He is half beast and half devil!

Charles Spurgeon

(Be sure to LISTEN to the Audio, as you READ the text below.)

Genesis 6:5, "The Lord saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time."

Jeremiah 13:23, "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?
Neither are you able to do good--you who are accustomed to doing evil."

Jeremiah 17:9, "The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked!"

Man by nature is worse than any one wild beast, for he is a jungle of beasts.
There is lion in him, and there is serpent in him;
there is tiger in him, and there is wolf in him;
there is dog in him, and there is devil in him.
He is half beast and half devil through the fall. I do not caricature him; his body allies him to the beast, and sin makes him a child of Satan.

Shall the Ethiopian change his skin? No, he cannot do that! Our defect is not merely skin deep--it is much more extreme than that. Changing skins is difficult, but changing hearts is impossible, except to God. You cannot change your heart, any more than you can create a new world. That is God's royal prerogative. It is a pure act of divine sovereignty and omnipotent love.

Shall the leopard get rid of his spots? Well, that is difficult; but still the task of taking spots out of leopards would be small, compared with the miracle of taking evil out of the very core of our wild-beast-like heart. The leopard's spots are far more superficial than the soul's sinful corruption. Only the blood of the Lamb has omnipotent cleansing power.

We are not merely a little out of order; we are totally ruined. The fall has not broken the leg of humanity--it has broken its neck! There is no ability in sinful men to change their own wicked hearts. Man is dead in sin--not sick, not faint, not dying, but dead! And none but the eternal God who first made him, can make him live again.

All the tears of repentance,
all the efforts of morality,
all the strivings of religion,
cannot blot out a single sin. Our nature is so deeply polluted, that there is not a single faculty free from defilement:
  the will is stubborn,
  the understanding is darkened,
  and the affections are earthly and sensual.

View human nature in the looking-glass of Scripture, and you will see a leper from head to foot, covered with the foul disease of sin--incurable by any human remedy.

These truths crush self-righteousness and exalt the glory of God in salvation. By the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit, God . . .
  grants repentance and faith,
  removes the heart of stone,
  and writes His law upon the heart.

"I will also sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean.
 I will cleanse you from all your impurities and all your idols.
 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you;
 I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
 I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes and to carefully observe My ordinances." Ezekiel 36:25-27

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Today's choice AI resource: The highest virtue in evangelicalism today: "Be nice!"