The Anointing (Rewritten)

“As for you, the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and so you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, abide in him.” — 1 John 2:27 NRSV.

The anointing is not an abstract force or influence — it is a person. Scripture says He teaches, and teaching belongs to a living agent. The idea of anointing comes from the ancient practice of consecrating kings and priests. When someone was set apart from ordinary life to serve in a sacred role, they were anointed with oil. In the same way, when God sets apart His kings and priests, He pours out something far greater: the anointing of the Holy Spirit — the baptism of the Spirit — the blessed Comforter who remains forever. 

The Dove Descending and Abiding (Rewritten)

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Harriet Beecher Stowe, in her fine essay on “Primitive Christian Experience,” uses the following language:

“The advantages to the Christian Church in setting before it distinct points of attainment, are very nearly the same in result as the advantages of preaching immediate regeneration in preference to indefinite exhortation to men to lead sober, righteous, and godly lives. It has been found, in the course of New England preaching, that pressing men to an immediate and definite point of conversion, produced immediate and definite results; and so it has been found among Christians, that pressing them to an immediate and definite point of attainment will, in like manner, result in marked and decided progress. For this reason it is, that, among the Moravian Christians, where the experience by them denominated full assurance of faith was much insisted on, there were more instances of high religious faith than in almost any other denomination.”

That is a strikingly practical insight, grounded in real observation.

Things From Which We Are Not Yet Delivered (Rewritten)

Christ offers to free believers in this life not only from sinful actions, but from the sinful, selfish bent that comes with fallen humanity. Now we need to name some things that do come from sin — and can look a lot like sin — but don’t actually have its moral character. In other words, they aren’t on the list of things Jesus promises to remove for us in the present life. They are —

First: Spiritual warfare — which, of course, includes temptation. Jesus himself faced temptation. “As he is, so are ye in this world.” “The disciple is not above his Lord.” The Christian life is a long battle, and our weapons come from Christ’s promised presence, the power of his word, and the gift of his Holy Spirit. Still, we do insist that we can be delivered from the most distressing and dangerous kind of war: a civil war — a revolt against Christ raging inside the believer’s own heart. 

Bible Texts Examined: What Scripture Really Says About Sin (Rewritten)

Much of the disagreement about sin comes down to a lack of precision. People often talk past one another because they mean different things by the word sin. In this discussion, we are not talking about involuntary human weakness or unavoidable imperfections. We are talking about willful violations of God’s known law — whether that law is written in Scripture or impressed on the conscience.

The idea of living without sin immediately alarms many people. To them, it sounds like taking the crown off Christ — the only sinless person to walk the earth — and placing it on human heads. But before reacting, we need to ask a deeper question: does sin in the human soul honor Christ, or does it dishonor Him?

Full Salvation is Available Now (Rewritten)

There’s no serious disagreement among Christians that full sanctification is necessary to enter Heaven. Where people often hesitate is on when that kind of purity can actually be reached. Many assume that as long as soul and body are joined together, the body must inevitably contaminate the spirit. According to this view, complete purity is impossible before death.

But this assumption rests on a very old mistake.

The idea that matter itself is inherently evil comes not from Scripture, but from ancient pagan philosophy—specifically from Gnosticism and Platonism. These systems taught that matter is eternal, un-created, and irreversibly corrupt. God, they claimed, merely shaped this flawed substance as best he could, but could never fully cleanse it. As a result, the soul was thought to remain defiled as long as it was trapped in the body, only to be purified later — after death — by some kind of fiery process.