Genesis 6:12

Genesis 6:12

(with Luke 17:26)

I. The statement in Genesis of the corruption of the world before the flood is expressed in very strong language: "The wickedness of man was great in the earth." Only one particular feature of this general corruption is given: "that the earth was filled with violence." Yet this is mentioned as forming rather a part of the general corruption than as being the whole of it. Another, and as it may seem, a more prevailing part, is given by our Lord: "They were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage."

Our Lord here names not occasional crimes which disturb society, but society's most ordinary and most necessary practices; things which are neither crimes nor sins in themselves; things which men may do and must do. He means us to understand that there is a natural danger in the things of which He was speaking, which, if left to itself and not earnestly struggled against, would certainly lead to the following judgment.

II. The great truth is, that no one, old or young, can save his soul by following the course of life quietly and letting it drift him whither it will.. It is not in our life here, as we now live, with all its wisdom and all its labour and all its pleasures, to attain to life eternal. Round the tree of life there is a fiery guard, which allows not fallen man in his own natural course to reach unto it. It is not like a tree standing by the wayside, so that we have only to put forth our hand as we go by, and eat and live for ever. Christ came to take us out of our common nature, to tear us away from the path which we were naturally treading; to give us another nature not our own, to set us in a new way, of which the end is not death but life.

T. Arnold, Sermons,vol. v., p. 82.

Reference: Genesis 6:13. Parker, vol. i., p. 159.