By the Grace of God We Can

Jeremiah 13:23 – “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots?  Then also you can do good who are accustomed to do evil.”

Rudyard Kipling wrote a short fictional story about how the leopard got his spots in his book Just So Stories.  In that story, he described how at one point in time, the leopard and his fellow Ethiopian friend would hunt zebra and giraffe together on the African plain.  At first, the leopard and Ethiopian were both light colored, blending into their surroundings on the open plain; that made it quite easy for them to catch their prey.  Eventually, the giraffe and zebra, sick and tired of becoming the breakfast, lunch, and dinner of these predators, moved from the plain into a forest, where over time, they developed spots and stripes to blend into their surroundings.  Realizing that they were out of food, both the Ethiopian and the leopard moved from the plain into the forest; but to their chagrin, they could smell zebra/giraffe, they could hear zebra/giraffe, but they could not see it, making it almost impossible for them to hunt their meal.  One day when they got lucky and caught something, they found out that what made it so difficult to capture a meal was that they were standing out like a sore thumb in this forest environment compared to their well-camouflaged prey; so the Ethiopian right at that point changed his skin color to black.  The leopard also decided to change his coat adding spots to it with the help of his Ethiopian friend.¹

Although Mr. Kipling wrote a fun and interesting take on how the leopard got its spots, it is simply fictional.  Surprisingly though, a few years ago some scientists actually discovered that there was a bit of truth to his story, in that, cats (whether lions, tigers, or leopards) actually had different coats based on the environments they were in.  Since leopards lived in a denser forest environment, they had spots, while things that lived on the plains like lions did not.²  Each cat species had adapted a coat that would be best fit for them to hunt in their environment.  In a way, Mr. Kipling was right.

But in both cases, the truth of the matter is, a leopard cannot change its spots once it has developed its coat, neither can a human being change the color of his skin (It is true that you can become a lot darker/lighter through various processes, like tanning, but you still are what you are).  This idiom that is part of our everyday language is usually used to remind people that they can’t change who they are.  It actually originated from this verse in the Bible that we find in our passage today.  In the context, the LORD was basically speaking to the people of Israel, rebuking them and letting them know that they are a group of sinners that cannot change their ways.  To say if the leopard could change his spots or the Ethiopian his skin, then you could do good, was basically a way of telling them that there was no way that they could ever do good, they were just so accustomed to doing evil already.  This verse is a sad commentary on how far Israel had fallen into their sin of idolatry and disobedience against God.

The same commentary could actually be said about all of mankind – we are so inclined to do evil that we can almost never do good, especially in God’s sight.  Two verses in Romans 3 attest to that – Romans 3:23 (“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…”) and Romans 3:12 (“All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one”).  And if we even managed to do good, Isaiah states that our righteousness is but filthy rags in the sight of God (Isaiah 64:6).  We are like the people of Israel – so accustomed to our evil ways that we cannot do good, we cannot be good.  It just isn’t in our nature.  Now, we could all easily take this fact and live lives of utter degradation, because we can’t help it.  But the beautiful thing is that our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ died to change that.  He died to give us a way to be righteous, to be holy, to be able to do good in God’s sight.  Our natural state after the Fall (After Adam ate of the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden) is to sin, but Christ when He died on that cross opened up a way for us to change who we are completely to become new creatures, new creations in Him.  2 Corinthians 5:17 states it best – “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.  The old has passed away; behold the new has come.”  We aren’t like Kipling’s leopard who just painted on his spots, but we are completely changed from the inside out.  It is like a caterpillar that emerges as a butterfly.  Once it has undergone metamorphosis, it is a completely different creature; it can never go back.  In the same manner, we as Christians have been changed from this state of complete corruption to a righteousness in God’s eyes.  This all came by His grace alone – “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and not of yourselves it is the gift of God:  Not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).  Jesus Christ is the only Reason we can be seen as righteous before God that we can be and do good, because He is our Righteousness, Redemption, and Sanctification (1 Corinthians 1:30).  Although the commentary of our passage today indicates that mankind can never do good, by the grace of God through the salvation He provided in His Son, we, as redeemed disciples of Jesus Christ, can.  So let’s do that. Let us live out our lives by being and doing good, bringing glory to our Savior and doing what is impossible for the world to do.

Note:

If you want to receive Christ, follow these easy steps:

A – Admit you are a sinner and in need of Christ.

B – Believe that He has died for your sins and His death on the cross has saved you from sin (from the penalty of sin (death), the power of sin (the inability to do good), and the presence of sin (from hell and into heaven)

C – Commit your life to Him trusting Him as Lord and Savior

¹http://www.boop.org/jan/justso/leopard.htm

²http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/eb4f6f88-e169-11df-90b7-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2bdekRiHW