Are You A Caterpillar or Butterfly?

Are You A Caterpillar or Butterfly?

by Norman Renshaw

Transcribed from the original recording; may contain errors.

Well now, I want to start off asking you a question. Take it as personally as you like. It’s not meant to be a rude question, though you might take it that way. Are you a caterpillar or a butterfly? Or perhaps you wish you were just in between at the moment.

I am a great believer in hibernation. I’ve never been able to do it, but I think it must be a wonderful thing just to keep with the clock and with the sun. Anyhow, are you a caterpillar or a butterfly? Now, don’t press this too hard. You must never do that with any parable. You ruin the great, lovely, ripped stories of Jesus by pressing them too far. Just take the one truth in any one of the parables. Don’t work it out in that kind of detail which makes stupidity of the story. He was the greatest storyteller of all time. And it ruins it to try and establish in every character in His stories some specific meaning. Nearly always in the parables there’s just one central thought. And He uses some quite ordinary situation to make it clear.

And at a long, long distance following in His footsteps, I would take this question this morning whether we are caterpillars or butterflies and forget that butterflies don’t live very long and all that sort of thing. The great thing is that there is a tremendous difference between a caterpillar and a butterfly. But there is also this amazing truth that the butterfly comes from the caterpillar. And indeed, if the caterpillar didn’t have his life, there could never be the butterfly. But although we use the phrase butterfly sometimes in the sense that we criticize people, you know, or they’re just butterflies, that this is to misunderstand the butterfly itself. For in its flitting around from place to place, it is serving. It is not a parasite in any sense of the word. And even in its short life, it does a tremendous amount in the realm of nature. But it is beautiful too. And have this marvellous loveliness of wing.

If you plant Brussels sprout plants in your garden or any of the other cabbage family, you are not too pleased with the caterpillar. If they arrive in their hundreds and strip it all down, there is perhaps nothing that eats so much, so swiftly as the caterpillar. But there it is, it has to be. And it goes on and finally decides that it will wrap itself up, or just hang itself from a twig, and wait. In a way, it would be easy for us if it were as simple as that. Perhaps the only thing we find simple is to eat like goodness knows what. Because we do really, don’t we? Until you get to a certain, I was going to say age, perhaps I should say poundage. Stoneage. And then you say, I must do something about this. On the whole, in the West, we eat far, far too much and far more than we need. So we are rather like the caterpillar as far as that’s concerned. But we’re not going to arrive at the butterfly stage just by rolling ourselves up in our cocoon. It just doesn’t happen that way, because we are not caterpillars or butterflies. We are people. God has paid us this extraordinary compliment of making us to be of the animal kingdom and yet not of the animal kingdom.

We are people with a choice. And all the disasters of life and all the rich possibilities of life, almost all, come from this freedom to choose. And so we have to do something about it. If we want to be a more beautiful being, then it won’t just happen. You won’t go to sleep for a month or two and wake up and find that this metamorphosis has happened. It doesn’t just happen. You’ve got to work at it.

Now, of course, the idea was put long, long before any of us thought of it. John 3. So there was one of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish council, who came to Jesus by night. “Rabbi,” he said, “we know that You are a teacher sent by God. No one could perform these signs of Yours unless God were with Him.” Well, that’s not a bad introduction to any preacher. Any preacher who heard that sort of statement made, he’d really feel that the work was nearly done.

“Rabbi, teacher, we know You’ve come from God. These marvelous things You do.” Everything that Nicodemus said appears on the surface to be absolutely right. And I suppose everybody but Jesus would have accepted it. And they’d have had some kind of polite conversation. And that would have been that.

Now, whether this was one of those conversations that someone actually wrote down soon afterward (there were no tape recorders around, of course, in those days), or whether it’s one of those inspired conversations that the writer of the fourth Gospel recalled.

Certainly here you have the authentic Jesus dealing with people. This man who seemed to have arrived to be the kind of person that everybody would want to be. A member of the Sanhedrin. That was a position of great importance. Don’t let us run away with the thought that all the Sanhedrin were a wicked lot as compared with us. Because they condemned Jesus to death. That would be to misunderstand our wickedness. No, they were cultured, civilized, religious, good.

And here was one who was beyond some of them. Nicodemus. “We know, Rabbi, that You’re a good man. You come from God.” Not many people said that about Jesus. And yet, Jesus butts straight in on the situation in answering him. Jesus answered, “In truth, in very truth I tell you, unless a man has been born over again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

Now, that’s a statement made by Jesus. Born over again. Born from above. Born anew. Born of the spirit world. Of the spiritual. You’re a born animal, but you’ve got to be born spiritual. This metamorphosis. It’s a Greek word we’ve just taken straight out of the New Testament and turned here into our English.

Jesus is unique in that He did not need this second birth. When we talk about the divinity of Jesus, we’re using words to try and express some truth about Him. And it’s very easy to take the word divinity and say, why do we believe in the divinity of Christ, and yet not really wrestle with what you’re saying. There can be a kind of theological shorthand which deprives us from the responsibility of thought. God.

When we say that Jesus was divine, we are saying that He had about Him a relationship with God that nobody else has had. God not yet. He had it. But He had it whilst He was here. He had it within the human situation.

He had it with all the limitations of the human situation. And so He did not need this. He had been born of the spirit. He knew what the kingdom was about. He knew that God is Father of all people. He knew that God loves. So He told people. He knew that God’s great task was not to judge, but to have mercy. That God’s great prerogative was to forgive. He knew this. This is of the kingdom. But He claimed that other people, if they are going to understand these things, must be born again into this kind of nature. Into the pattern of Christ. Being a Christian is first of all believing in Jesus. Believing in Him. But having begun to believe in Him, we are called then to begin to become like Him. And part of the activity of a CFO is for us to have this special time of training in that we might become more like Him. Not to look around and say, well, we are like the others and perhaps a bit better than some of them. But to say, what are we like compared with Jesus? This is the pattern. To be changed into His likeness. For He is the one who is our nature as we ought to be. We therefore need this transformation. This is what Glenn was talking about, Glenn Clark, in the Bond of Faith which I spoke of last evening. And in the fourth section of it he says, “We recognize that this way of life can be learned as a science and practiced as an art. But not until it is experienced in the form of spiritual rebirth can its full power be released upon earth. We agree that this rebirth cannot be achieved through creeds, rituals or laws, but only by the baptism of the Holy Spirit. This we do not explain or try to explain. All we pretend to know is that when we are meek in heart, forgiving toward our enemies, with love for our fellow man and with faith in God, and turn and become as a little child, this experience is more likely to be ours.”

And I believe that Glenn was really taking the kind of attitude that Jesus took. You see the conversation with Nicodemus was going to be all high brow, all theological high brow, because after all Nicodemus was a very cultured and wise man. And he recognized in Jesus a man of great insight. And so they were going to talk theology for two or three hours, all the rest of the night. Maybe Nicodemus was one of these great talkers, but many of these great talkers of theology. But Jesus cuts it all short.

Now maybe when I read the phrase, “only through the baptism of the Holy Spirit,” some of you began theologically to flutter a little and think, “Oh yes, that’s it, that’s it.” And then Glenn goes on to say, “We do not explain or try to explain this.” And comes down on the side of some very ordinary things. To be meek in heart. Meekness. This great attribute of Jesus, which is part of His living, part of His kingdom, part of His spirit. Meekness. Not weakness. Not weakness. This meekness, which is expressed in the Bible. This willingness to depend utterly upon God.

This readiness never to defend yourself. So that when criticism is leveled, you don’t immediately bridle up and try to hit back or at least to protect yourself. Meekness never bothers to do that. Meekness leaves the whole situation in the hands of God.

If there is something, of course, that must be confessed and apologized for, then meekness will swiftly do it. Will even go the extra mile in criticism of self. It was one of the brothers of St. Francis who was being criticized one day, you know, somebody was telling him that he wasn’t much of a Christian and all the rest of it. And this fellow said, “Oh, but it’s much worse than that. Much worse. I’m a much worse person than that if you only knew me.” Of course, you’ve got to be able to say it with a straight face and really mean it. But real meekness does mean it. And real meekness never defends itself.

It leaves the matter in God’s hands. Now that really is a job for a year, isn’t it? If I just took that away from this CFO and worked at it for a year, in every situation, and get beyond the position where I defend myself, to the position where I’m not only not defending myself in speech, but I’m not defending myself inside either.

You see, it is a step not to bridle up and say, “Oh, but this is the reason,” or “that’s the reason,” or “you don’t understand,” and that sort of thing. It’s quite a step not to say those things. But if all we’re doing is to silence it all and put it inside, and still be thinking it, I’d like to tell them why it is. I’ve got a perfectly clear conscience and I think, oh, no. That really is not sufficiently reborn.

The true meekness, I suppose, belongs to that relationship with the Father that relies entirely upon Him, that recognizes that we are all sinners, that takes unto itself the title, the greatest of sinners, and therefore understands that, of course, there’s bound to be criticism.

When the great William Carey came to the end of his life, the only attribute, the only name he gave to himself was Worm. “This frail and guilty worm, on Thy kind arms I fall.” That’s meekness. That really takes some working at. Because in the natural state, in the caterpillar state, we’re not meek at all. In fact, the natural world tells you that you’re going to have a rough time if you’re going to be meek. That isn’t natural. That isn’t even sense. You’ve got to hit back or else you’ll get attacked and hurt. But real meekness is of the Spirit. And in the realm of the Spirit, it is of Jesus.

Forgiving toward our enemies. Forgiving. Well, God is forgiving toward us. We are truly willing to accept that. Jesus said a lot about forgiveness, didn’t He? He said, in His pattern prayer, the only bit He commented on was the bit about forgiveness. The willingness to forgive others. And He said, in fact, that if we are not so willing, then we are not actually ourselves forgiven.

Of course, He means by that that if you can’t believe that you are willing to forgive another common caterpillar like yourself, how can you dare to believe that the great and holy God forgives you? Whenever I am unforgiving toward somebody, I am really saying, in effect, God doesn’t forgive me. Of course, God wants to forgive me, but forgiveness is a two-sided thing. And it does not become operative unless I am willing first to confess and then to ask for forgiveness and then to receive it. The willingness to receive it. But if this happens, then it’s so magnificent and wonderful if God forgives me and I believe it, that I am bound to be forgiving toward other ordinary people like myself.

But in the natural state, I am not bound to be forgiving at all. In fact, it feeds my own desire in the natural state to be strengthened in my own importance not to be forgiving. To feel that, you know, well, yes, they did do something that they ought not to have done. And I have a right, haven’t I, to feel not a little put out by the situation. And I am not at all sure that so deep a hurt can be lightly forgiven. Oh, I can build it up magnificently! And it makes the natural man swell like anything! Talk about the caterpillar eating. He eats on this sort of thing more swiftly and more constantly than anything.

But once I really understand the nature of the forgiveness of God, that God not only knows me by name, and knows all about me, all about me, and on top of all that forgives. If that’s true, if that’s a real possibility, if that’s part of living, then this is the most marvellous thing that can happen to anybody!

Particularly when it didn’t happen just once, but has to go on and on happening, because it takes so long for me to massage this really into my being, and get toward the place where I stop hurting him. But if that happens, then to be forgiving toward others is the natural outcome.

So the test of our receiving of God’s forgiveness is whether we are forgiving. It’s awfully down to earth, isn’t it? And you can think of somebody now, if you like, where you have won the battle, perhaps. Maybe because of wrestling with this and letting a new birth occur in you, you’ve achieved it by the grace of God. Well, you look back with tremendous thanks. Perhaps you’re still battling with it. Still wrestling with this real act of forgiveness inside you. And don’t let us forget, you don’t have to wait till the other person is repentant. To have the forgiving spirit, you don’t have to wait until they confess. You don’t have to wait until they come and ask you for forgiveness. And how do I know that? Well, as they nailed Jesus to the cross, He was forgiving.

They didn’t confess it. They weren’t starving. They didn’t stop. But He was forgiving. “Father, forgive them.” You only pray for that if you are forgiving them yourself. So that this spirit of Jesus is something very down to earth.

Meek in heart, forgiving toward our enemies, with love for our fellow man. With love for them. One of the great things about CFO is that we’re all such a strange mixture. But then every community is a strange mixture. Take your own family. Where there are possibilities of a certain amount of rapport and understanding because of the biological situation. Even there! Look what a strange situation you have. Can somebody help Mr…

In a camp, as I was saying, we have such a variety of people. You have a variety of people in your own family. This unexpected grouping of personalities. And there’s nowhere perhaps where love is needed more than within the family. And so that if you get a group gathered together from a variety of families and background, you’re bound to have a great mixture. You get a great mixture too, of course, in a church. Or in an office. Or any place. There’s a great mixture in the world. And this is because of the wonder of human personality. We’re not made in an individual mould.

That is, we’re not all made in the same mould. And this is what calls for the need for love. To love our fellow men. One of the things that through CFO and through a closer reading of the New Testament that I have noticed is how easily we turn round the two statements of Jesus who said, “Don’t judge people, but do love them.” In the natural caterpillar state we find it so much easier to judge them.

And so much harder to love them. Now here this week we have the chance straight away to go on more and more loving. Practice here so that you get as it were a start for when you get home. Love of fellow man. And Jesus doesn’t give us any excuses about this. He doesn’t say, “Well, if you can love 50% of the people, that will give you a pass mark.” He doesn’t permit us a few exceptions.

One or two you can miss out if you like. One or two you can ignore. Congratulations if you love eight out of ten. That’s not the realm of the spirit. He’s always interested in the one or the two that we find it difficult to love. Because you see we can’t really forget those one or two. It’s not that He’s being hard on us. It simply is that the thing won’t work if we are not getting to grips with the situation where it is difficult. So even if you are getting on with eight people out of ten, the other two will keep nagging away, won’t they, in your mind. They won’t let you alone. Sometimes actually they won’t let you alone. But even if they do appear to let you alone, inside you have them and the sense of defeat. And you know that you are called upon to do for them what you do for the eight. And the very fact that you do it for the eight perhaps quite easily is a challenge to do it to these two for whom you find it so difficult. To live in love.

With your fellow man, well in there we just got to fill in. Somebody or other’s name. Somebody or other’s name. Don’t put too many down to begin with. One or two will do, to start with. Work on one or two. Find the victory with one or two.

And with faith in God. With faith in God. This was the supreme attitude of Jesus. He really had faith in God. Committed His life to God. He didn’t just believe that there was a God. He had faith in Him. A deep commitment to God. This is what Christian faith really should be. A deep commitment. An assurance that God is God and that God is as you believe in the being. For us, the God as we believe Jesus said He is. Utter confidence in God. Faith in Him. Committing your activities to Him. Acting upon the basis that God is like this. Leaving Him, as it were, to work it out. Because you have the assurance that you can utterly rely upon Him. And have trust in Him. And the God we are talking about is the God who is the Father of Jesus. The one He saw at work. The one He utterly believed in. The one He had such supreme faith in. He was willing to give Himself even to the death of the cross. Assured that even so, He could trust in God. It’s one of the strangest parts of the crucifixion. That they should have shouted out with jeers at Him and said, “Ha! He trusted in God!” He did. They never said a truer word.

And His faith was completely vindicated. This is why ours is a resurrection belief. It’s not a bit of good celebrating Easter if we don’t recognize this. That if a person utterly trusts God, then in the final outcome all is well. It may be the other side of Golgotha. But it’s well. You can rely on God. He will not finally let anyone down. He will not let anyone down at all. Faith in Him is this complete commitment of one’s life to Him. To have faith in God. To have faith in God. And turn and become as a little child. And turn and become as a little child. Well, there will be chances today to be just like that. Child-like.

And we won’t find it easy because the whole pressure of the natural world is to forget you’re a child. To grow up. Grow up. Grow up as quickly as you can. Grow up and be wise and mature and all the rest of it. Rush on to adulthood. And then when you are an adult, never let on that you’re child-like, if you can help it. But Jesus wasn’t like that. He knows that this is a dead way to live. It shuts us off from the realities of the realm of the spirit.

For this kind of adulthood is of the material world. Not of the spiritual. It’s a child, isn’t it, that can see that which cannot be seen. It’s a child that can people a whole room. I called on a house the other day. There were two little girls there. Two of my Sunday school children. Very, very little ones. Well, all the dolls came out and they’d all got names and there was something to be said about all of them. As they were put down on the settee beside me. And time and time and time again I was wrong when I said that Matilda had gone to sleep. Oh no, Matilda hadn’t gone to sleep. No, no. Matilda was this, that and the other. This child-like world where there is reality in the unseen.

And you may recall that I have once at least said this. On occasion when our eldest daughter was very, very small. And my father was staying with us and he went to sit in a chair. And this little girl who was, I suppose, about two and a half or three at the time, she said, “Grandpa, you’re sitting in the sink.”

Well, how was he to know that the laundry was all being done for all these dolls? And that the nice looking arm chair was actually full of water? The child-like mind. See, we’ve got to have this ability to see.

We say we see Jesus. And we can’t see Him as we see one another. But the Christian faith says He’s here. He is here. He is here. I sometimes like to think He’s, you know, quite close here. But then my friends tell me, “Oh, He’s not sitting out there with you in the ball pit, He’s sitting with us in the pew.” That’s right. Where we are, He is. But we have to see Him.

Beware of the inner eye of the spirit. This child-like ability. This is to be different from the worldliness that says, well, no, I can’t see anything. But the whole of our relationship with Christ and with the Father is based upon this belief.

That Jesus is as real in spiritual terms as any one of us is real in physical terms. Just believe it. Believe it and commit yourself to that belief. Don’t wait until you feel that this is so. You may have to wait a long, long time. Of course, the rare occasions when you feel it are marvelous. But believe it. Commit yourself to it.

So that before you do anything and whatever you are doing in a Christian way, you do in this belief that God in Christ is there with you doing it. This child-like belief. I’ve come to realize in the last six or twelve months how often I have spoken to the Father in prayer.

I never even waited to ask Him whether He’s heard me. I think it’s, again, a book by Glenn, who reminds us, a little booklet, that there are three parts to prayer. There is the getting quiet, to realize the presence, to be assured of it. And out of the getting quiet there is then the speaking. And then thirdly and lastly, there is the listening again.

And often and often we can ask God to help us with this, that or the other. We never even wait to listen whether He says, “I heard you and I’m going to do it.” And I’ve discovered that this third part of prayer is a tremendous inspiration and a terrific strengthening of faith. We pray for somebody desperately ill, perhaps. We’ve got a young fellow in our church now, only married a year ago. Desperately ill. He talked to God about him. All the church talks to God about him. It’s so necessary to hear what God says. And what a tremendous comfort and inspiration it is when you hear Him say, “I heard you. Yes, I do love this lad David. Yes, I am entirely opposed to this cancerous condition that’s within him. Yes, I did hear you ask me to do something about it. Yes, I am doing something about it. Yes, I have got the power to do something about it. And I’m only just delighted that you asked me.”

Childlike? Well, children always want to be quite sure that when they’ve asked for help, they’re going to get it. And they’ll tug at your hand until you actually come to the place where they want the help. Because their requests are made known in childlike faith. So must ours be.

Commitment to God. Faith in God. This transformation. And for our great encouragement, the transformation into becoming people like Christ, achieved not by our own efforts, but by the powerful victory that Christ achieved through His living, through His dying, through His rising, and His entry by faith into our lives.

And as a commentary on it, just remind yourselves of the Transfiguration. That’s a preview recorded in the Gospels for us, particularly perhaps in Mark 9, 1-10. I haven’t time to read it now, but you can look at it again. When the great activity of death and resurrection were, as it were, given a preview, He momentarily entered into His glory, into His glorious resurrection life. He gave these three people a glimpse of it. And they wondered what this rising from the dead should mean. Later on they discovered it. But it’s that glorified risen Christ, who’s passed through death to life, who indwells us. So that the same transformation, transfiguration, it’s all the same Greek word, can take place in us. So that when Paul, writing to the Romans in the 12th chapter says, “Let your whole being, let your mind be transformed. Don’t be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” He’s talking about the indwelling transformation that occurs through Christ.

So the greatest good news about the Gospel is that this is a power given to us, provided we’re willing to use it. This is a word of Spirit offered to us, provided we want the Spirit to be within us. And so we can turn from the natural into the spiritual. And I believe more and more that our earthly life, our earthly life is for this purpose. To turn from nature into spirit. And to experiment in the things of the Spirit by faith here, so that we will be ready for the total spiritual state, beyond this earthly life. And we have the excitement, the challenge, the inspiration, and the glory, of experiencing this by faith in Christ. “You’ve got to be born again,” said Jesus. “You’ve just got to be.”

We must take His word for it. Let us pray. If You are Lord here, Christ, Jesus, if You are the Lord, Your words must be heeded, taken seriously. Your words are more than good advice, they are life. So may we this day receive Your word and glory in it. May the word to come forth into us and produce in us that which pleases You and Your Father.

Through Your name we ask it. Amen.