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The Amish Voice 15
The Bible says that we are sinners by
nature. What does that mean? Could we
stop sinning if we tried hard enough?
Make the penalty very severe and people
will not dare to break the law. Is that
even possible?
A neighbor of ours has a cat. It is
friendly and most of us all love to
hear cats purr and snuggle up to
you when you pet them. His
fur is soft and smooth. The
cat is very friendly and
comes up to anyone.
Everyone likes to pet him
but he is by nature a hunter.
That is a problem at times.
We also have many types of
songbirds that we love to have
around. We may put out birdseed and
oranges to attract Orioles and Grosbeaks.
Every so often, the cat, hunter that he is,
catches and kills one. This makes his
master very angry. I will only say that I
would not like to be the cat when this
occurs. If severe punishment could
change his nature, he would never, never
repeat his evil deeds; but he always does.
No matter what you do, he repeats the
crouching and the sneaking up on an
unwary bird. It is safe to say that you
cannot change his nature. So it is with
people. What shall we do?
Luke 4:18-19 says:
The Spirit of the
Lord is upon me, because he hath
anointed me to preach the gospel to the
poor; he hath sent me to heal the
brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to
the captives, and recovering of sight to
the blind, to set at liberty them that are
bruised,
to preach the acceptable year of
the Lord.
After Jesus quoted the above Scripture
from Isaiah 61 of the deliverance of
captives, it so enraged his audience that
they tried to kill him right then by
throwing him over a cliff. Read the story
for yourself.
What was He then talking about? You
may say that you live in America and that
you are free; but are you? In every
society there are people who are
addicted to destructive or
annoying behavior. Try as they
will, they cannot break the
hold. Even my great-
grandfather
was
an
alcoholic. Today we might
call it substance abuse,
but he could not set
himself free. No
one
can.
Addiction is so
powerful,
that
even if you know it will
kill you, you cannot quit. It gets
into your inner nature.
Sin is like that. Sin is not a substance, yet
it can only be defeated through the
deliverance of which Jesus spoke. Sin
actually is part of our inborn nature.
Without Jesus intervening, we remain
captive until we are delivered. We cannot
defeat sin and then become worthy of the
kingdom of God. Oh, we could fool
ourselves and think we can. We may
even think we are doing pretty well,
finding nothing in which to fault
ourselves.
Therein lies the good news of the gospel.
God knew how much trouble we were in.
Mankind had to be more than just
reformed; man had to be born anew. That
is why Jesus came to earth. You can
perhaps be trained to reform your ways,
but peace with God will still be missing.
For if we have been planted together in
the likeness of his death, we shall be also
in the likeness of his resurrection:
Knowing this, that our old man is
crucified with him, that the body of sin
might be destroyed, that henceforth we
should not serve sin
(Romans 6: 5-6).
It now makes sense that the apostle Paul
wrote,
Because the carnal mind is enmity
against God; for it is not subject to the
law of God, nor indeed can be
(Romans
8:7). Just as the cat cannot be trained to
abstain from hunting, you and I cannot
obey God without a new nature.
And you hath he quickened, who were
dead in trespasses and sins; Wherein in
time past ye walked according to the
course of this world, according to the
prince of the power of the air, the spirit
that now worketh in the children of
disobedience: Among whom also we all
had our conversation in times past in the
lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of
the flesh and of the mind; and were by
nature the children of wrath, even as
others.
(Ephesians 2:1-3).
That is why it was necessary for Jesus to
offer the new birth. The inner man must
die and a new man born.
Jesus answered
and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say
unto thee, Except a man be born again,
he cannot see the kingdom of God
(John
3:3).
It’s His Nature
—By Eli Stutzman
The End