We Cannot Change
Jeremiah 13:23
“Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then also you can do good who are accustomed to do evil”.
At this phase in Jeremiah’s prophecy, he is still calling God’s people to repent of their sins and turn back to God. There is a judgement coming and he is pleading with his people to turn back to the Lord.
The thrust of this passage is very clear; Jeremiah is comparing a spiritual impossibility to what is easily understood as a physical impossibility. People cannot change their skin, just as leopards cannot change their spots. Likewise, we who are accustomed to doing evil are incapable of doing good. However, even if we reverse the saying, Jeremiah is still speaking of the same thing. Just as dark skin is natural to the Ethiopian and spots to the leopard, so is it that we are naturally sinners, born in sin and wretched form infancy.
We ought not allow this truth to slip past us. We are - in no uncertain terms - naturally wicked. We are accustomed to doing evil. We deceive our neighbors, we speak what is false, and we weary ourselves from doing such evils (Jeremiah 9:5). Later in this prophecy, Jeremiah exclaims that, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick” so that no one “can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). The answer? No one but the Lord can understand our hearts (Jeremiah 17:10)!
We are incapable of changing this about ourselves. We have no power. We have no hope. We have no ability. Paul even speaks of this inability in Romans 8:7 saying, “…the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot.” This theme runs throughout all scripture.
But because this inability is recognized by all these authors, Jeremiah and Paul, they continually point us to our hope. Jeremiah continually points to the New Covenant that the Lord is preparing for his people. He speaks wondrously of this New Covenant in Jeremiah 31:33 when he says “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” And Paul, in Romans 8:9-10 says, “You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.” In both of these instances, God is the one working despite our inability to change. God takes the initiative and does for us what is needed to spare us from his wrath, give us peace with himself, remove our sins, and - proverbially - change our spots and our skin color. God does it! And he puts his Spirit within us, that we may mourn over our sins, worship him in spirit and truth, pray, and love him. It is in Jesus Christ that we have victory and have received an inexpressible gift! (1 Corinthians 15:57, 2 Corinthians 9:15).
