Jeremiah 13:23
Jeremiah 13:19-25 (see also Jeremiah 18:6)
The cities of the Negev have been locked up, and there is no one to open them; all Judah has been carried into exile, wholly carried into exile. Lift up your eyes and see those coming from the north. Where is the flock that was given you, your beautiful sheep? What will you say when He appoints over you--and you yourself had taught them--former companions to be head over you? Will not pangs take hold of you like a woman in childbirth? If you say in your heart, “Why have these things happened to me?” Because of the magnitude of your iniquity your skirts have been removed and your heels have been exposed. Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then you also can do good who are accustomed to doing evil. Therefore I will scatter them like drifting straw to the desert wind. “This is your lot, the portion measured to you from Me,” declares the LORD, “Because you have forgotten Me and trusted in falsehood.”
Concerning the spots, at Jeremiah 13:23, God echoes what Israel itself confesses at Jeremiah 18:11-13:
God is saying that those spots shouldn’t be, and that it is to their shame.
Calvinist, James White, writes: “Those who are accustomed to doing evil can no more simply decide to do good than a leopard can simply ‘choose’ to change its spots. Why? Because a leopard’s spots are part of its nature, and sinners, fallen sons and daughters of Adam, likewise share his corrupted nature. The nature must be changed before true good can be done.” (Debating Calvinism, pp.66-67, emphasis mine)
These were God’s people. They should not have been “accustomed to doing evil.” Nevertheless, what kind of change of nature is White proposing?
Calvinist, James White, writes: “Just as a person cannot change the color of their skin, or the leopard its spots, so the one who practices evil cannot break the bondage of sin and start doing good. The corruption is indelible and can only be removed by a radical change of the heart.” (The Potter’s Freedom, p.80, emphasis mine)
The “radical change of the heart” is simply a Calvinist’s coded-language for Irresistible Grace, and yet, if that’s true, then why did God make the solution to their recovery, the Babylonian captivity? Surely, He could have simply, instead, dispensed an alleged, Irresistible Grace, as suggested by White? Of course, the Calvinist will simply utilize the ever convenient escape-hatch of, “well, this is just the means by which God instills the radical change (i.e. Irresistible Grace)....” The bottom line is that White is guilty of proof-texting, since literally, nowhere in the context, is it teaching an Irresistible Grace.
Jeremiah 18:11-13: “So now then, speak to the men of Judah and against the inhabitants of Jerusalem saying, ‘Thus says the LORD, “Behold, I am fashioning calamity against you and devising a plan against you. Oh turn back, each of you from his evil way, and reform your ways and your deeds.”’ But they will say, ‘It’s hopeless! For we are going to follow our own plans, and each of us will act according to the stubbornness of his evil heart.’ Therefore thus says the LORD, ‘Ask now among the nations, who ever heard the like of this? The virgin of Israel has done a most appalling thing.’”
Question: Why was it impossible for God’s people to repent?
Answer: Their Total Inability was because God’s people had “forgotten” their God, abandoning their conscience and making disobedience so much a part of their identity (like the leopard and his spots), so that they were lost, and could not reform their ways, and thus required God’s punishment in order to instill a desire for repentance. That’s how God changes their spots. There was no magical, Irresistible Grace. Rather, God put them through a 70 year Babylonian Captivity. It was a tough lesson, but a needed lesson. “For whom the LORD loves He reproves, even as a father corrects the son in whom he delights.” (Proverbs 3:12) So does this mean that you can change your own spots? If God is at work, yes. And that’s precisely what God was doing. He was breaking them down, humbling them, in order to restore their heart.
