Creation Corner
Metamorphosis
By Jim Doenges
Monthly Series: October 2006
The American Heritage Dictionary defines metamorphosis as: “(1) a transformation; (2) a marked change in appearance character, condition, or function.” People have long marveled how many of God’s creatures undergo dramatic metamorphosis during their lives. These radical changes in the lives of individual animals are amazing!
Here are just three of many examples:
About 88 percent of all insects undergo a complete metamorphosis during their lives, typically from egg, to larva, to pupa, to adult. Larva and adults often live in completely different environments and eat different foods. One example is the well known Monarch Butterfly. The Monarch larva — or caterpillar — hatches from an egg and is dependant on the milkweed plant. Milkweed is common throughout North America. The caterpillar eats the leaves of the milkweed and then undergoes a dramatic metamorphosis within a pupa (or chrysalis) — a cocoon-like structure — and emerges as the brightly colored orange and black-winged adults. God created about 17,500 species of butterflies, and they all undergo some kind of metamorphosis. Butterfly pavilions (zoos for butterflies) are becoming more common in the United States, and anyone who has ever visited one can attest to the vividness and variety of bright colors our Creator painted butterflies with. Butterflies are the only insects that have scales covering their wings. Almost amazing as their metamorphosis is the Monarch’s migration to their wintering grounds in the forests of the Sierra Madre Mountains of Mexico. They gather there by the millions. The largest threat to the Monarchs is logging of their winter habitat; widespread use of pesticides also kills many nontarget species, such as the Monarch.
Most school children are aware of the amazing transformation of a tadpole (or polliwog) into an adult frog. After hatching from an egg, frogs in the tadpole stage have external gills, no legs, a finned tail, and specialized mouthparts for herbivorous feeding (algae or vegetation). Tadpoles look and act completely different from adult frogs. In less than a season, the metamorphosis to an adult frog is completed. First, the tadpole grows hind limbs, then forelimbs emerge, and the gills are replaced by lungs. The tail gradually shortens by reabsorption as the frog becomes an adult, which is now a carnivore (usually eating anything it can get in its mouth). The 2,700 species of frogs and toads throughout the world are good indicators of environmental stress due to their permeable skin, and sensitivity to water chemistry. While large-scale trends in amphibian populations show considerable variability over time and from place to place, populations of frogs have been declining for several decades. Causes of the declines are often unknown, but may include habitat destruction (especially wetlands), chemical contamination, introduction of predators to areas where God did not put them, global climate change, acidic precipitation, or combinations of these factors.
The American eel is a fish. The eel was formerly a commercially valuable species. Even though they have slimy skin, they are good eating. (I thank one of the best biology professors I ever had, Dr. John Poluhowich, for giving me an eel cookbook.) American Eels lead amazing lives and unlike most fish, they undergo a dramatic metamorphosis! Adult eels migrate out of rivers, streams, and estuaries along the eastern coast of North America and spawn in the central Atlantic Ocean. A large female eel can produce up to 20 million eggs. Larval eels hatch from the eggs and drift like plankton with the ocean current. The larvae are called “glass eels” – tiny, transparent, leaf-shaped creatures that bear no resemblance to an adult eel. Glass eels undergo a metamorphosis into “elvers,” an advanced juvenile stage about the size of a match stick. Elvers migrate to the eastern coast of North America and swim up estuaries, rivers, and streams where they grow to be adults. Some eels travel hundreds of miles up rivers and streams. Adults live for 6 to 10 years and grow to be three feet long before returning to the sea to spawn. Studies of eels in Quebec, New York, Virginia, and South Carolina indicate that populations of eels have declined significantly. Dams and other impediments to their movement have eliminated eels from many of their historical habitats.
The Christian life experience involves a kind of metamorphosis. Following Jesus results in transformation! Indeed, the butterfly is often used in churches as a symbol for that transformation that occurs through a life in Christ. But unlike animals the outward appearance of our bodies does not change, although there are profound changes in our character, condition, and function.
At first, our external appearance may not be much different after an encounter with Jesus. Going to church on Sundays does not make you a Christian any more than being in a garage makes you a car. But God begins His great inside job within us. As the Apostle Paul explained to the early Christians in Corinth, “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17). This redemption is the restoration and fulfillment of God’s purposes in creation and takes place in Christ, through whom all things were made and in whom all things are restored or created anew. “And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into His likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18).
Unlike the metamorphosis of animals that is restricted to a distinct time of their life-cycle, our metamorphosis is designed by God to be continuous this side of heaven. God accepts us as we are, where ever we are, and whatever we have done. But he does not leave us there. God is in the transformation business! We are continually changed to become more and more like Jesus. Theologians call this process sanctification. Jesus uses this word in His powerful prayer for His disciples recorded in John 17: 13-19, and Paul used the word in his letters to the people in Thessalonica:
- “It is by God’s will that you should be sanctified” (1 Thessalonians 4:3).
- “May God Himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through” (1 Thessalonians 5:23).
- “But we ought always to thank God for you, brothers loved by the Lord, because from the beginning God chose you to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth. He called you to this through our gospel that you might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (2 Thessalonians 2:13-14)
We can all grow in our capacity to hold and share God’s love, and know the joy, peace, and hope that is accessible only through Christ Jesus. This is accomplished through the power of the Holy Spirit, the truth of God’s Word, and the practice of spiritual disciplines both individually and within the encouraging environment of the local body of Christ (the church).
Oswald Chambers died in 1917 at the age of 43. Some lecture he gave to a college in England and devotionals he gave at a YMCA were later compiled by his wife into the classic book, My Utmost for His Highest. Writing about sanctification, Chambers noted:
“The reason some of us have not entered into the experience of sanctification is that we have not realized the meaning of sanctification from God’s perspective. Sanctification means being made one with Jesus so that the nature that controlled Him will control us. Are we really prepared for what that will cost? It will cost absolutely everything in us which is not of God. … The resounding evidence of the Holy Spirit in a person’s life is the unmistakable family likeness to Jesus Christ, and the freedom from everything which is not like Him. Are we prepared to set ourselves apart for the Holy Spirit’s work in us? … When I pray, ‘Lord show me what sanctification means for me,’ He will show me. It means being made one with Jesus. Sanctification is not something Jesus puts in me — it is Himself in me (see 1 Corinthaians 1:30). … Sanctification means nothing less than the holiness of Jesus becoming mine and being exhibited in my life. … Sanctification means the impartation of the holy qualities of Jesus Christ to me. It is the gift of His patience, love, holiness, faith, purity, and godliness that is exhibited in and though every sanctified soul. Sanctification is not drawing from Jesus the power to be holy — it is drawing from Jesus the very holiness that was exhibited in Him, and that He now exhibits in me. Sanctification is an impartation, not an imitation. Imitation is something altogether different. The perfection of everything is in Jesus Christ, and the mystery of sanctification is that all the perfect qualities of Jesus are at my disposal. Consequently, I slowly but surely begin to live a life of inexpressible order, soundness, and holiness — ‘kept by the power of God’ (1Peter 1:5).”
Henri Nouwen was a Canadian pastor who died in 1996 after writing many wonderful devotional books. In his book, Making All Things New, Nouwen wrote:
“Our lives are destined to become like the life of Jesus. … Only when we recognize the radical purpose of Jesus’ ministry will we be able to understand the meaning of the spiritual life. Everything that belongs to Jesus is given us to receive. All that Jesus does we may also do. Jesus does not speak about us as second-class citizens. He does not withhold anything from us: ‘I have made known to you everything I have learned from my Father’ (John 15:15); ‘whoever believes in me will perform the same works as I do myself’ (John 14:12). … He became like us so that we might become like him. He did not cling to his equality with God, but emptied Himself and became as we are so that we might become like Him and thus share in His divine life. This radical transformation of our lives is the work of the Holy Spirit.”
God created animals that undergo dramatic metamorphosis in their lives. Unlike the animals, God created you uniquely to bear the very image of Him who made you. God loves you! Just think of the transformation He can accomplish in your life!
Metamorphosis, transformation, sanctification. We say, “YES.” Thank you, Holy Spirit! And amen!
Jim Doenges is the director of Climbing For Christ's Summit Stewards ministry. |