From His Mother's Womb
Acts 14: 8
After healing a multitude of Jews and Greeks in Iconium the Lord Jesus Christ brings Paul and Barnabas to this man. Be sure you understand his condition? He was impotent in his feet. Not only this, but he was a cripple from his mother’s womb. Have you ever noticed just how thoroughly incurable the people were in whom Christ, and his apostles, worked a miracle? (Acts 3: 2; Mark 5: 25-29; John 5: 1-9.) Every sinner God saves is incurable by man. We need to be made whole to be accepted of God. Yet, that is an absolute impossibility for any sinner to perform. But like the blind man whom Christ healed, this lame man was born in this condition that the works of God might be made manifest in him (John 9: 1-4.) That which is impossible by man is accomplished fully by the great Physician. This man's lameness is the result of sin. Not the result of some sin he committed for he was lame from his mother's womb. Sin is what we are by virtue of our first birth in Adam. By the sin of Adam all whom he represented were separated from God. Through natural generation we were conceived of corrupt seed therefore the sin of our hearts kept us separated from God. We do what we are. We may reform our doing on the outside but it does not change what we are on the inside. What we are within dominates what we do without. That is true of the unregenerate sinner and the regenerated saint (Mt 12:35; Ro 6: 16, 17.)