I love C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia (if you’ve never read them, stop reading this post and go read them). From time to time, I want to use these blog posts to share some of my favorite passages. The scene for this post comes from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

In this book, we are introduced to an awful boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb (and he almost deserved it). He is swept into Narnia with his two cousins, Edmund and Lucy, who had been to Narnia previously. He is a continual pain and bother to all those around him and he is completely consumed by his selfishness. Eventually, as the book says, because he had a dragonish heart, he became a dragon himself.

It seems as if Eustace will be condemned to life as a dragon, even though it is clear that his time as a dragon has made him aware of how horrible he is. But then, he has an encounter with the great lion king of Narnia, Aslan. Eustace is told by Aslan to undress himself. He tries three times to rip the reptilian skin away but each time finds another layer underneath. And this brings us to the passage.

Then the lion said - but I don’t know if it spoke - ‘You will have to let me undress you.’ I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.

The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart.  And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know - if you’ve ever picked the scab of a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away.

Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off - just as I thought I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt - and there it was lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there was I as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me - I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on - and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I’d turned into a boy again.

Towards the end of the chapter, we find this statement about Eustace:

It would be nice, and fairly nearly true, to say that “from that time forth Eustace was a different boy.” To be strictly accurate, he began to be a different boy. He had relapses. There were still many days when he could be very tiresome. But most of those I shall not notice. The cure had begun.

The cure had begun. What a beautiful picture of what the Bible speaks of when it speaks of being born again (John 3)! It reminds us that all of our efforts to change ourselves are futile because we don’t have the ability or power to change our sinful, ‘dragon’ hearts. Therefore, we need someone else to do for us what we can’t do ourselves. And Jesus, by His Spirit, does this transforming work for us. And though it has its pains and costs, it comes with such love and joy and peace that those momentary afflictions pale in comparison.

And yes, like Eustace, we can still be ‘tiresome’, still wrestling and struggling against the remaining corruption of sin. But the cure has begun! Or in the words of the Apostle Paul, 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 (Philippians 1:6). So let us look with thanksgiving to God’s past works of grace, let us walk in the power of the Spirit and bear the fruit of the Spirit in these present days, and let us look forward to the day when the work begun reaches its completion. Come, Lord Jesus, come!