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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.”

From the Calvinist perspective, this is reflective of the general human condition, in which mankind suffers from Total Depravity, who cannot even take the first move toward God, much less to seek after God. Therefore, from the Calvinist perspective, the nature of fallen man must be changed if anyone is to ever become saved. As such, God must remove and replace the unregenerate heart of man with a new heart that is able to turn to Him in repentance.

However, God was specifically addressing His people, Israel, who had “forgotten” Him, and who now had become “accustomed to doing evil.” Their fallen state reflected a condition of anti-perseverance, or apostasy, in going from a place of knowing Him, to not knowing Him, and which therefore serves as a warning to believers. God says, “Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as in the day of Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers tested Me, They tried Me, though they had seen My work.” (Psalm 95:8-9) God was not giving a theology lesson on the general human condition, in going from not knowing Him to then knowing Him. If Calvinists wish to explore a theology lesson, then they could turn to the Parable of the Sower at Luke 8:4-15, in which some who had later fallen away, initially received the word with “joy” and who believed “for a while.” (Luke 8:13) Obviously that would not comport with the “Ethiopian” or “leopard” analogy, which was otherwise directed toward Israel. Furthermore, the solution that God had given for fallen Israel was not an Irresistible Grace, but a brokenness in Babylonian captivity, which would be completely irrelevant in the Total Inability taught by Calvinism.

God is saying that those “spots” on Israel shouldn’t be,

and that it is to their shame. They had “forgotten” Him.

This was a lesson on falling into apostasy, and God’s

solution was nowhere indicated to be an Irresistible

Grace, but instead being broken through a Babylonian

captivity.

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?

James White: “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.

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