How Heredity Affects Salvation
‘JT will cleanse their blood.” — Jorn iii. 21.
AN religion do that!” you say. “Can it
cleanse sins of the blood! I always knew it could cleanse sins of a certain order — sins of example, sins of upbringing, sins of worldly circumstance; but sins of the blood ! — I thought that was something beyond it.” No, it is not. You need not, unless you will, be a victim of heredity. You say, “I carry in my bosom the vices of my ancestors.” No, my brother, you do not. You bring only one vice from your ancestors — a weak will, and with that you make all your vices. What do you mean by the transmission of wickedness? What is that which passes from father to son on the stream of heredity? Is it drunkenness, lasciviousness, temper, extravagance, meanness? Not one of these. No child brings a temptation with it into the world. The
child of drunken parents before it has tasted alcohol has no more tendency to drink than you have. What it does bring into the world is a weak will. That is the only moral possession transmitted by corrupt blood. God says: “The transmission must be, but it can be remedied right well. You say you have received from your father a will that cannot withstand temptation. Come, then, and I will give you a temptation which you ought not to withstand — the temptation to a great love, a Divine love. You say you have got by heredity an inability to resist surrender. I will make that hereditary weakness your glory. Surrender to Me! Give up your will to My tempting! Yield to the solicitations, to the allurements, of My Spirit! Abandon yourself to the prospect of ‘pleasures for evermore ’ — of a house with many mansions and a city with streets of gold and a river of crystal clearness and a tree of fruits perennial! Then shall your very defects become your salvation. Not in spite of, but through, your transmitted weakness you shall enter the kingdom of heaven. It will be worth while to have received from your ancestors an unresisting will if thereby you have been able to surrender yourself to Me. It will be worth while to have been halt and maimed if thereby you have been overtaken by My chariots. It will be worth while to have been wounded in the wing if thereby you have been captured as a prisoner of the Lord.”
Lord, it is through my very nothingness I hope to be cleansed. It is through that very weakness of will which I have derived from my earthly fathers that I hope to be drawn to my heavenly Father. The stream of heredity has taken away my power of resistance; but so shall I the sooner be conquered by Thee. It is the old heredity that has prepared me for a new heredity. For, when I come to Thee I shall get new blood in my veins — the blood of Jesus Christ Thy Son. When I come to Thee the old defect shall be cleansed. My weakness of will shall vanish when my will is Thine. I shall be brought to Thee on a bed; but when I see Thee I shall take up my bed and walk. I shall come in as a captive, but I shall go out as a soldier. I shall enter wearing a chain, but I shall emerge bearing a banner. The blood of Christ Thy Son will be to me a new heredity — a birth from my Father. I will hang my harp no more on the willows by the streams of Babel. There will be a second stream — the blood of a new ancestry — the stream that maketh glad the city of my God. There shall I tune my harp in the sweet by and by. The impurity of the old stream may indeed prepare my way; but the blood of Jesus Christ Thy Son cleanseth from all sin.