Another lesson from our dear friend Escherichia coli

A while ago I posted about what our dear friend Escherichia coli (E. coli) can teach us about raising up new leaders (click here), and today Escherichia will once again be teaching us another important theological principle; this time on sanctification.

But first an introduction to E. coli and a process known as Bacterial transformation.  Despite the bad reputation E. coli gets in the media, this little gram negative bacteria is essential to the proper health of our intestinal flora.  E. coli plays a key role removing in the toxic O² gas which otherwise would kill many of the obligate anaerobic (cannot tolerate O²) bacteria within us, and we need our intestinal bacteria!  So having E. coli is important.

Bacterial transformation is a process by which bacteria cells are able to find and absorb new DNA fragments from their environment.  This allows for a transformed bacteria to begin expressing novel DNA sequences and novel proteins.  Some bacteria are naturally able to incorporate environmental DNA, this characteristic is known as "competency", while other bacteria like E. coli require a bit of coaxing¹ into DNA uptake.  Transformation for E. coli is contingent upon prior external events, and only then is E. coli able to incorporate and begin expressing new DNA.

Cool, so what does this have to do with us?  I submit to you that we are like E. coli.  Despite all that we are capable of or our best intentions, left to our own devices Humanity will never save itself.  At the Fall we lost our identities, our humanity was warped, and ever since we have been shadows of who we were intended to be.  We are broken and hurting and we cannot change ourselves.  But in Jesus everything changes, He's a game-changer.  Through His work and His grace we are now able to be transformed; His victory is the external event upon which our ability to be transformed depends.  Like transformed E. coli expressing novel DNA, in Jesus we are changed and now able to express an identity which was previously foreign to us.  We are made human, as God intended in the beginning, once again.

I encourage you to allow Jesus to transform you as He alone can, back into who He alone intended you to be.  May we all live as transformed E. coli expressing our renewed identities.

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1. Ingraham, John L. et al.  Microbe.  ASM Press. 2006. p.187.