I taught this in my Sunday Bible school class some years ago. It’s good to reflect on, determining in which category you fit.
We look at two creatures and how they correlate to our walk with Christ. The chameleon and the butterfly.
The chameleon is the type of person who proclaims the name of Christ as “Christian,” but her actions do not always proclaim Him. This person is one who, when meeting with the church, looks like a Christian and talks like a Christian, but when she is away from Christians, looks and sounds like the unsaved world. The chameleon changes color based on its environment, so to fit in with the world around it. No matter what it tries to mimic, it is what it is.
There are many who bear the name “Christian,” yet look like the unsaved world when they are with the lost. This type of “Christian” is not a Christian at all, but, more than likely, a false convert.
The butterfly, on the other hand, is a creature who has genuinely been transformed into a new creation. The butterfly is no longer the same. This is what it is like to be a true Christian. When one changes her heart for Christ, she genuinely changes completely. The butterfly will carry Christ not only throughout meeting with fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, but also in her daily life: at work, at home, in the music she listens to, the movies she watches, the words she chooses to speak…everywhere and in everything she does.
The butterfly doesn’t change based on its environment -no matter what others want it to be.
Are you a chameleon or a butterfly?
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.
Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, 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.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”