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Transform appears in only three verses of the ESV. The first is about the mind: “be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Romans 12:2, ESV). The second is about the image: beholding the glory of the Lord, we “are being transformed into the same image” (2 Corinthians 3:18, ESV). The third is about the body: Christ “will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body.” (Philippians 3:21, ESV) In all three the change runs God’s way: toward His will and the Lord’s image, and at last into a body like His Son’s. When Scripture warns about the other direction, it reaches for a different word: “Do not be conformed to this world” (Romans 12:2, ESV).

So the word is narrow, but change is happening to all of us. There are no days where I am not transformed. Much of what shapes us is not something we decided on; it happens to a body living under the sun, where “time and chance happen to them all.” (Ecclesiastes 9:11, ESV) Either way, something is being made of us, and Philippians 3 gives only two ends.

Philippians 3 walks the whole road, and it starts where all of us start. Before we choose anything, we are formed, as the psalmist says: “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.” (Psalm 139:13, ESV) Paul’s own list begins with something done to him as an infant: “circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin” (Philippians 3:5, ESV). Nobody eight days old chooses a tribe. Then the list turns to what he made of it: “as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church” (Philippians 3:5–6, ESV). Received formation becomes, through repeated choices, a way of living, and Paul’s way of living was aimed squarely at Christ’s people. Paul calls all of it “reason for confidence in the flesh” (Philippians 3:4, ESV). It is physical life, real and partly received, but it is not the life Paul is pressing toward.

Then he met the One he was persecuting (Acts 9:5), and soon after he rose and was baptized (Acts 9:18). Everything he had counted as gain changed columns. “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” (Philippians 3:8, ESV) Everything. That is the response the encounter asks for. Some desires took me away from God, but God gave those desires back in a different form. It was being creative — being a producer. That production was worldly. Now I am a product of what is eternal and eclipses that worldly production. It costs me everything because to embrace it I must die to myself. Paul has a phrase for it: “becoming like him in his death” (Philippians 3:10, ESV). Before the body is ever made like Christ’s glory, the self is made like Christ’s death. Romans names where that death begins. Spiritual life, as distinct from the physical life we were formed with, begins at the waters of baptism, where we are baptized into His death and raised through faith (Romans 6:3; Colossians 2:12) so that “we too might walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6:4, ESV)

And it does not finish in a day. “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on” (Philippians 3:12, ESV). This is where character is built, slowly, and where we are tempted to turn it into a list we can check off. Transformation is not a checklist. It is a change and shift in the direction of every impulse we are given to own inside of the body. Paul expects God Himself to keep correcting the way we think: “if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you” (Philippians 3:15, ESV). That is close kin to the renewal of the mind Romans 12:2 calls for, and it goes on as long as we do.

Paul’s call to the church is plain: “Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us.” (Philippians 3:17, ESV) And he will not let us read the chapter as if only one road runs through it. “For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things.” (Philippians 3:18–19, ESV) Whatever repeatedly holds attention eventually shapes worship. They are being changed too, only in the other direction. Their appetite has become their god, and the text names where that road ends. Paul says this with tears, not with a pointed finger. He tells it to the church as a warning, and none of us is past needing it. Is the direction of my impulses toward the cross, or away from it?

Then one small word turns the chapter.

“But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.” (Philippians 3:20–21, ESV)

Here the one doing the transforming is Christ. In Romans we are told to be transformed by the renewal of the mind; here the body is changed by Christ, with a power that subjects all things to Himself. We cannot raise ourselves. We await Him, and we wait as people pressing on. And what He changes is the body itself. The body whose appetites the enemies of the cross serve, and that we are tempted either to indulge or to despise, is the very body He has promised to transform.

He can be trusted with our bodies, because He took a body Himself. Christ was “in the form of God” (Philippians 2:6, ESV), and He took “the form of a servant” (Philippians 2:7, ESV). That was not a transformation. He did not stop being who He is: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” (Hebrews 13:8, ESV) What is transformed is us, into His image, and the reason is love. God, “being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us,” made us alive with Christ (Ephesians 2:4–5, ESV). The One who took the form of a servant is the One who will change our lowly body.

The chapter holds both ends of a life. On the other road the end is destruction. On this one it is a glorious body like His. We are all being changed into something. The question the text leaves us is into whose image.

The Same Person Inside the Storm

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction” (2 Corinthians 1:3–4, ESV).

Then Paul tells the Corinthians about the affliction behind it:

“For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself” (2 Corinthians 1:8, ESV).

Paul describes the weight of the affliction in Asia without identifying it. We all want to carry the confidence that everything is going to be ok during moments of absolute uncertainty. I’ve had those seasons in my family, and in my experiences. I’ve always tried to portray this image that it’s all going to be ok. It’s not always ok. In the most recent season, health concerns were ever present. In many ways there seemed to be no real clarity on what the issue was. It impacted our daily lives, our jobs, and our walk as well. I think about what I’ve been through, and I read this passage. Even so, I do not think they are the same thing. But the power of the text gives us a chance to be connected to those, without specificity, who have suffered as is being described here. The beauty of this is that it is not clear what it was. We only have what it was like, and that’s a blessing from God. We can fill our names into that description.

Later in the same letter he does it again. He says “a thorn was given me in the flesh” (2 Corinthians 12:7, ESV). He doesn’t disclose the thorn, or the details of the despair, only what they did to him. We do not need to identify Paul’s affliction to learn from his dependence on God.

“Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:9, ESV).

God is named by what He does. He raises the dead. Paul says plainly where that hope rests: “he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus” (2 Corinthians 4:14, ESV). The resurrection is still ahead of us, but the hope it gives can comfort us now. We can depend on God without knowing how this particular affliction will end.

Part of what we miss is this. To handle these circumstances in a godly manner, we must not be so concerned for ourselves that we forget who was concerned for all. I feel this strongly. Paul says it more sharply: Christ died for all, “that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised” (2 Corinthians 5:15, ESV). Suffering does not suspend that. But also, we need to be careful not to assume God has placed us in harm’s way because of something we have done. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. Physical safety and recovery are not always promised. Where Paul went is exactly where we should go.

“He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again. You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many” (2 Corinthians 1:10–11, ESV). In our most challenging moments in life the tendency is to fix it on our own. Who can we trust in these moments? Who is the one leading us where we are going? We often need to set down our self-willed assessment and do what Paul did. Paul set his hope on God and asked the saints to help him by prayer. My family needed to do the same. We all need to do the same.

We had prayers from the Church that came to us and God healed us according to His will. We followed Paul’s example. Not every season ends that way, and the text does not promise that it will. The hope set on God holds either way.

“For our boast is this, the testimony of our conscience, that we behaved in the world with simplicity and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom but by the grace of God, and supremely so toward you” (2 Corinthians 1:12, ESV). Paul is defending how he had dealt with them. Some read his changed travel plans as the mark of a man who says yes and no at once (1:15–17). His answer is a clear conscience. By the grace of God, his conduct toward them had been sincere, even under pressure.

Notice how the circumstances were handled. The two ways a life can run. Earthly wisdom or the grace of God. We must look beyond the human outcome and focus on the spiritual outcome. In chapter 12 Paul asks three times for the thorn to be taken away. I carry pain from my past. I asked God to remove it, and He hasn’t. Paul heard this answer: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9, ESV).

Grace does not mean looking unaffected. Paul told the Corinthians he despaired. His grace sustains us in weakness. We are called to remain faithful while we carry what has not been removed. We need to be the same person inside the storm as we are outside of it. That’s living inside the grace He gives. The grace He gives demands faithful obedience for us to be called living.

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. ESV Text Edition: 2016. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Developed with the assistance of AI writing tools, under the author’s full theological review and final editorial control.

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