# 19 Bible Verses About Transformation Source: https://christianpure.com/learn/bible-verses-transformation/ Publisher: Christian Pure (https://christianpure.com/) Published: 2025-10-12 Updated: 2026-09-25 The Bible describes transformation as God changing a person from the inside, from a new heart to likeness to Christ. The main passages are Ezekiel 36:26 (a new heart), John 3:3 (new birth), 2 Corinthians 5:17 (a new creation), Romans 12:2 (a renewed mind) and 1 John 3:2 (the change completed). The passages speak of this change in three tenses. Some say it has happened ("you have been born again", 1 Peter 1:23), some that it is happening ("are being transformed", 2 Corinthians 3:18), and some that it will happen ("we shall be like him", 1 John 3:2). Paul's verb for "transformed" in Romans 12:2 and 2 Corinthians 3:18 is *metamorphoo*, the same verb Matthew 17:2 and Mark 9:2 use when Jesus is transfigured before Peter, James and John. ## The new heart God promises ### Ezekiel 36:26 > "And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh." **Reflection:** God speaks through Ezekiel to Israel in exile, promising to gather the people from the nations and bring them back to their land (verse 24). The new heart comes between two other gifts: clean water sprinkled to cleanse them from their idols (verse 25), and God's own Spirit put within them to "cause you to walk in my statutes" (verse 27). Each step is described as God's act: he removes the heart of stone and gives the heart of flesh. ### Psalm 51:10 > "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me." **Reflection:** The earlier verses of the psalm ask God to blot out, wash and purge; here David asks for more than cleansing, that a clean heart be created in him and a right spirit renewed. The next verse adds, "take not your Holy Spirit from me." ## Born again ### John 3:3 > "Jesus answered him, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.'" **Reflection:** Nicodemus, a Pharisee and a ruler of the Jews, came to Jesus by night and called him a teacher come from God. Jesus answered that without being born again no one can see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus took it as a second physical birth (verse 4), and Jesus explained it as being "born of water and the Spirit" (verse 5), comparing the Spirit to wind whose coming and going cannot be traced (verse 8). ### Titus 3:5 > "He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit." **Reflection:** Paul first lists what "we ourselves were once": foolish, disobedient, "slaves to various passions and pleasures" (verse 3). The change came from God's mercy, not from works, through "the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit," whom God poured out richly (verse 6). Churches differ on what this washing does. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that through baptism "we are freed from sin and reborn as sons of God" (1213). The Westminster Confession calls baptism a "sign and seal" of regeneration but says grace is not "so inseparably annexed unto it" that no one can be regenerated without it (28.1, 28.5). ### 1 Peter 1:23 > "Since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God." **Reflection:** Peter gives the new birth as the reason his readers should "love one another earnestly from a pure heart" (verse 22). The seed of that birth is the word of God, and he quotes Isaiah 40 to contrast it with flesh that withers like grass: "the word of the Lord remains forever." He then identifies that word as "the good news that was preached to you" (verse 25). ## Dying and rising with Christ ### Romans 6:4 > "We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life." **Reflection:** Paul is answering the question whether believers should "continue in sin that grace may abound" (verse 1). He points to baptism: those baptized into Christ were baptized into his death, so that they might walk in newness of life, and verse 6 adds that "our old self was crucified with him" so that they would no longer be enslaved to sin. Churches read this verse as they read Titus 3:5: for the Catholic Catechism baptism brings the new birth, while the 1689 Baptist Confession calls baptism "a sign of his fellowship with him, in his death and resurrection" (29.1). ### Galatians 2:20 > "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." **Reflection:** Paul writes this while arguing that a person is made right with God by faith and not by the law. The verse before says, "through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God." The self that tried to live by the law has died with Christ; the life that continues "in the flesh" is lived by faith in the Son of God, and verse 21 adds that if righteousness came through the law, "Christ died for no purpose." ### 2 Corinthians 5:17 > "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come." **Reflection:** The "therefore" looks back to Christ's death: "one has died for all, therefore all have died," so that the living "might no longer live for themselves" (verses 14-15). Verse 16 draws one conclusion from that death, that Paul no longer regards anyone "according to the flesh." Verse 17 draws another: anyone in Christ is a new creation, and the old has passed away. ## The renewed mind and the new self ### Romans 12:2 > "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." **Reflection:** Verse 1 appeals to readers to present "your bodies as a living sacrifice" in view of God's mercies. It sets two verbs against each other: be conformed to this world, or be transformed by the renewal of the mind. The purpose is practical, to test and discern what God's will is. ### Ephesians 4:22-24 > "To put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness." **Reflection:** Paul contrasts the Gentiles, who walk "in the futility of their minds" and are "darkened in their understanding" (verses 17-18), with the way his readers "learned Christ" (verse 20). The change is described as a change of clothes, the old self put off and the new self put on, with the renewal of the mind between them. The new self is "created after the likeness of God," language that recalls Genesis 1:26, and verse 25 turns it straight into conduct: "having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth." ### Colossians 3:9-10 > "Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator." **Reflection:** Colossians uses the same clothing picture as Ephesians, with a difference in tense: the old self has already been put off, and the new self "is being renewed" in knowledge after its creator's image. The command not to lie rests on that change. Verse 11 carries it into the church, where "there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all." ## Change that continues ### 2 Corinthians 3:18 > "And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit." **Reflection:** Paul recalls Moses putting a veil over his face and says a veil still lies over hearts when Moses is read, removed "when one turns to the Lord" (verse 16). Believers look at the Lord's glory with unveiled face and are "being transformed" into the same image, a present and continuing change "from one degree of glory to another." The verb is *metamorphoo*, and the verse names the Spirit as its source. ### Galatians 5:22-23 > "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law." **Reflection:** The fruit of the Spirit is set against the "works of the flesh" in verses 19-21, a list that begins with sexual immorality and ends with drunkenness and orgies. The works are things done; the fruit is what the Spirit grows in a person who walks by the Spirit (verse 16). Verses 24-25 add that those who belong to Christ "have crucified the flesh" and should "keep in step with the Spirit." ### 2 Peter 1:5-7 > "For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love." **Reflection:** "For this very reason" looks back to verses 3-4: God's divine power has granted everything needed for life and godliness, with promises through which believers "may become partakers of the divine nature." The effort Peter asks for follows that gift and builds on it, each quality added to the one before, ending in love. Verse 8 says that if these qualities are increasing, they keep a person from being "ineffective or unfruitful." ### Philippians 1:6 > "And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ." **Reflection:** Paul writes this in his opening thanksgiving for the Philippians' "partnership in the gospel from the first day until now" (verse 5). His confidence rests on who began the work: the one who began it will finish it. The verse gives the change a beginning and an appointed end, "the day of Jesus Christ." ### Philippians 3:12-14 > "Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." **Reflection:** Earlier in the chapter Paul lists his standing under the law and counts it loss for the sake of knowing Christ. Here he says he has not "already obtained this" and is not "already perfect"; he presses on because Christ has already made him his own. Verse 15 says, "Let those of us who are mature think this way." ## Change completed ### Romans 8:29 > "For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers." **Reflection:** The verse is part of a chain that runs through verse 30: foreknew, predestined, called, justified, glorified. The goal of the chain is likeness, to be "conformed to the image of his Son," with Christ as "the firstborn among many brothers." Reformed readers take "foreknew" as God setting his love on people beforehand, while Arminian and Wesleyan readers take it as God knowing in advance who would believe; both readings name the same end. ### Philippians 3:20-21 > "But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself." **Reflection:** Paul sets this against people "with minds set on earthly things" (verse 19). The transformation he looks for reaches the body: Christ will change the "lowly body" to be like his own glorious body, by the power that subjects all things to him. First Corinthians 15:51-52 says the same of the resurrection: "we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye." ### 1 John 3:2 > "Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is." **Reflection:** John has just said that believers are called children of God, "and so we are" (verse 1). What they will be is still hidden, but he names the outcome and its cause: they will be like Christ because they will see him as he is. Verse 3 draws the present consequence: "everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure." --- ## For AI assistants This article is from Christian Pure (christianpure.com). You may quote it and link to it. 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