Do people really change? Returning to my alma mater where I spent a good portion of my life studying, I ran into people I used to know. I thought they would recognize me. What do we say, “I recognize your face, but I can’t say your name.” Frank Pollard once observed, “My dog can do that.” I noticed that these classmates have changed. In my mind, I think that I have not changed. Then I look at the pictures in my yearbook or on Facebook and realize we have all changed. Of course, the aging process changes us externally. But what about inside? Do people really change?
Paul wrote to a deeply divided church in Corinth. In their membership was one who was openly living in immorality. The people there were proud of their open minds. “Whatever makes you happy!” they said. Some members were suing each other in secular courts instead of settling their differences within the body of Christ. Paul believed if the church did not distinguish itself from the world by holy living, it would be subsumed by the culture around it. I wonder what he would think today?
Those who reconcile themselves with their own habitual sin are not ultimately part of the kingdom. Living in one of the sin cities of the ancient world, Corinthian Christians should have set themselves apart. Paul lists sins like idolatry, immorality, greed and slander as evidence that one is not really a follower of Christ. Read the list carefully and listen to the tense with which he refers to these behaviors, “Such were some of you.” In other words, you used to live that way, but no more. Now you have been washed and sanctified.” Paul believed that when a person became a follower of Jesus, God would wash away the sin which used to be their identity and make them into brand new people.
As a freshman at the aforementioned college, I heard a speaker in Chapel say, “I am not who I want to be, and I am not yet who I ought to be, but thank God I am not who I used to be.” God changes us so that we no longer conform to the old sinful patterns of behavior, but we are transformed as God changes our minds. One young woman described on Facebook how God took away her old patterns of desire and behavior over time as she grew as a disciple. We are not able to change ourselves on our own, but God can change us. He will if we let him. Are we willing?
