How to Become a Christian

I stand before a class of boys, holding on a leaf an ugly-looking creature, and ask them, “What is this?”

“A caterpillar.”

“Are you certain it is not a butterfly?”

“It is nothing like a butterfly,” they answer. “It is a caterpillar.”

I put this ugly-looking worm into a showcase. Later, holding something before the boys, I ask, “What is this?”

“It is a chrysalis,” they reply.

“What is a chrysalis?”

“It is the shell made by the caterpillar.”

I place the chrysalis back into the showcase. A few days later, standing before the boys and again holding an object up to view, I ask, “Who can tell what this is?”

They answer in a breath, “That is a butterfly.”

“Are you certain,” I question, “that it is not a caterpillar?”

“Certainly it is not a caterpillar. It is a butterfly.” The boys know that a caterpillar is not a butterfly and also that a butterfly is not a caterpillar.

“But, you said awhile ago that it was a caterpillar; now you say it is not one. This is a mystery. Who can explain it?”

One bright boy holds up his hand. “It was a caterpillar, but it died to its old life. It was in that chrysalis tomb like a dead thing. The old caterpillar life passed away, and a new life came forth. A butterfly life. This butterfly is a new creature with a new life. All its habits, all its manner of life are entirely new.”

The boy is right. He has told the story, too, of how the sinner becomes a Christian. He must die to the old life of sin. Out of that death springs forth the Christian life. The Christian is a new creation. He is as distinct from the sinner as the butterfly is from the caterpillar.