New, Not Improved Creation

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. (2Corinthians 5:17)

I have some goats.

Incidentally, they have been opening my eyes to a lot of scripture understanding as I have been taking care of them.

I want us to look at one aspect, the difference between them and sheep. And it came alive as I was herding those few goats.

I never realised how different goats are from sheep.

Did you realise that goats do not eat grass?

You see, goats are browsers and not grazers like sheep and cows.

They therefore feed on shrubbery and eat grass when there is nothing better. And even then they prefer the flowery part of the grass when it is there.

This single fact explains so much about the goat’s behaviour.

Due to the fact that a goat samples everything it comes across to be able to get the nutrition it requires, it is very difficult for it to be constrained to a pasture or shepherd.

Goats nit-pick their food, not eat mouthfuls at any time.

They also must verify what they eat through their noses. I think it is not wrong to call them nosy.

When we were evicted from our father’s land because he was in the Mau Mau, a number of our sheep died after consuming a certain plant where we moved.

Yet I never saw the same with goats. And now that I am taking care of them can understand why.

Goats sniff everything before consuming it, however succulent it may appear.

Goats are suspicious by nature. And they know they are in the wrong always. Shout and a goat must look at you and stop whatever it is doing. It is not the same with sheep and cows which will stop only when they are moving.

Why all these stories? I know someone is wondering.

Christ did not come to make us better goats. He came to transform us from goats to sheep.

There is no way you can improve a goat to even remotely be like a sheep. They are DIFFERENT, completely different species.

A sheep simply is. A goat is aiming at something, especially something beyond its reach since that is where the most succulent fare is.

Place food on the ground and a goat will eat very little and trample the rest. Place the same in a place they can barely reach and they will eat it to the last bit without wastage

A goat is always looking for better pasture, never content with what it has. A goat is restless. However much it has eaten, it will behave as if it is starved if it sees something resembling food.

To a sheep, a shepherd is the guide since sheep trust him. To the goat, the shepherd is the limiter.

You take that to the spiritual and you realise what Christ came to do.

Adamic nature is goatish. New life in Christ is sheepish.

Salvation is therefore the transformation from one nature to another, not improvement of the goatish nature to make it sheepish.

And this explains some things people complain about.

Like why do ministers kids become children of Belial? Why do missionary kids hate mission work?

You see, growing among sheep may make a goat behave like a sheep and think that it is a sheep.

Once you remove them from the environment, their true nature manifests and they will start behaving who they are.

A minister’s kid is as goatish as the kid raised in a brothel. It is the environment that constrains him from releasing that goatish nature.

It means that a minister’s child must encounter Christ just as the one in the brothel for them to become sheep, God’s sheep.

The reason we hear of ministers behaving badly is many times because they did not give Christ their nature to transform. They may have subscribed to some dogmas and of course entered into an environment that made them think they were sheep.

Then they saw an exposed thigh or breast and their goatish nature exploded. Then they saw an opportunity for easy cash and their goatish nature exploded.

Growing and living with sheep is no insurance against goatishness.

Only Christ’s transformational salvation can. And it does so by replacing the goatish nature with a sheepish one.

This makes it possible for the former goat to be content with following the shepherd and listening to Him. It makes it possible for the former rebel to relax in the provision of the Shepherd.

Let me give an application.

A goat reads the Bible to look for excuses to do what they want.

When you hear a believer asking where in the Bible polygamy or smoking is condemned, please know that you are dealing with a goat since a goat is never satisfied with boundaries.

The drive for better prospects, greener pastures, greater and bigger things is many times an indicator for a goat. Discontent is the driving force in goats whereas rest is the preserve of sheep.

Goats fear the rod. It will jump over any obstacle to escape punishment.

Incidentally it is not only punishment. Hold a stick and a goat will run away.

If you hear someone who got saved some time ago saying that they got saved to escape hell, I think it is a clear indicator that their goatish nature still reigns. They came to escape hell but didn’t take the nature that escape required.

It is the same with the person who is sexually pure because they are scared of the consequences or are honest for fear of being caught.

The reality is that their good is really a cover for their goatish nature. Or it is their argument of being sheep.

A sheep does not fear the rod since it follows the shepherd.

Look at our preaching.

Give so that this or the other happens or does not happen.

That is fare for goats.

Sheep will give out of their love and trust in their shepherd. They do not give to attract a reward or avoid punishment.

Or those people who attend and get involved in church so that they can get a church burial or access church goodies. These are goats and the ones who preach such nonsense are also goats.

Heaven and hell, real as they are, are not the primary reasons Christ calls us to Himself.

God did not create man to escape hell.

He created man to have fellowship with Him.

It is the goatish nature activated by the fall that brought heaven and hell in the picture. But it did not make them the focus of God’s redemptive agenda.

And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. (Revelation 21:3)

Keeping up with the joneses is also the evidence of a goat nature.

Give goats each their own pasture and they will all be running at each other’s pile. It will bite here and run off to bite at the other pile the whole day.

Tether a goat and the grass will be eaten at the extremities since a goat thinks that what is unreachable is better than what is easily available.

We will look at other aspects of this topic.

Are you a sheep or goat?