we shall morph indeed

Excerpts from The Life You've Always Wanted by John Ortberg

"A few years ago, the dominant interest of six-year-olds in the United States was a group of teenage superheroes called the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers...The key to the show's appeal was the characters' ability to 'morph'...Their rallying cry in moments of crisis was 'It's morphing time!' and they would be transformed with the ability to do extraordinary things...Of course, it is not just six-year-olds who want to morph. The desire for transformation lies deep in every human heart. This is why people enter therapy, join health clubs, get into recovery groups, read self-help books, attend motivational seminars, and make New Year's resolutions. The possibility of transformation is the essence of hope...

This little word 'morph' is actually one of the richest Greek words in the Bible. Morphoo means 'the inward and real formation of the essential nature of a person.' It was the term used to describe the formation and growth of an embryo in a mother's body...In his letter to the Galatian believers, the apostle Paul said that they, like us, are in a kind of spiritual gestation process. We are pregnant with possibilities of spiritual growth and moral beauty so great that they cannot be adequately described as anything less than the formation of Christ in our very lives.

Paul used another word, summorphizo, in his letter to the Roman Christians when he said that God had predestined them to be 'conformed to the image of his Son.' This word means to have the same form as another, to shape a thing into a durable likeness...We are to be to Christ as an image is to the original.

Still another form of the word, metamorphoo, is used when Paul says we are not to be conformed to the world around us but 'transformed by the renewing of our minds.' The English word metamorphosis comes from this word...a creeping caterpillar is transformed into a soaring butterfly...

When morphing happens, I don't just do the things Jesus would have done; I find myself wanting to do them. They appeal to me. They make sense. I don't just go around trying to do right things; I become the right sort of person.

These are audacious statements. Ordinary people can receive power for extraordinary change...The primary goal of spiritual life is human transformation...the reclamation of the human race. It's morphing time."