Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered outside the gate. Therefore, let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach. For we have no continuing city here, but we seek one to come.
Select a thought to read by choosing a collection, the month, and then the day:
"TRUST IN THE LIVING GOD, WHO GIVETH US RICHLY ALL THINGS TO ENJOY."
Lesson: We can only reproduce what we really are.
The world cannot do good because it is the world's nature to do evil. "How can ye", the Master said, "being evil, speak good things?" (Mt. 12:34). Everything that an evil-hearted man does is wrong. Everything that an evil-hearted man touches, he dirties. Nothing that an evil-hearted man says can be trusted. When he prays, he disgusts God. When he gives, God refuses. When he lends aid, there is a hook hidden in it, and he expects a return on his "aid" that is contrary to the will of God. "The whole world lieth in wickedness", John said. How then can anyone who is "of the world" do good? Nothing a worldly person does is acceptable with the Creator. Worldliness is perverse; it is blind; it is rebellious; it is ungodly! The whole world is submersed in wickedness and cannot love or do righteousness. Even in trying to do good, a wicked man only furthers the cause of sin. There is no hope in either man or his world, and anyone who loves this world and its fashions cannot love God (1Jn. 2:15). Friendship with this world makes a man the enemy of God (Jas. 4:4).
(As I was contemplating these things that I have just written to you, I heard a firm but gentle voice in my heart say to me, "But you do not yet understand what I am saying because you do not yet know your God." This word was not so much a criticism of my lack of the knowledge of God; rather it was more of a fatherly invitation to continue to pursue this truth more. And so, I did.)
Solomon observed that "God created man upright, but he has sought out many inventions." In the beginning, when God had completed each day of His creation week, He surveyed what He had created that day and was pleased because "it was good." But when He created man, He soon realized that it was not good for man to be alone. So, God created for the man a mate, and He told the couple while they were still in their innocent state to "be fruitful, and multiply" and to populate the earth with their children. Unfortunately, before the man and his mate could produce a child, they both sinned. Innumerable troubles, fears, sufferings, and death entered into the world. The two transgressors were cast out of God's earthly paradise and bore their children outside the pleasant Garden of God.
That reproduction of children was according to God's earlier commandment and should have been cause for great joy. But Adam and Eve soon discovered, to their very great sorrow, that the sinful nature which now polluted their hearts was transferred into the children that they conceived. They found that they could only reproduce what they had become: sinners. It was with them as Jesus would later say: "A corrupt tree cannot produce good fruit. Neither can a good tree produce corrupt fruit."
Motivated by his inherited sinful nature, Adam's oldest son Cain envied and then murdered his younger brother, the righteous Abel. Cain's heart was wicked; he was filled with envy of the blessings God had given to his righteous brother. He could not enjoy the blessings God gave to him for envying those of his brother Abel. Being wicked, Cain could only produce wicked works. Being upright, Abel could only do righteous deeds. Unknown to Cain, what Cain really hated was not Abel his brother but the righteousness of God that was in Abel and was expressed through Abel's deeds. The light of his brother's righteousness exposed Cain for what he really was, and Cain's response was not repentance but murder. He tried to extinguish God's light by killing the person through whom it shined. Being wicked, Cain could only think wrong thoughts. The wicked deeds followed that.
A sinful man does not have to try to sin; it is his nature to displease God. And a righteous man does not have to try to live uprightly; it is his nature to obey God. If your heart is not right with God and you find that you are unable to do righteous deeds, don't try harder. It won't do you any good. Paul's reminiscences of his efforts to be righteous without the Spirit of God inside of him describe such a life well (Rom. 7). But after Paul's heart was circumcised from worldliness by the holy Ghost and his spirit was cleansed by the power of God's holy Ghost, Paul found that to obey God's commandments was for him no longer impossible, as it once had been. That is why he so greatly rejoiced in the Lord.
So, instead of trying harder to be righteous with your old nature still intact, turn to Christ Jesus and become a partaker of the nature of God (see 2Pet. 1:4). Seek God for a new, tender heart and a clean, holy spirit. With a godly spirit and a clean heart, doing righteous deeds will come easily and naturally for you, for we reproduce only what we truly are, and there is nothing else that we can do.