Monday, August 1, 2011

Nobody but Jesus!

Job 14:4"Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?Not one".

Job had a deep sense of the need of being clean before God,and indeed he was clean in heart and hand beyond others as God pronounced him perfect and upright.But he saw that he could not of himself produce holiness in his own nature,and therefore,he asked this question,and answered it in the negative without a moment's hesitation.The best of men are as incapapable as the worst of men bringing out from human nature that which is not there.

It is impossible for sinful parents to give life to innocent children,we cannot produce a holy nature from a depraved nature,pure acts from a impure heart,perfect acts from imperfect men or a heavenly life from nature's moral death.But we must be clean to be accepted.Yet we cannot do the needed work of cleansing by our own strength.But there is one by which all can be cleaned.One by which all can become righteous.As by one man all were made unclean,by one all can be made clean.Jesus the power of God;the cleansing power of the blood of the lamb.Jesus would not have died, if sin could have be removed by others means.The renewing work of His Holy Spirit would not be needed to regenerate us, if we could do it ourselves.We were unclean,separated from the father and needed a way to be made righteous.

Adam is said to have begotten "a son in his own likeness,"sinful as he was as well as mortal and miserable.The holiest of saints upon the earth has a corrupt and sinful nature which he passes down to his child;just as the circumcised Jew begat an uncircumcised child.We needed a new nature,to be changed from the inside.Regeneration is a change of nature,but not a natural change;it's supernatural."Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?Nobody but Jesus!

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