Turning Tin Soldiers into Men

Book Club | Mere Christianity: Book 4 (chap. 5-7)

In Chapter 6, Lewis is addressing a hypothetical question about the possibility of there being many Sons begotten of the Father. He explains his reasons for finding the idea very unlikely, if not impossible; and concludes by saying that when he really considers the question, “I find I am not really thinking of anything. The idea fades away into mere words.” (p. 185)

Lewis is describing the experience of hypothesizing oneself into heresy — trying to put God into a box of one’s own making. This can happen with a question that arises within, or independent of, Scripture. Our quest for an answer leading us to nonsense and “mere words” with no relation to Reality.

This is a danger to all of us, searchers. This is what leads us to all kinds of systems and dogmas and “teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.” This is why we need community: to keep us from straying, to keep us in alignment with Reality. This is why we need Scripture as our firm foundation — the anchor fixed on the sea floor as the wind and the waves threaten to cast us out into the void of “mere words.”

As Lewis unpacks the content of these chapters, he leans not on his own understanding: theories, logic, reason, wishful thinking. He plants his feet in a broad place: the solid rock of God’s revealed Word.

“we begin to see what it is that the New Testament is always talking about. It talks about Christians ‘being born again’; it talks about them ‘putting on Christ’; about Christ ‘being formed in us’; about our coming to ‘have the mind of Christ’.” (p. 191)

And in this quote, we find the burning core of Lewis’ thought: Man’s sanctification, or Man’s becoming like Christ.

Whatever way you’d like to say it, Lewis offers a sharp exhortation to his readers as they consider these things:

“Put right out of your head the idea that these are only fancy ways of saying that Christians are to read what Christ said and try to carry it out… They mean something much more than that.” (p. 191)

We are not to read the myriad passages in the Bible about our becoming like Christ— becoming “partakers of the divine nature,”¹ “being transformed into the same image,”² a “new creation” in Christ,³ “being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator”—and chalk them all up to a moral striving and mere self-improvement through our will to obey the commands of Christ.

Lewis makes clear that it is not our own strength and will to improve which are the means to the glorious end of Christlikeness.

“It is a living Man, still as much a man as you, and still as much God as He was when He created the world, really coming and interfering with your very self; killing the old natural self in you and replacing it with the kind of self He has.” (p.191)

Or if you’d like it more succinct:

“He is beginning to turn you into the same kind of thing as Himself.” (p. 189)

To expand on the idea and make the aspects of it clearer, Lewis takes a child’s fantastical desire for their toys to come to life.

He asks you to imagine a little tin soldier actually coming to life: cold, dead tin turning to warm, living flesh. But he supposes the tin soldier would not want to become a real, living man—that turning from tin to flesh is really like some kind of death. He will regard the loss of his tin-ness and the taking up of flesh-ness as only a destruction of his “true identity,” not knowing that to become a Man is far better than being a toy.

When we are saved “by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior,”⁴ he begins a real, substantial work in us.

Jesus is “beginning to turn the tin soldier into a live man. The part of you that does not like it is the part that is still tin.” (p. 189)

Jesus is changing us into something we were not before—this is what the Spirit means by saying that in Christ we are a “new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” What is old is dead and dying. What is new is alive and becoming alive.

A spiritual reality now, a physical reality in the Resurrection.

1 Thessalonians 4 tells us that the will of God is our sanctification—our becoming holy or our becoming like Christ. Paul then goes on to encourage the church to embrace purity and reject impurity, to live and grow in holiness. But, as Lewis says, “After the first few steps in the Christian life we realize that everything which really needs to be done in our souls can be done only by God.” (p. 193)

Scripture calls us to be holy, but says that God is the One actually making us holy. While we are present and active in obeying the commands of Christ, it is actually God working in us to accomplish the obedience to Christ’s command. We are the little tin soldiers reluctantly being turned into real Men.

And this is good news because most of us aren’t like Pinocchio, who really does want to become a real boy. Most of us are content to remain what we are, and see the transformation into a real, live Man as a kind of death. But God doesn’t leave us in this state—He acts, and that is grace.

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Next week’s reading: Book 4, part 8-11 (p. 195-227 in most copies)

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1. 2 Peter 1:4

2. 2 Corinthians 3:18

3. 2 Corinthians 5:17

4. Titus 3:5-6