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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."

 

The line between good and evil runs through the human heart, as Alecksandr Solzhenitsyn famously said. We are all capable of both. We are fallen human beings created in God's image of love. But when we keep choosing evil, that line starts being pushed to one side. Our hearts become so full of wicked ways of thinking that good gets crowded out and it becomes impossible for us to change without God's intervention. So intervene He does, because He does not want to lose us.

 

Here God is telling Judah and Jerusalem that suffering is coming their way to the greatness of their iniquity. (Jeremiah 13:22) The suffering they are about to encounter is their lot, God says, because they have forgotten Him and trusted in lies (Jeremiah 13:25), they have engaged in all manner of abominations due to those lies, and He wants to make them clean (Jeremiah 13:27).

 

Abominations don't seem like abominations to us when we have trusted lies and thus pushed truth from our hearts. This is how we move the line between good and evil; this is how we become so wicked that we cannot change ourselves; this is when God intervenes, and it hurts, a lot, but it is ultimately the only way to change us back to what we are meant to be.