There was an interesting story in Quanta Magazine about metamorphosis. Most are familiar with the biological process where bugs, transform from a larva or caterpillars, into new creatures.
There are varying levels of metamorphosis in our natural world. In the more extreme cases, such as the caterpillar to butterfly transformation, the process creates a completely new creature.
The butterfly is so different, it has to consume a completely different diet in order to survive.
According to Quanta, 80% of insects, amphibians, and marine invertebrates undergo varying levels, of evolution-defying, metamorphic change.
But recently scientists have discovered an interesting thing about the process.
The metamorphosis transformation has a powerful impact on the brain of the insects. I mean a butterfly’s survival is based on an understanding that it can no longer chomp on leaves for nutrition, it must now suck nectar.
According to a study published in elife journal, scientists studying the metamorphosis process in fruit flies specifically tracked their brain neurons and concluded that they probably don’t remember much from their days as a larva.
As they transform from a larva to a fruit fly, their brains are essentially rewired.
In many ways, it confirms the Biblical process that God wants us to go through.
When Jesus taught about the first step of salvation, the Lord talked about how we need to be reborn through the Spirit of God (John 3:3) or as it is more commonly referred to be born again.
Putting our faith in Christ is a restart of life for the believers as we burst out of our cocoons as a butterfly (2 Corinthians 5:17).
But then the Apostle Paul takes it one step further and adds a vital and necessary component needed to complete this remarkable change.
In Romans 12:2, Paul uses the Greek word, metamorphoō, from which we get our English word metamorphosis when he says that we need to be transformed.
But then Paul he adds this important qualifier, that we are transformed by the renewing of our minds.
We are transformed or metamorphized as we change the way we think.
What does this change of thinking involve?
When we are reborn, we become a ‘child of God’ (1 John 3:1) and ‘coheirs with Christ’ (Romans 8:17). We are no longer slaves to this world, but free to serve God.
We not only need to embrace our new identity in Christ, we are required to go through a third step.
Like the biological metamorphosis on Earth, it is a complicated spiritual process for believers as well.
Unfortunately, we don’t go through a physical change like the fruit fly, where the memories of our past life are automatically wiped clean, as believers we must purposefully choose to forget.
Paul explains it this way:
13 Brothers and sisters, I do not regard myself as having taken hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:13-14 NASV)
Paul understood that his complete metamorphosis could only be achieved as he forgot his past. And it is not an easy process, as Paul admits that he hasn’t completely gotten the victory in this area.
There were many things from his past, that Paul needed to forget including his participation in the murder of the Church’s first martyr Stephen and as well the arrest and torture of dozens of believers.
As we are reborn by the Spirit, because of our faith all our past sins are forgiven, and God declares that He has thrown our sins out of His memory into the deepest parts of the sea (Micah 7:19).
But now to complete this transformation we must do the same.
Notice how Paul says that he has chosen to do this. It is an act of the will. As God has forgiven us, we must also forgive ourselves. We must purposefully forget.
We must continually put those past thoughts out of our minds to complete our metamorphosis.
OpentheWord.org 
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