The best way to take the Lord in is to eat Him (John 6:57). Eating brings in growth. All the babes grow up by eating. The more they eat, the more they grow. This is why we stress again and again that the church needs the eating. Teaching can never cause people to grow. You cannot have your children grow by teaching them. The best, simplest, and easiest way to help your children grow is to feed them. In this chapter, however, the basic point is not on growth but on transformation. If you have the growth, surely you have the issue of growth, which is transformation.
Transformation is not a kind of outward change or outward correction. Transformation, in the New Testament sense, is a metabolic change. Metabolism causes a change in life from within. Something new added into your being carries away the old element and replaces it. Then you have transformation. It is not an outward change, but an organic change, a change in life, a metabolic change, through the supply of a new element to replace the old element.
A person who puts makeup on his face has some outward change, but this is not transformation. This is like the work of a mortician. The face of a dead body is very pale, but its appearance is changed when a mortician covers it with makeup. Much of the work today in Christianity is like the work of a mortician. The morticians in a mortuary change the appearance of corpses. There is a change with these corpses, but not an organic change.
We should not be concerned about whether or not the young brothers have long or short hair. We should be concerned about their having an inward transformation. If we want someone to be transformed, we have to feed him with rich nourishment day by day. Then after a while, he will be shining and living because of the transformation from within. This is a kind of metabolic change with something organic, with something growing, with some new element replacing and discharging the old element. Transformation is a metabolic change from within.
Jesus is not a corrector. He is not a mortician, and we are not dead bodies. We are not in a mortuary but in a living home. We are living persons in the church, the house of the living God (1 Tim. 3:15). Jesus is not only a good Feeder but also the rich food. When we call upon Him, He comes into us. He is living, nourishing, and transforming. He supplies us and replaces the old element with Himself as the new element. Then we have an organic change from within.