What Is A Winged Creature?

What is a winged creature?

Why the weird blog title?

I assure you the title of this blog is not an attempt to be trendy, to gain readership or any other reason other than that it is the perfect title to capture the goal of this blog.  The penultimate and final chapters of C.S. Lewis’ most famous work, Mere Christianity, are titled “Nice People or New Men” and “The New Man.” These chapters are the culmination of 31 previous chapters. In these 31 chapters Lewis addressed the existence of God and truth, the most basic doctrines of the Christian faith, Christian morality, the importance of theology and the cost of discipleship.

One should conclude from these chapters that Christianity is believable, logical and defendable. One could also conclude that Christianity is another religion. Although Lewis made abundantly clear that Christianity is different from all other religions, the temptation to file it in the small archives of world religions is real.

Lewis, understanding this temptation and having the goal to not let it be so, focuses his last two chapters on providing one of the most discernable differences between Christianity and all other religions and belief systems.

C.S. Lewis’ Winged Creature

The most elegant and powerful words, in my opinion, in the entire book are found in the penultimate chapter where Lewis illustrates the difference between Christianity and religion.

God Became man to turn creatures into sons: not simply to produce better men of the old kind but to produce a new kind of man. It is not like teaching a horse to jump better and better but like turning a horse into a winged creature. Of course, once it has got its wings, it will soar over fences which could never have been jumped and thus beat the natural horse at its own game. But there may be a period, while the wings are just beginning to grow, when it cannot do so: and at that stage the lumps on the shoulders­—no one could tell by looking at them that they are going to be wings—may even give it an awkward appearance.

Religion & The Gospel

Religion tells us how to be better; the gospel says “we can’t be better!” Religion says we can earn our way; the gospel says “we most certainly cannot!” Religion teaches that we must stop sinning to earn god’s love; the gospel teaches that God loves us despite our sin. With Religion, one strives to be better; with the gospel, Jesus gives His perfection. Religion teaches that we are saved by our work; the gospel teaches that we are saved by Jesus’ work.

We are not horses who work hard to jump better and better, rather we are winged creatures who have been given a new nature. We didn’t work for these wings; they were given to us. The reason we can clear fences is because of the wings that we undeservedly received. We receive love, salvation, acceptance, forgiveness because when the Father looks at us He sees His Son’s righteousness. The righteousness that He gained on the cross bearing our sin. We are forgiven because of Jesus’ work, not our own. Paul explains this in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

This blog is titled “A Winged Creature” because that’s what we (Christians) are. This blog’s aim is to share a gospel perspective of all things. It is this blog’s goal to assist believers in Jesus Christ to keep a gospel mindset in an increasingly secular, yet religious world.

“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.” (Galatians 1:6-7)