Focus: Miracle of a Changed Life

Text: Lk.8:35

"Then they went out to see what was done; and came to Jesus, and found the man, out of whom the devils were departed, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind: and they were afraid."

What a change Christ brings to a life! He cures us of the madness of sin, rescues us from eternal damnation, restores our sanity of mind, and covers our moral nudity. Of all the miracles God does, that of man's salvation is the grandest, which includes that of a changed life. A sinner becoming a saint is a miracle so great, and in the world of sinners, the saint is a wonder to see.

*Saved by Christ

The Christian is a living testimony of divine change. O the miracle of a saved, sanctified, and consecrated life! Real change is alone the work of Christ. It is nothing short of a spiritual metamorphosis. Jeremiah inquires, "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil" (Jer.13:23). The word 'accustomed' means basically 'schooled' in the original. Man is schooled, tutored and learned in evil doing. The way of good he knows not. Man's moral nature is awfully tainted, and he is blind to even see it. Our world is full of abnormal and subnormal human beings. Christ alone makes us normal.

*Saved from slavery to sin and Satan

Man is a slave of sin and under an evil master. The shackles of evil on man are so strong. Norman Vincent Pearle says, "To change a human being is the greatest feat imaginable, because the most complicated entity in the world is man himself. Man is riddled with contradictions; he is shackled with habit patterns; he has prejudices; he has resistances; he has complexities. He is the sum total of countless influences playing upon him since infancy. So, when you talk about changing him, you know it will require some force of enormous power to do so." Paul gives us God's solution: "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new" (2Cor.5:17). In John 9, after the blind man receives his sight, he says, "One thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see" (Jh.9:25). The father of the prodigal says to his elder son, "For this my son was DEAD, and is ALIVE AGAIN; he was LOST, and is FOUND. And they began to be merry." The Christian was once blind, but now he sees; once lost, but now found; and once dead, but now brought back to life by the power of the resurrected and living Christ.

*Set free forever

Peter T. Forsythe said, "The first duty of every soul is to find not its freedom, but its master." The saint has found Christ as his only liberator and true master. Albert Camus has said that "the only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion." The Christian's life is radically different from the rest of humanity, and he moves in a different direction and heads to a different destination. He is a living miracle of divine grace.

The Lord Jesus Christ rescued the mad man, restored his sanity, took his rags away, and gave him a new robe, and amazingly, he has done same for us. Our salvation and transformation in Christ is the miracle of all miracles. Every Christian is a living and walking miracle. Yes, you are! You are a changed man, and still changing.

by Bishop Moses E. Peter