Have You Been?

NOT because you are worse than your neighbors. Not because you sometimes lose your temper. Not because you are a very wicked person.
But because you are a sinner — a sinner root and branch. You were born a sinner; you grew up a sinner; and you are a sinner still, with a sinner’s nature. “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one.” “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?” No. Why? Because they were so born. So with man. He cannot be reformed so as to please God; he cannot be improved so as to gain heaven. He needs to be made “a new creature.” He cannot bear the fruit of the Spirit so long as he is in the flesh, any more than a bramble bush could bear apples or a thorn bear cherries. It is not a little help he needs to make him “all right,” it is not a “good religious education”; it is a new life. And this new life must come from somewhere outside himself; he cannot find it within him — he cannot earn it by his works.
A blacksmith once said; “I have often tried to be good; I have often made resolutions to live better; but this being ‘born again’ is beyond me: I never tried that.” It was something he could have no hand in; it is God’s workmanship.
Reader, have you found this out for yourself?