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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.

HEB

I do not always use my freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but somehow the flesh finds me anyway. It is not that I lack love for the Lord. It is that I live inside a frame, and the struggle with it comes back every day. I have had moments when two minds differed on a matter of judgment. In those moments the shift from being led by the Spirit toward the flesh tipped the difference into disagreement, the kind that, if not addressed quickly, could lead to something more serious. That is walking by the flesh and not by the Spirit.

Against that frame, Paul sets a single command: “If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit” (Galatians 5:25). It asks something of us on every ordinary day we spend in Christ. Paul’s word means to walk in line, and that image helps us see what he asks: a line of walkers moves together only when each one sets the next foot where the line is going. The “if” is not a doubt. It assumes we already live by the Spirit, and it asks that our steps agree with the life we have been given. The pronoun is worth a second look. Paul does not say “you.” He says “us.” The apostle who wrote the command puts himself in the line with the people who first read it. He had already told those same people how they came to be in Christ: “for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Galatians 3:26–27).

Paul’s route to this command matters. He reaches it by way of freedom rather than struggle. “For freedom Christ has set us free,” he writes, and he tells the Galatians to stand firm and not submit again to a yoke of slavery (Galatians 5:1). For most of the letter he has been guarding that freedom against those who would hand it back to the law. Then he turns and guards it from the other side, reminding them that they were called to freedom: “Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another” (5:13). Freedom can be lost in two directions. It can be surrendered to a yoke of slavery, or it can be spent on the flesh. Paul allows neither, because the freedom Christ gives is meant to be spent in love that serves.

He is honest about what stands in the way, and he is honest about where it stands. “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do” (5:17). That was written to Christians. The opposition is not something we leave behind by belonging to Christ, because Paul describes it in people who belong to him.

Before he describes the conflict, Paul gives the promise: “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh” (5:16). The word “gratify” keeps catching me, because at times it sounds to me like “satisfy.” Paul’s word is plainer than that. It means to carry a thing through to its end, which is why some translations read “carry out” or “fulfill.” The promise is not that the desire will never be felt, because the next verse says it will be. The promise is that the one who walks by the Spirit will not carry it through.

Then Paul names the works of the flesh, and the list is not the one most of us would have written. “Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these” (5:19–21). We expect the sins of the body to be on the list, and they are. What we may not expect is that eight of the fifteen are sins against one another. Enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, and envy need no dark street or hidden room. They can take root in a congregation that never misses an assembly. Most of the works on Paul’s list are not sins of the body, and he will not let any of us blame the body for the flesh. When I read Paul’s list, I do not see fifteen separate temptations so much as a congregation of influences that aim to take us away from the freedom to be led by the Spirit.

Paul has bracketed the whole passage with that danger. On one side stands the warning, “if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another” (5:15). On the other stands the chapter’s last word, “Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another” (5:26). Between them, Paul places the verdict: “I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God” (5:21).

From that list Paul turns to another. “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law” (5:22–23). The fruit belongs to the Spirit. No law stands against a life like that, and it is hard to imagine a statute that ever needed to forbid patience.

Then Paul sets the ground beneath the command: “And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (5:24). Earlier in the letter he told them that if they are Christ’s, they are Abraham’s offspring and heirs of the promise (3:29). The order matters. Paul describes those who belong to Christ before he tells them to keep in step, so the command rests on what is already true of them. Belonging to Christ has meant a death, and the flesh with its passions has been crucified. That lies behind those who are his.

What lies ahead is the daily work, and in Romans Paul holds both agencies in one sentence: “For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Romans 8:13). We do the putting to death, and we do it by the Spirit.

When one of us falls out of step, Paul does not leave him behind: “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted” (Galatians 6:1). That is a command to the church, and it shapes how the warning of 5:21 is heard inside the family. The warning stands at full strength. The one caught is to be restored, and the one restoring him is to watch his own feet.

Paul tells the church what to do with a brother who is caught. John tells each of us what to do with the sin itself, and he writes from inside the “we.” He warns first that to claim fellowship with God while walking in darkness is a lie, and he does not make that warning light. Then he says that when we walk in the light, as God is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:6–7). Paul tells us to walk by the Spirit, and John writes of those who walk in the light. Then John gives the promise: “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1:8–9).

John is writing to believers, people he calls his little children, and he does not pretend they will never sin. To deny our sin is self-deception, and to confess it is to find God faithful. He names the one who stands with us when we do sin: “if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins” (2:1–2). John writes so that we may not sin, and he still provides for the day we do. Forgiveness is not God looking away from what we have done. It comes through Jesus Christ the righteous, who is our advocate with the Father. So when a disagreement tips and we lose the step, the way back begins with confession. The Father is faithful to forgive, and the Son speaks for us before him.

Being led is what the Spirit does in us: “if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law” (Galatians 5:18). Keeping step is what Paul asks us to do, and it asks something of our feet. To follow, we have to keep up, and keeping up takes diligence. Paul never pictures that diligence alone. After the restoring of the one who is caught, he gives a charge to all of us: “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (6:2). He is just as clear that no one else can walk for us: “For each will have to bear his own load” (6:5). The others do not take our steps for us; walking with them is part of how we keep up. Togetherness is underrated.

So we end where Paul does. We are to “keep in step with the Spirit,” and we are not to “become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another” (5:25–26). In that picture, the line is already moving, and Paul has taken his place in it. We take the next step beside him, in step with the Spirit.

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: 2025. 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.