Friday, April 30

You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. – Ephesians 4:22-24


What an amazing passage!

The Greek expression Paul uses to describe our spiritual lives actually has to do with dressing and undressing. He is telling us to take off our old selves the way we would take off old dirty clothes and to put on our new selves as we would put on a new jacket or new pair of pants. Oh, if only it were that easy! The truth is that many of us still like our old ratty clothes. Even those of us who want to get rid of them and try to take them off, find that they cling tightly to us and are not as easy to get out of as we thought. Sometimes we try to put our new self on overtop of our old self, but that only gives us temporary, surface level changes. We find that we are really no different at all because our old smelly clothes are still there underneath the new ones, just as stinky and rotten as ever.

Spiritually speaking, we are not capable of undressing ourselves. Just like little children (see yesterday’s devotion) we need help to get undressed. Nobody has described this process better than C.S. Lewis in the third book of his Narnian Chronicles, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The following passages describe how the boy, Eustace Scrubb, who had become a dragon, finally got “undragoned”.

The water was as clear as anything and I thought if I could get in there and bathe, it would ease the pain in my leg. But the lion told me I must undress first… I suddenly thought that dragons are snaky sort of things and snakes can cast their skins. Oh, of course, thought I, that’s what the lion means. So I started scratching myself and my scales began coming off all over the place. And then I scratched a little deeper, and instead of just scales coming off here and there, my whole skin started peeling off beautifully, like it does after an illness or as if I was a banana. In a minute or two I just stepped out of it. I could see it lying there beside me, looking rather nasty. It was a most lovely feeling. So I started to go down into the well for my bathe.

But just as I was going to put my feet in the water I looked down and saw that they were all hard and rough and wrinkled and scaly just as they had been before. Oh, that’s all right, said I, it only means I had another smaller suit on underneath the first one, and I’ll have to get out of it too. So I scratched and tore again and this underskin peeled off beautifully and out I stepped and left it lying beside the other one and went down to the well for my bathe.

Well, exactly the same thing happened again. And I thought to myself, oh dear, however many skins have I got to take off? For I was longing to bathe my leg. So I scratched away for the third time and got off a third skin, just like the two others, and stepped out of it. But as soon as I looked at myself in the water I knew it had been no good.

Then the lion said… “You will have to let me undress you.” I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.

The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off…he peeled the beastly stuff right off…and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I’d turned into a boy again.

Prayer
Lord Jesus, I am tired of wearing this old self around, and I am weary of trying to take off in my own strength. I want the new self that you have for me. I confess that I cannot even dress myself. Please help me to become the person you created me to be. Amen

Jeff Frazier