Preaching to Sharks?

There is a scene in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick in which Fleece, the cook on a whaling boat, starts preaching to a bunch of sharks. The sailors are annoyed by how much noise the sharks are making as they devour a whale carcass tied to their ship, so Fleece gives the sharks a lecture. “Stop dat ... noise dare. You hear? Stop dat ... smackin’ ob de lips!” He tells the sharks that if they would only alter their voracious nature, then their behavior wouldn’t be so unruly. If they would just control their appetite, they could be angels instead of sharks. Of course, the sharks cannot understand a word the cook is saying, so their feeding frenzy continues undisturbed. One of the sailors cheers the cook on. “‘Well, done, Old Fleece!’ cried Stubb, ‘that’s Christianity; go on.”

But that is not Christianity at all.... The gospel does not shout at us, telling us that we need to change. We cannot change. We can no more, by our own effort, stop being sinners than a shark, through trying hard, can stop being a shark. In the gospel God makes us new through a relationship with Christ. As God’s Spirit works in our hearts, he unites us with Christ through faith. We are forgiven because of what Jesus did in our behalf on the cross, and we are given a new nature in him.

God doesn’t just yell at sinners, telling them so stop being sinners. That would have no more effect than a sermon has on sharks. Rather, by uniting us to his Son through faith, God makes us new!