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Steps to Christ
“Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one.” “The carnal
mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God,
neither indeed can be.”
Job 14:4
;
Romans 8:7
. Education, culture, the
exercise of the will, human effort, all have their proper sphere, but
here they are powerless. They may produce an outward correctness
of behavior, but they cannot change the heart; they cannot purify the
springs of life. There must be a power working from within, a new
life from above, before men can be changed from sin to holiness. That
power is Christ. His grace alone can quicken the lifeless faculties of
the soul, and attract it to God, to holiness.
The Saviour said, “Except a man be born from above,” unless he
shall receive a new heart, new desires, purposes, and motives, leading
to a new life, “he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
John 3:3
, margin.
The idea that it is necessary only to develop the good that exists in
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man by nature, is a fatal deception. “The natural man receiveth not the
things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither
can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” “Marvel
not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.”
1 Corinthians 2:14
;
3:7
. Of Christ it is written, “In Him was life; and the life was the light
of men”—the only “name under heaven given among men, whereby
we must be saved.”
John 1:4
;
Acts 4:12
.
It is not enough to perceive the loving-kindness of God, to see
the benevolence, the fatherly tenderness, of His character. It is not
enough to discern the wisdom and justice of His law, to see that it is
founded upon the eternal principle of love. Paul the apostle saw all
this when he exclaimed, “I consent unto the law that it is good.” “The
law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.” But he
added, in the bitterness of his soul-anguish and despair, “I am carnal,
sold under sin.”
Romans 7:16, 12, 14
. He longed for the purity, the
righteousness, to which in himself he was powerless to attain, and
cried out, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from this
body of death?”
Romans 7:24
, margin. Such is the cry that has gone
up from burdened hearts in all lands and in all ages. To all, there is but
one answer, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of
the world.”
John 1:29
.
Many are the figures by which the Spirit of God has sought to
illustrate this truth, and make it plain to souls that long to be freed
from the burden of guilt. When, after his sin in deceiving Esau, Jacob