Becoming What We Were Made to Be

Cover Article

by Michael Jones · Week of May 17, 2026

Picture a lump of clay on a potter’s wheel—shapeless and unremarkable. Then the wheel begins to spin and the potter’s hands press in. What was formless starts to take shape. That is exactly the image God paints of His work in our lives: “We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). The Greek word for “workmanship” is poiema—the word from which we get “poem.” You are God’s poem, His masterpiece still being written. And the central question of the Christian life is this: Are you becoming the person God created you to be? Paul writes, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2). That word “transformed” is metamorphoo—the same word used for a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. God is not interested in behavior modification. He wants metamorphosis—to change you from the inside out, making you into someone who looks more and more like Jesus Christ.

But here is what we often miss: this transformation does not happen in isolation. God designed it to happen in community. The Hebrew writer urges, “Let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another” (Hebrews 10:24–25). Every Lord’s Day, when we gather around the table to remember Christ’s body and blood as the early church did (Acts 20:7), when we lift our voices together in song that speaks “to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:19), when we open the Word and let it cut into our hearts like a surgeon’s scalpel (Hebrews 4:12)—something happens. The Spirit works through these appointed means to reshape us. We do not simply attend worship; we are formed by it, shaped like iron on an anvil—every blow of the hammer making us stronger, sharper, more useful to the Master. “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another” (Proverbs 27:17).

Think about what it means to become more like Christ. It means learning patience when everything in you wants to react in anger. It means forgiving someone who has not asked to be forgiven—because that is what Jesus did from the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). Paul paints the portrait of this transformed life: “Put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience; bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you” (Colossians 3:12–13). This is not a list of suggestions. It is a wardrobe change for the soul. You take off the old self like filthy rags and put on the new self “which is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created” you (Colossians 3:10). Notice the present tense—“is being renewed.” Transformation is not a one-time event. It is a daily becoming that will not be complete until we see Him face to face (1 John 3:2).

So where does that leave us? It leaves us with an invitation to trust the Potter with the clay of our lives. “We have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves” (2 Corinthians 4:7). You may feel cracked. You may feel ordinary. But God specializes in impossibilities. He spoke light into darkness (Genesis 1:3). He raised the dead to life (John 11:43–44). He took a persecutor named Saul and turned him into the apostle Paul (Acts 9:1–22). Peter writes, “His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence” (2 Peter 1:3). Everything you need is already yours in Christ. You were buried with Him in baptism, raised to walk in newness of life (Romans 6:3–4). The old has gone. The new has come. Now the question is whether you will cooperate with the Potter’s hands—whether you will show up each Lord’s Day, open the Word each morning, pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17), and let God do what only God can do: make you into the person you were always meant to be. The wheel is spinning. The hands are pressing in. Trust the Potter. He knows exactly what He is making. - MJ

Other congregations are welcome to reprint this. It may be reproduced in another congregation’s bulletin or newsletter without asking permission. An acknowledgement of Orange View Church of Christ is appreciated but not required.

Bible Questions & Answers

What does the Bible say about divorce and remarriage?

This is one of the most sensitive questions in the life of the church, and it deserves careful, humble treatment. Few subjects have been studied more earnestly by godly men and women, and few have caused more pain when handled carelessly. So let us go to the text with open Bibles and honest hearts—recognizing from the outset that faithful Christians who love the Lord and revere His Word have reached different conclusions on some of the harder questions surrounding this issue. A short bulletin answer cannot settle a debate that has occupied serious students of Scripture for centuries, but it can point us to what is clear and invite each of us to study further.

Begin with what is clearest. God’s design for marriage from the beginning was one man and one woman, joined together for life. Jesus pointed back to creation itself: “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate” (Matthew 19:4–6). The word “joined” is the Greek kollaoo, meaning to glue or cement together. Marriage in God’s design is not a social contract; it is a divine union, and God hates the devastation that divorce brings (Malachi 2:16). On these points there is no serious disagreement among those who take Scripture seriously.

The harder questions begin when we ask what Scripture teaches concerning divorce that has already happened and the possibility of remarriage. In Matthew 19:3–9 the Pharisees came testing Jesus with a question framed entirely around the Mosaic legislation of Deuteronomy 24. They asked, “Why then did Moses command to give her a certificate of divorce?” (Matthew 19:7), and Jesus answered within the terms of that discussion: “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives” (Matthew 19:8). The well-known “exception” clause for porneia (Matthew 19:9; cf. Matthew 5:32) was spoken in that setting—to Jews still living under the Law. Some sincere students of Scripture have therefore asked whether that exception was given primarily as an application of the Law to Israel (much as Jesus’s words about tithing in Matthew 23:23 spoke to those still under the Law), and whether Christians on this side of the cross should look first to Paul’s instructions in 1 Corinthians 7 for the church’s standard. Others read Matthew 19 as a creation-based teaching that binds every age and every covenant. This is not a question a single paragraph can resolve, and good and godly people land in different places.

What is striking is that 1 Corinthians 7 lays out a path on which a believer cannot go wrong. Paul writes to the church and gives three options for someone whose marriage is broken. First, “remain unmarried” (1 Corinthians 7:11). Second, “be reconciled to her husband” (1 Corinthians 7:11). And third, after the death of one’s spouse, “she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 7:39; cf. Romans 7:2–3). These three—remain single, reconcile, or wait until your spouse has died—are paths upon which there is zero chance of being wrong. They are safe ground. Any other path may turn out to be permissible in God’s sight, but it carries at least the possibility of being mistaken. That alone is worth careful, prayerful weight before God.

Beyond that safe ground, godly believers have reached different conclusions. Some hold the view widely taught in churches of Christ—that divorce and remarriage are permitted only for the cause of sexual immorality (Matthew 19:9). Others add desertion by an unbelieving spouse as a second ground, drawing on Paul’s words that the believer in such cases “is not under bondage” (1 Corinthians 7:15). Still others, weighing the audience and setting of Matthew 19 as discussed above, conclude that Christians have somewhat broader liberty under grace. Some views, of course, cannot possibly be right—polygamy is plainly excluded by Scripture, and divorce for trivial or selfish causes flatly contradicts what Jesus taught. But among the views that take the marriage covenant seriously, more than one may stand. Romans 14:5 charges each of us to “be fully convinced in his own mind,” and Romans 14:23 warns that “whatever is not from faith is sin.” Each Christian must therefore study the passages prayerfully, weigh them honestly, and act on the conclusion they can hold with a clear conscience before God—not on what a preacher, an elder, or even a long-standing tradition has assumed without examination.

A final word for those who carry the weight of a broken marriage. The same God who calls us to take His Word seriously is the God who “is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Repentance—a change of mind that produces a change of life (Acts 26:20)—is always the door back to fellowship with the Father. The woman at the well had five husbands, yet Jesus offered her living water (John 4:17–18, 10). David committed adultery and suffered terrible consequences, yet God restored him when he came with a broken and contrite heart (Psalm 51:17; 2 Samuel 12:13). God hates divorce because of what it does to His people, but He does not hate the divorced. He loves them, calls them to study His Word, to be fully convinced, and to walk forward in faith. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). - MJ