Matthew 12:33

33. Either make the tree good That is, consider or hold the tree to be good. There cannot be a permanent contrariety between a moral agent’s moral actions and his moral dispositions.

There is a sort of religious doctrine which teaches that men are not depraved in their natures, but only in their actions. Their nature back of their actions, it is claimed, is either innocent or it is neutral neither good nor bad; and all of human depravity consists in the fact that men do freely act bad, and always will do so. Now, in opposition to this doctrine, our Lord teaches that there is in men a moral nature back of moral action; just as the tree is back of the fruit, just as the fountain is back of the stream, and just as the treasury full of good or evil is drawn from by the owner. It follows from this fact of man’s fallen moral nature, that in order to be pure in life he must become pure in heart. There must be a change in heart in order that there should be a complete change in moral action. This does not indeed deny that in individual acts (as in the fall of the angels or of man) their free will may choose wrong from a right nature. But in their permanent history, the actions and the character will conform to each other.

Now no nature can change itself. If the nature is bad, the resulting action is bad; and if the action is bad, that bad action cannot react and make the nature good. So that no mere natural man can regenerate himself; that is, make his own nature good and pure. No filthy stream can make its fountain clean. No corrupt fruit can send back a stream of pure sap and regenerate the tree.

There must then be a divine aid. A gracious power must be able to enter our nature, and there, by power, make all right, or must communicate to the fallen nature the power to perform those conditions by which it may come right. Fatalism teaches that God by arbitrary power seizes some part of the human race, and absolutely makes them right. Our own Church teaches that God gives the power to all men by his Holy Spirit to do works meet for repentance; that grace used obtains further grace and power; so that by a gracious ability, and not by a natural ability, man may attain reformation, regeneration, and salvation. Yet that grace is not irresistible, nor necessarily unresisted, but accepted and used in action, with a full power of willing and acting otherwise instead.

Tree corrupt Moral corruption of nature lies to a great degree in the state of the dispositions. It consists in a permanent temper and purpose to indulge the appetites, passions, and desires, with little or no regard to the divine law or the obligations of absolute right. Hence sin is either a state or an action which is a transgression of the law.