The Skin He Could Not Shed

In C.S. Lewis's The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, a selfish boy named Eustace Scrubb falls asleep on a dragon's treasure hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart. He wakes to discover he has become a dragon — his inner nature made outwardly visible. At first he enjoys the power, but soon the loneliness becomes unbearable. He cannot speak. He cannot be known. He is trapped inside a skin that finally matches what he has always been.

Then Aslan appears and tells Eustace to undress. The boy begins scratching off his scales, peeling away layer after layer of dragon skin. Each time he thinks he has reached the boy underneath, he finds another layer of scales. His own effort is not enough.

Finally, Aslan says, "You will have to let me undress you." The lion's claws cut deeper than anything Eustace could have managed himself. It hurts terribly. But when Aslan throws him into the water, Eustace emerges with soft, human skin — a boy again, changed from the inside out.

Lewis understood what Scripture teaches: we cannot transform ourselves. We can scratch at the surface, make resolutions, peel back a layer or two. But the deep work — the work that reaches the dragon underneath — belongs to the Almighty alone. As Paul writes, "If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come" (2 Corinthians 5:17). The Holy One does not ask us to fix ourselves. He asks us to hold still and let Him make us new.