WHEN I was in Montreal years ago I had occasion to dine at a restaurant where the owner displayed a little pet pig. Piggie was quite an attraction. He was as white and clean as soap and water could make him, his little toes carefully manicured, fairly gleamed with pink fingernail polish, and he had a bright ribbon around his neck.
Piggy conducted himself very prudently and one would almost have thought he was aware that his job depended on his behavior. He was very cordial to all the guests and wandered about the dining room occasionally expressing his satisfaction with a good-natured, "Oink! oink!"
Then he visited our table and as I looked into his small upturned face and gazed into his little blue eyes, I said to myself: "Piggy, how different is your lot to that of most little pigs! Few of your kind are born to grow up amid such luxury and cleanliness. Still you are but a pig. You won't be in heaven, nor do heavenly things interest you. You were made for earth."
There is an old story of a Chinese emperor who also had for a pet a little pig which he was determined should not grow up as did others of his species. So he had him dressed in a fine suit, he fed him with the choicest food from the royal kitchen, and he kept him within the palace walls for a year.
Then one day he took him for a walk. It was not long after a rain, and Piggy, instead of behaving himself as the emperor's pet pig should, spying a pool of muddy water he took the greatest delight in rolling over and over in it, fine coat and all.
The Emperor was quite discouraged, but determined to try again. So he kept Piggy shut up from the outside world and after a time he again took him for a walk. But the result was the same.
The little pig's nature was unchanged. Fine clothes, fine food and culture would never make any difference. He would always be a pig.
And here Piggy teaches us an important lesson. Every one of us are children of fallen Adam and are born with a fallen nature, a nature that loves the "muddy" attractions and sinful pleasures of this world and can never be improved. Unless God Himself put it there, there would not be one desire after Him and heavenly things.
But not only is that old nature fallen, it is at enmity with God. All is as dark as night in our hearts unless the light of God shines in and shows us our deep need of Jesus as Saviour. Only His precious blood can cleanse these hearts from the dark stains of sin. All need that cleansing — both young and old no matter what our bringing up has been.
However, to those who receive the Lord Jesus by faith into their hearts as Saviour, He gives a new nature the same as His own, which delights in God and heavenly things. Thus the Christian has two natures — the old, fallen and bad which loves the world and sin; and the new which finds all its delight in Christ. When He comes and calls His own from this world to heaven then that old nature will have gone forever.
Do you have this new nature, dear reader? Have you been born again?
Messages of the Love of God 5/4/1975