Is Humor Forbidden?

QUESTION: Is all facetiousness forbidden in Eph. 5:4: "nor filthiness, nor foolish talking, or jesting, which are not befitting."

ANSWER: From the connection we infer that jesting is here used in a bad sense, as scurrility, ribaldry, and low wit. There is a good sense which is not forbidden — pleasantry, humor and facetiousness. 

— Steele's Answers p. 79. 

Agape: to God, or to People?

QUESTION: when the noun agape, love, is used in the epistles, without any expressed object, does it mean love to God or love to men?

ANSWER: It is generally used of love to men, especially to the brethren. We know that it is thus used in 1 Cor. 13, from the evil environments which love is said to surmount in verses 3-7. 

— Steele's Answers pp. 78, 79. 

One Self or Two?

QUESTION: Is there a self-life that is holy, and a sinful self?

ANSWER: There is but one self, not two. If this one self leans toward sin, it needs to be changed so as to lean toward holiness. St. Paul calls these two different states, the old man and the new. Hence some erroneously think there are two persons. When we speak of self-crucifixion we do not mean self-annihilation, but the change of the soul's gravitation from downward to upward, or from being self-centered to God-centered. The self which bears the full image of Christ does not need to be nailed to the cross. 

— Steele's Answers p. 78.

The Penetrating Power of God's Truth

QUESTION: Explain Heb. 4:12: "God's Message is a living and active power, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing it's way till it penetrates soul and spirit — not joints only, but the very marrow — and detecting the inmost thoughts and purposes of the mind." (The Twentieth Century Version.) 

ANSWER: This excellent version gives the idea not of the separating, but of the pervasive and penetrating power of God's truth accompanied by the illuminating and purifying spirit. In the priestly examination of an animal for sacrifice, the outside was examined and then the flesh after it was skinned, and finally the backbone was cleft with a cleaver from end to end, dividing the spinal cord so as to detect the least speck of disease. The writer of this epistle uses this priestly practice to illustrate the office of the Holy Spirit in the detection of inward impurity.

– Steele's Answers pp. 77, 78. 

Sonship to God

In the interest of clearness of thought and in vindication of Christian truth, let us see first what we mean by the phrases "Sons of God," "Children of God," and "Fatherhood of God."

Strictly speaking, there is but one Person so linked to God by the genetic tie as to be "the Son of God." Hence He is "the only begotten son." His being is grounded on the Divine Nature and is without time limits. He is the eternal Son. All other beings are grounded not on the nature of God, but upon His will, within time limits. They are creatures. The Divine Logos is never spoken of in the Holy Scriptures as a creature. God is never called the creator, but the Father, of our Lord Jesus Christ. His sonship is unique and unshared by any other being in the universe.

Together With Jesus

Jesus was begotten of the Holy Ghost; the sons of God are born of the Spirit. Jesus was circumcised the eighth day: the real, spiritual seed of Abraham have their circumcision not in the flesh, but in the spirit, being cleansed from all filthiness of the flesh and of the spirit. Jesus, after a period of religious development, was baptized with the Holy Spirit; so are all those children of God who tarry in Jerusalem with persevering faith. Jesus had the certificate of His sonship in the repeated utterance of His Father, "This is My beloved Son;" so does the child of God hear the attestation of his divine adoption prompting the joyful shout, Abba, Father: —

Can Repentance Based on Fear be Genuine?

QUESTION: Can repentance be genuine, if based upon hope of reward or fear of punishment? Is the following sentence true, "Virtue founded on fear is only vice in a fit of dejection"?

ANSWER: this kinds like the distant echo of the New England Hopkinsian doctrine that holiness is disinterested benevolence, that the least regard for our own well-being is inconsistent with true holiness, and repentance is not genuine if it does not include willingness to be damned for the glory of God. In the first quarter of the last century, a boy named Mark Traffon, in a Calvinian inquiry meeting in Maine, was asked if he was willing to be sent to hell forever for God's glory, and replied: "No, sir, I have decided objections." He went to hear an Arminian preacher, was converted, and became an eminent minister. Moses had respect to the recompense of reward, and Noah, moved by fear, prepared for himself an ark. In Christ's preaching he perpetually appealed to men's hopes and fears, especially to the latter. He uttered more alarm truth and said more about hell fire than any other person in the Bible. Many modern preachers seem to be wiser than the great Teacher. They think that the doctrine of retribution is not promotive of genuine piety, and for this reason drop it from their sermons, and then wonder why sinners are not converted, and comfort themselves with the declaration that "the times have changed and the age of revivals is past." Says Bishop Butler in his Analogy: "Veracity, justice, regard to God's authority, and our own chief interest, are coincident; and each separately, a just principle. To begin life from either of them, and persist, produces that very character which corresponds to our relations to God, and secures happiness."Repentance from the lowest motive leads to the higher and ultimately to the highest.

— Steele's Answers pp. 76, 77.

The Cremation of the Earth

QUESTION: When will the cremation of the earth take place (see 2 Peter 3:10)?

ANSWER: Ask an easier question. The Creator of the earth will burn it up when he has no better use for it.

— Steele's Answers p. 76.

Is Original Sin a Biblical Doctrine?

QUESTION: Are the phrases "original sin," "birth sin," "inbred sin" found in the Bible?

ANSWER: No. But a doctrine may be in the Bible while the term invented by men to express it is not scriptural, such as Trinity, sacrament, eucharist. Atonement is not found in the Revised New Testament. Theologians, feeling the need of a term to express racial bent or inclination towards sin inherited from Adam and Eve, called it original sin, using the term "sin" in an improper sense, because "sin properly so called," says J. Wesley, "is the willful transgression of a known law of God." Hence Arminians, whenever they use any one of these three phrases, are obligated to disclaim the elements of volition and guilt, which constitute the essence of sin. Much perplexity and many theological discussions would have been avoided if a different term had been invented to denote the racial trend towards sin. Paul used the terms "flesh" and "carnal" in 1 Cor. 3:1-3, and Gal. 5:17 in describing Christians in whom there was still lingering the proclivity to sin. But this word has about a half dozen meanings, mostly good, so that its use to denote badness is very confusing. Hence many speakers and writers decline to use the term so equivocal. The phrase "sin which dwelleth in me," occurs in Rom. 7:17 as descriptive, not of a regenerated person, but of a convicted moralist, personated by Paul, a character striving to realize his ideal of righteousness without faith in Jesus Christ. If real sin dwells in a man, he is not born of God, but is a child of the devil, according to 1 John 3:9, 10.

— Steele's Answers pp. 75, 76.

The Unbelieving Spouse

QUESTION: What is the meaning of "sanctified" and "holy" in 1 Cor. 7:14: "For the unbeliving husband is sanctified in the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified in the brother: else were your children unclean; but now they are holy"?

ANSWER: When either the wife or the husband becomes a Christian and the other party continues in the marriage relation, consenting to the religious change, he or she is measurably withdrawn from the contamination of heathenism and brought under the saving influence of Gospel truth and the Holy Spirit. This is the peculiar sense of "sanctified" and "holy" here used. The unconverted party is presumably on the road to salvation, and the children escape a pagan education and learn the way of salvation.

— Steele's Answers pp. 74, 75.

Perfect Love

Perfect love constitutes evangelical perfection, the sum of all duties, the bond which binds all the virtues into unity.

As we stand midway between the perfect estate of paradise lost and of paradise regained, regretting the one and aspiring to the other, but excluded so long as we are in the flesh, our gracious God, through the mediation of Christ, commissions the Holy Ghost to come down and open the gates of a new paradise of love made perfect, love casting out all fear, love fully shed abroad in our hearts.

Love is the fulfilling of the law. To fulfil is perfectly to keep, not the old Adamic law, but the law of the new Adam, the Lord from heaven. "Fulfil ye the law of Christ, the royal law of liberty." This law is graciously adapted to our diminished moral capacity, dwarfed and crippled by original and actual sin.

All there is left of us after sin has spread its blight may be filled with the fullness of God. Every faculty may be energized, every capacity be filled, and every particle and fibre of the being be pervaded with the love of Christ, so that the totality of our nature may be subsidized in the delightful employment of love, attesting itself by obedience, rejoicing evermore, praying without ceasing, and in every thing giving thanks. Says Wesley, "I know of no other Christian perfection."

Predestined to Holiness

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ; according as He hath chosen us [believers] in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love."
— Ephesians i. 3, 4.

The doctrine of predestination always has reference to holiness. God, by an immutable decree, has made entire sanctification the goal attainable by all believers; from eternity He has determined that those who, by a free compliance with the conditions, are adopted into His family, "should be conformed to the image of His Son," not only in the distant future, but now, in the present life. "As He is, so are we in this world."

The broad line of demarcation between the children of God and the children of the devil lies in this one word, sin. "Whosoever has been born of God [and so continues] is not sinning, because His seed, the new principle of love, remaineth in him, and he is not able to be sinning, [as a habit,] because he has been born of God" [and so remains]. The significance of the Greek tenses is shown in the parenthetic words, the perfect tense denoting an act whose effect remains to the present time, and the present tense indicating an habitual or oft-recurring act.

Ritualism and Spirituality

QUESTION: Does ritualism promote spirituality?

ANSWER: I think that a simple prescribed form of administering the two sacraments by insuring their dignified and orderly celebration promotes spirituality. But as synonymous with Tractarianism, which apes Romanism by an ornate and spectacular form, eucharistic vestments, and genuflextions to a crucifix, ritualism, by dazzling the senses, promotes æstheticism rather than spirituality.

— Steele's Answers p. 74.

Life Insurance

QUESTION: Should the father of a family keep up his life insurance if he is able?

ANSWER: Yes, by all means that are honorable.

— Steele's Answers p. 74.

Christ: Founder of a New Order

When sin had discrowned Adam and his sons it was determined in the Council of the Trinity that a new and superior order should be constructed out of the ruined race. A second Adam appears on earth the first term of the glorious series, the new founder of the new order. He is the norm or model by which the new creation will proceed.

All those sons of fallen Adam who by faith yield to the transfiguring power assume the essential attributes of the second Adam, the Lord from heaven. To adopt the phrase of modern philosophy, a new race is to be evolved. In all evolution there must first be involution. You must put into the first term all that you take out. Jesus Christ is the first term. "And it pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell." "For in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily."