Genesis 6:3 - Meaning and Application

This comes here as a sign of God’s displeasure against those who married people outside the covenant, that is, strange wives. He warns that he will withdraw his Spirit from them, because they had grieved him by these marriages, even though they knew better. Fleshly lusts are often punished by spiritual judgments, and those are the worst judgments of all.

Another way to see this is that it shows one more reason for the great wickedness of the old world. The Spirit of the Lord had been warning and pressing them through their resistance, but they kept pushing back. So the Spirit stopped striving with them, and then all religion was soon lost among them. God warned them of this ahead of time, so they would not keep grieving his Holy Spirit, but would pray that he would remain with them.

In this verse, we should notice God’s decision not to keep striving with people by his Spirit forever. The Spirit was then striving through Noah’s preaching (1 Peter 3:19, 1 Peter 3:20) and through inner warnings of conscience, but this was useless with most people. So God says, “He shall not always strive.” The blessed Spirit still works on sinners by convincing them of sin and warning them, trying to turn them from sin to God. But if the Spirit is resisted, quenched, and fought against, he may strive for a long time, yet he will not strive forever (Hosea 4:17). Those are moving quickly toward ruin whose hearts the Spirit of grace has stopped pressing.

We should also notice the reason for this decision: “for that he also is flesh.” That means he is hopelessly corrupt, worldly, and driven by sinful desires, so striving with him is wasted effort. Can the Ethiopian change his skin? In the same way, the sinner cannot change his own sinful nature by himself. The words also means that this is true of all people, one as much as another, since all have sunk into the mud of the flesh. It is the corrupt nature within us, and the heart’s leaning toward the flesh, that resist the Spirit and make his work seem useless. When a sinner has long stayed on the side of the flesh against the Spirit, the Spirit justly withdraws his help and no longer strives. No one loses the Spirit’s efforts except those who first rejected them.

Yet mercy still gives a delay: “His days shall be one hundred and twenty years.” God says he will put off the judgment they deserve and give them time to turn from their sin by repentance and changed lives. Justice said, “Cut them down,” but mercy pleaded, “Lord, let them alone this year also,” and mercy won a reprieve of 120 years. The time of God’s patience toward provoking sinners can be very long, but it always has a limit. A reprieve is not a pardon, and though God bears with sinners for a long time, he will not bear with them forever.