When you look around you and you see people who are in pretty bad shape, particularly young people who are in pretty bad shape. And you want to, if you have the courage to go up to them and try to give them some suggestions as to how they might be able to improve their physical life, you might be able to have the courage enough to go up and say, you know, you need to get some exercise, you need to lose some weight, and maybe that'll make you feel a little bit better. We understand how physical exercise is something that is so fundamentally important to our existence as physical human beings. But sometimes I fear that because perhaps we're dealing in the realm of the nebulous or things that are more esoteric, we oftentimes have this tendency to think that spiritual exercise is something that is not really all that important and not all that significant. Again, in Hebrews chapter five, it's made clear that these were people who had not exercised the way that they should have, as he says there in verses 13 and 14, "for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child, but solid food is for the mature, who for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil." Now I'm afraid that many people have the idea that spiritual maturity comes as a result of just reading and studying your Bible. Now, as important as that is, and it is important, and I'm going to have some more to say about that in just a minute, but as important as that is, it does not create spiritually mature Christians who are being transformed into the image of Christ. If all it took was to simply be familiar with your biblical text, to be able to make your way around in all of those 66 books, to be able to find some of the obscure texts, perhaps to be able to have in depth knowledge of some of the more obscure concepts. Then, if that's the case, all of these theologians up in these seminaries should be the first ones who get in their ticket punch to go to heaven, but I would submit to you that many of them are people who, in some cases, do not even believe in God, although they know their Bibles. I guess what I'm trying to say here is that it's just not enough to know what the Bible says. What's important, perhaps, is the most important is the fact that there is this constant practice, this training by practice, as as the Hebrew writer says here. It's exercising, or, in other words, putting into practice what we have learned. You might remember James wrote in James chapter one, beginning in verse 21 how that we are to understand that we have been saved by the word of God, to receive with meekness, this implanted word which is able to save your souls. But then he goes on to say, "but do not be hearers only deceiving yourselves, but be doers of the word." We have to implement it into our lives.
So how do we do this then? How do we spiritually exercise? Knowing the Word of God. Well, the first thing is, first thing is this, and that is to know the Word of God, to spend time in His Word. Psalm, 119 verse 97, in fact, the whole of Psalm, 119 is the longest chapter in the Bible, 150 verses. And all it is is the greatest, the greatest chapter of praise for the Word of God. And in this particular psalm, in verse 97 he says, "Oh, how I love your law. It is my meditation all the day." Again, as I've noted with you, practicing what we learn from the Scripture is something that is critical in maturing spiritually. But it goes without saying that practicing what we learn requires first of all an information of truth to learn. In other words, there has to be a body of information by which we are now making our decisions, our world views, all of these things that are important to the way that we live and that requires time in the Word of God. We cannot be transformed without the truth. And to get the truth requires spending time with the Scriptures, both in the worship assemblies and in our private, our personal times as we spend time with God's word.
Number two is this, spend time praying. You know, there are so many passages that talk about the importance of prayer. The one that probably most people just rolls off of their tongue is First Thessalonians, chapter five, verse 17, where Paul says to pray without ceasing. There are many passages that talk about the importance of this continual communication with God. Talking to God is a fundamental spiritual exercise that is critical in keeping this transformation process going forward in a Christian's life. And I'm not just talking about praying like at worship services, or perhaps the perfunctory prayers that we offer when we sit down to a meal or as we're putting our children to bed, although those are important. But what I am saying is that it is a continual conversation that we are in an intimate relationship with the Lord, and I would submit to you that if we're going to prevent our transformation from stalling out, we're always going to be talking to God, however you characterize that. You're always going to be, I will always be, in communication with the Lord, talking to him, having intimate conversation with him, because of the intimate relationship I share with him through Christ.
And then the third one is this, spend time with other Christians. In Acts the second chapter, and I'm not going to take the time to read this, but you will note that in Acts the second chapter, when these Jews became Christians, they were continually with one another. Perhaps I'm going out on a limb here, but I'm going to say this. I've said it back home, where I've lived, and that is that I believe one of the great things that came out of the COVID pandemic, if in fact, there's anything good that came out of that, was the realization by children of God that we need each other. And I really do believe that many children of God did not have that concept until they were closed from their assembly halls, that they could not gather together, that whatever this social experiment that was going on which utterly failed, it was Christians who began to understand it first. We need each other. I want to tell you this, that if you want to make sure that your transformation stops, then stop being around other Christians. But on the other hand, if you want to make sure that your transformation is going forward, then you need to spend time with Christians who are seeking to be transformed, just like you are seeking to be transformed. The fact is, we need each other, and we need each other to aid each other, to help each other, to be encouraged by each other, to hold each other accountable. The Apostle Paul speaks about it again in a familiar text to all of us, Galatians chapter six, verse one, "brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you, who are spiritual, should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ." This is talking about how much we need community. We need to spend time with other Christians.
We need to spend time sharing the gospel message. You know, when Jesus sent His disciples out with the Great Commission, he told them go into all the world and preach the gospel, Acts chapter eight verse four, that's exactly what they did. They went everywhere, preaching and teaching the gospel message. The message of the Gospel is powerful. We've seen it in our own lives, have we not? And as we see the powerful change that has occurred in our life, I want to submit to you that if we ever lose the sense of that power in the lives of other people, then what's going to happen is we're going to lose the sense of that power in our own lives. If we don't think the gospel message can change people today, then why would we think the gospel message is going to change us? So as we go about talking to people about it, they may never respond, but you know what happens to us? We become even more confirmed that this is the truth, and by continuing to do this, as we seek to spread the message of the gospel, we reinforce the power of it in our own lives, resulting in transformation going forward.
And then the last thing I would submit to you in spiritual exercise is to simply spend time serving other people. Paul writes in Galatians, chapter six, verses nine and 10, "let us not grow weary of doing good for in due season, we will reap if we do not give up. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are the household of faith." Doing what we can and serving others will keep transformation going forward, because it lifts our eyes from our own personal what we perceive to be needs or our own slights, personal slights that we think have happened to us. It'll lift our eyes from that, and it'll help us be able to expand our vision so that we really see those who truly are in need. And as we do what we can then in serving other people, we become more like Jesus, because Jesus's whole life was spent serving people around him. As he said, I did not come to be served, but I came to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. So just as physical exercise helps us in changing physically, so does spiritual exercise help in keeping this transformation process alive and going forward in each of our lives, helping us to become more and more like Jesus.
We also need to keep our focus on Jesus. I can't tell you how important that is. When we take our focus off of Jesus, and when we put it on others or ourselves, then jealousy and strife, as Paul points out in the first Corinthian letter there, jealousy and strife is inevitable. It is going to occur. And so instead of our focus being that way, focusing on self or focusing on others, we need to keep our focus on Jesus, and as we keep our focus on Him, keeping our focus heaven bound, then what happens is we have the true capacity to be able to have the true vision that we need to be able to go and live the lives that are being transformed. As the Apostle Paul wrote in the Colossian letter. In Colossians chapter three, beginning there in the first verse, he says, there, "if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things that are above, not on things that are on the earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God." And our attitudes need to be those of building each other up, instead of focusing upon me and myself or my little perhaps idiosyncrasies. Instead what we need to be doing is focusing upon how we can build each other up in the faith, as Paul points out in Romans chapter 12, rejoicing with those that rejoice, weeping with those that weep, being an encouragement to one another as God would have us to be, which goes back to the point I was making about how we need community. When we focus on Jesus and when we work to build each other up, jealousy and strife will have no room to develop, and thus we will not stall in our transformation.
And then here's the last point, and that is simply this, remember who you are. If you're a Christian, you are a new creation right now. You are a new creation, as Paul says in Second Corinthians, 5:17, if you are in Christ, you're a new creation. Old things have passed away, and new things have come. In being transformed we are to put off this old self, but if the old self once again takes hold and we live like people of the world, then it's a sure thing that transformation is going to stop. I think that one of the saddest descriptions and one of the greatest tragedies that can be said of Christians who are not being transformed as they ought to be, is what Paul says in First Corinthians, chapter three and verse three, when he says, "You are behaving only in a human way," and we don't want to behave that way as God's people. We want to behave in a way that magnifies and praises the God who brought us into a position of salvation through His Son. Transformation, by its very nature, means that something is happening in our lives. Something that is significantly different from the ways of the world. We have been given new life, empowering us to live a new way of life. We are new creatures, part of a new creation created in Christ, Jesus to live new lives of holiness and righteousness. We need to remember who we are: new creatures in Christ. And that will keep our transformation going forward, and we will then not settle for this paltry, inferior ways of the world that Paul characterizes as behaving only in a human way.
So the law of entropy, it's a law that says energy and matter is running out, and as it does so, things will continue to decrease, and everything is eventually going to come to a grinding halt, unless there is intervention that's not the intent of God's life for us. That's not the intent of what it means to be a Christian. God creates new life in us, and he wants to transform our everyday lives into the image of His Son through the power of the gospel. The Apostle Paul said in Second Corinthians, four, verse 16, and I realized that the context is a little bit different than the way what I talking about. But nonetheless, the principle is there, and that is when he says, though our outer self is wasting away, our new self is being renewed day by day, our inner self is being renewed day by day, that's the process that we're talking about. And by constantly being involved in spiritual exercise, focusing on Jesus, rejoicing and celebrating with one another, and remembering who we are, new creatures in Christ, then by the power that God exercises in us, we can be transformed into the image of Christ. And let me say to you this I bring this lesson to its conclusion. If you have found that your transformation has stalled, or if it's come to a stop in some way, then it's time to make a decision. And my encouragement to you would be decide that this stalling is no longer going to be an option, and instead choose to allow the transformation process to begin once again in your life, and in so doing, find your life being changed, being changed in a way that probably you couldn't even fathom yourself, because that's the very nature of the power of God working in us. And if you're not yet a child of God, as I have said multiple times, and I'm sure has been said many times from this pulpit by Kenny and by other men who have preceded him, that if, in fact, you are not in Christ, then you do not have new life. And if you do not have new life, I don't care how moral you try to live your life, you are still dead, spiritually dead. The only place in which real change is going to occur is when you are made alive again in Christ, new life, which then facilitates transformation. If you know what you need to do to become a Christian, we would encourage you to do that. If you need to study to be even more informed about what does God want? How do I become a child of God? I'm sure that there are people in this assembly who would be willing to study with you, but if you understand what you need to do, we're going to sing a song of invitation. Take advantage of the opportunity. Let us be people who are children of God, those of us who are children of God continue this transformation process. Thank you all for listening.
