What makes a life Christian? What marks a soul entangled with the Divine through Jesus Christ? According to the apostle in his second letter to the Corinthians, it is the experience of transformation:
12 Since we have such a hope, we are very bold…17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18 And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. –2Corinthians 3:12, 17-18.
Because Jesus is so great, explains Paul, “beholding” Him in close quarters transforms us. The word he uses for “being transformed” is the passive of the verb, metamorpho’oe (μεταμορφόω). We whose faces have been unveiled through conversion, beholding the glory of this Lord, are being transformed (μεταμορφόω) into the same glorious Image. Paul uses the same word in his letter to the Romans to describe what happens to followers of Christ as they worship (Romans 12:1-2). It is the Greek word that gives us the English: metamorphosis, the idea of profound and glorious change. Biologists snatched up the poignancy of this word to label the transformation from a tadpole to a fully functional frog, or a caterpillar to a butterfly.
As I have written, we must affirm this reality when facing desires in ourselves we come to see are wrong. To those with strong desires that run against the marriage covenant that God gives, or those impelled to imitate a different gender, this message is critical. Same-sex attraction is no death sentence. For those in Christ, change is not only possible. it is inevitable. And it is not just meager modification. It is metamorphosis “from one degree of glory to another.”
I have been a pastor a long time. I know that struggles can feel quite overwhelming and that change sometimes takes time. But—and I also know this from being a pastor—the Holy Spirit is in the business of working profound change in people through Christ. We do a great disservice to hide this from those seeking change in their desires.
The gospel writers use the same word to describe the glorious change that the three close disciples, dumbfounded and befuddled, witnessed in their Teacher on the top of a mountain (Matthew 17:12, Mark 9:2-3). He metamorphosed before them. His face, in fact, shone like the sun. His dress became dazzling white, whiter, says Mark, than any earthly process could bleach them.
You, disciple, He is taking up that mountain also. God is bleaching your clothes in Christ likewise. He is making your soul more dazzling than any earthly process could do.
To say less is to dishonor this Lord.