37. Your Resurrected Life (LifeLift #4)

The difference between the old and the new is so radically different that no part of the first would make you possibly think it could become the second.

For virtually every day one summer I wore my day-camp shirt when I was a kid. It was from a church camp. Yellow with green words. And a green outline of a butterfly.

The shirt displayed the 2 Corinthians verse we just discussed on it, written in small print, on the front. The words NEW CREATION were highlighted to stand out, somehow signifying something about the butterfly.

Think about where butterflies come from— because this illustrates the point perfectly. A weary caterpillar makes its way to a branch, creates a cocoon, and hibernates. In time, although it seems that nothing has happened, the insect struggles and pushes its way through the hiding place…

A completely different creature emerges— something so incredibly better and qualitatively different that there’s no recognition between what existed before and what exists now. In fact, the discrepancy between the old and the new is so radically different that no part of the first would make you possibly think it could become the second.

One of the guys in a 12-step small group I attended last year told me this: “Somewhere I read that a caterpillar doesn’t just go into a cocoon and grow wings. Instead, everything about that caterpillar dissolves… into nothing. It goes away. It’s just goo that’s left. Then, miraculously, once it’s nothing, the Lord starts rebuilding it into the butterfly.”.

“It’s almost like the caterpillar has to lose it’s life— or what it thought was its life— in order to find it,” I said, recalling Jesus’ words from Matthew 10:39.

That is the Gospel. This is the life you’ve been given. It’s a totally new life, a resurrected life, an unrecognizable life which is void of any semblance from the past.

Yes, we’ve exchanged our old life for the life of Christ. We haven’t just traded the current version of ourselves for a clean version.

Why does it matter?

It matters b/c it makes all the difference in the world…