Let’s take sugar and water. When we mix the two, we get sugar water. There’s no mystery there. We tie a string to a pencil, drop it inside, and sugar crystals start to form on the string.
How do the sugar crystals taste? Salty? Bitter? Like lemons? Of course not. They taste like sugar, because we are getting back the exact same sugar we put in the glass.
That’s the religious experience of a person who does not truly commit to Christ. When we pull him or her out of the church, everything is exactly the same as before.
Better is the Christian who is changed by his experience with Christ, and who no longer resembles who she was before coming into contact with the Deity of all deities.
We need to be irretrievably superglued with Christ, baked with him into a cake, and knitted into a new garment that does not resemble the old. Superglue makes two things as one, and to pull them apart damages both. Sugar in cake? It is permanently changed by the baking process. Knitting? Those long threads can become socks, scarves, or cloaks to keep us warm in the worst the weather can throw against us.
Let’s look at knitting. It is an extensive, step-by-step process. For a long time, the pile of yarn still looks like yarn. However, as our needles slowly click away, we begin to see what we will become.
Psalm 139:13-16 says:
“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.”
We are knitted together stitch-by-stitch by the Great Creator. How wonderful is that? Now let’s look at how the modern day Christian is knitted together into a wonderfully made garment that is pleasing to Christ.
Knitting Stitch #1:
1 John 1:9. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
With each sin forgiven, the knitting needles click along, and we are interwoven much more closely with Christ. We become bonded with him.
Knitting Stitch #2:
Acts 13:39. “And by him everyone who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses.”
It is our faith that allows the world to slough away and for Christ to shape us into something new. We become a new garment in his hands.
Knitting Stitch #3:
John 3:16. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
When we give up something treasured to provide for someone else, it is a locking stitch that can be undone only with the greatest of difficulty. God gave us his most precious possession.
Knitting Stitch #4:
Nahum 1:3. “The Lord is slow to anger and great in power, and the Lord will by no means clear the guilty. His way is in whirlwind and storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet.”
It is those who walk uprightly before Christ who will become part of his tapestry. Those who abandon him will be cast aside.
We can choose to be sugar in water, and we will never change. We will sweeten for the moment, but we will not be changed. Or we can be woven into something new and precious, something useful to others, something that will make us into a new creation in Christ.
Becoming like Jesus is a process. Being like Jesus is our goal.
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