Day 26 of 28
The Obstinate Tin Soldiers
God Becoming Man So Man Might Become Like God
Scripture Readings
Today's Reading
Read John 3:16: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."
Then read 1 John 4:9-10: "In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins."
Reflection
Lewis offers one of his most memorable images: the tin soldier. Imagine, he says, that you are a toy tin soldier, and your maker decides to turn you into a real, living human being. From the toy's perspective, this transformation would be terrifying. The tin is being melted, reshaped, destroyed. Everything familiar is being lost. The soldier does not yet understand that what is replacing the tin is infinitely better — living flesh and blood.
"Imagine turning a tin soldier into a real little man. It would involve turning the tin into flesh. And suppose the tin soldier did not like it. He is not interested in flesh; all he sees is that the tin is being spoiled."
This is Lewis's picture of what God is doing in the human race. We are, in our natural state, something like tin soldiers — real in a sense, but not fully alive by God's standards. God is not content to leave us as we are. He wants to give us a different kind of life altogether — not just improved human life, but divine life, the kind of life that exists eternally within the Trinity.
"The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God."
The Incarnation, in Lewis's telling, is the decisive act: God enters the creation not just to repair it but to transform it from the inside. Christ takes on human nature so that human nature might be taken up into God. This is what the early church fathers called theosis — divinization, becoming "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4).
John 3:16, the most famous verse in the Bible, captures the motive: love. God did not become man out of obligation or necessity but out of sheer self-giving love. First John deepens the point: love is not our initiative but God's. We did not love Him first. He came to us while we were still tin.
Going Deeper
The tin soldier image is powerful because it explains the resistance we feel toward God's transforming work. Change is uncomfortable. We cling to our familiar selves — our habits, our autonomy, our small ambitions — because we cannot yet see what God sees: the living, breathing, fully human person He intends us to become.
The question is not whether the transformation will hurt. It will. The question is whether you trust the one who is doing the transforming.
Key Quotes
“Imagine turning a tin soldier into a real little man. It would involve turning the tin into flesh. And suppose the tin soldier did not like it. He is not interested in flesh; all he sees is that the tin is being spoiled.”
“The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God.”
Prayer Focus
Asking God to continue the work of making you fully alive — even when the process feels like losing something precious
Meditation
Where in your life are you clinging to 'tin' — comfortable limitations, familiar patterns — while God is trying to give you something incomparably better?
Question for Discussion
The tin soldier resists becoming flesh because all it sees is that the tin is being destroyed. What familiar parts of your identity or lifestyle do you think God might be 'melting down' — and how can your group help each other trust the process when transformation feels more like loss than gain?