The Leopard and the New Creature

Jeremiah asks a question with an obvious answer. “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.” A leopard can’t scrub its spots off. And people used to doing wrong can’t make themselves good.

That is bad news if change depends on us. Many of us have tried. We’ve scrubbed at the same spots for years.

Paul answers Jeremiah from the other side. “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” Notice it is present tense: he is. And Paul writes that to the Corinthians, a church with plenty of spots still showing.

You can’t change your own nature. But Christ doesn’t ask you to. He makes you new, and then he spends a lifetime working that newness out. That is the hope of the resurrection season: what was dead can live.