Jeremiah 13:23 Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may you also do good, that are accustomed to do evil. If we compare together these words of Jeremiah with other words on the same subject by Isaiah we arrive at a more complete view of the force of evil habits than is presented to us by this single text. "Come, now, let us reason together, though your sins," etc. This is the essential message of Christ, that there is forgiveness of sins — that the transgressions of the past can be blotted out and he who has done evil learn to do good. This doctrine was very early objected to. It was one of the arguments that the educated heathen in the first ages of the Christian Church brought against Christianity that it declared that possible which they believed to be impossible. "It is manifest to everyone," writes Celsus, the first great polemical adversary of Christianity, who flourished in the second century, "that those who are disposed by nature to vice, and are accustomed to it, cannot be transformed by punishment, much less by mercy, for to transform nature is a matter of extreme difficulty," but our Lord has taught us that what is impossible with men is possible with God, and Christianity proved again and again its Divine origin in accomplishing this very work which, according to men, was impossible. Against the sweeping assertion of Celsus to the contrary, we may place the living examples of thousands upon thousands who through the Gospel have been turned from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God. To trace the steps of such a change in any particular case is one of the most fascinating studies in biography; but no study will ever explain all, for in the work of a soul's regeneration there is a mystery which can never be brought into the mould of thought. "The wind," said Christ, "bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth; so is everyone that is born of the Spirit," but man's part in the work can be conceived, and this is what we should strive to understand, so that we may work with God, and there are three chief ways in which we may do so: 1. There is resistance. As every yielding to temptation strengthens a bad habit, so every act of resistance weakens it. It was the belief of the North American Indians that the strength of the slain foe passed into the body of the slayer; and in the moral world it is so, for not only does resistance take from the force of habit, it strengthens the will against it, so that in a double way acts of resistance undermine the force of habit. 2. Then there is education. Every man who is not wholly lost to a sense of right-doing feels every time he gives way to an evil habit a silent protest working in his breast, something that tells him he is wrong, that urges him to do differently, that interferes with the pleasure of the sin, mingling with it a sense of dissatisfaction. This protest will generally take the form of urging us towards the good which is opposite to the evil in which we are indulging. And by educating, by drawing out the desire after this good more and more, the evil is more and more put to flight. Thus the way to overcome inattentiveness of the mind is not so much to fix our attention on the fault, as to cultivate and educate its opposite, concentration of mind. 3. Once again, there is prayer. It has been said that to labour is to pray, and that is true in a measure; and those who labour in resisting evil habits and in cultivating good ones are, in a sense, by such actions praying to God; but anyone who has ever prayed knows that that definition does not exhaust the meaning or force of prayer. Prayer is more than labour — it is having intercourse with God. It is one of the chief means by which we are made conscious that we are not alone in the battle of life; but that there is One with us who is our unchangeable Friend, who looks down upon us with an interest that never flags, and a love that never grows cold. (Arthur Brooke, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil. |
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