Righteousness Leading to Sanctifcation (Rewritten)

 "I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness." — Romans 6:19 KJV.

 "I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification." — Romans 6:19 NRSV.

Ἀνθρώπινον λέγω διὰ τὴν ἀσθένειαν τῆς σαρκὸς ὑμῶν. ὥσπερ γὰρ παρεστήσατε τὰ μέλη ὑμῶν δοῦλα τῇ ἀκαθαρσίᾳ καὶ τῇ ἀνομίᾳ εἰς τὴν ἀνομίαν, οὕτως νῦν παραστήσατε τὰ μέλη ὑμῶν δοῦλα τῇ δικαιοσύνῃ εἰς ἁγιασμόν. — Romans 6:19

---

In the King James Version of the Bible, the phrase reads “righteousness unto holiness.” This does not refer to the initial holiness that comes with regeneration, but — as Dean Alford explains — to perfect holiness. In other words, believers are called to “present their members as servants to righteousness, leading to — resulting in — perfect holiness.”

Jesus' Brothers and Sisters

QUESTION: Did Mary, the mother of Christ, have other children after Jesus, or are James, Joses, Judas, Simon and their sisters, of whom Jesus is called "brother" in Mark 6:3, cousins of Jesus, as some say?

ANSWER: The Papists, in their attempt to prove the perpetual virginity of Mary, insist that "brother" means cousin, and that "firstborn" in Matt. 1:25 is a spurious reading. Dean Alford well says: "No one would ever have thought of interpreting this verse any otherwise than its prima facie meaning, except to force it into accordance with a preconceived notion of the perpetual virginity of Mary." Other Romanists, finding it very difficult to prove that the brothers and sisters are cousins, try to prove that they are Joseph's children by a former marriage!

— Steele's Answers pp. 249, 250.

Jonah in the Belly of the Fish

QUESTION: Having heard a Methodist preacher make the statement from the pulpit recently that Jonah was dead in the belly of the whale three days and nights, I wish to ask if, in your judgment, there is anything in the Bible to back up such a statement, and if there is, does it not prove that the Roman Catholics are right in their claim that we have a chance to get right with God after death? If God gave Jonah the privilege of repenting after he was dead, have not we a right to expect the same privilege?

ANSWER: The day after this question was laid on my table, my daily paper of May 17 reported that a vessel called the Octopus, sunken near Newport, R. I., was raised, after a submergence of twenty-four hours, the whole crew of fifteen men being found alive and as well as they ever were. They voluntarily went down in a water-tight submarine war vessel, well supplied. with food and fresh air condensed in vaults which they let out from time to time after expelling that which had become foul. They testify that they could have been very comfortable several days. If men using only natural means could prolong life under the sea, could not God, who has both the natural and the supernatural at his command, keep a runaway preacher alive in the Octopus, which he prepared for him in the Mediterranean Sea? The sailor at masthead cries "There she blows," when he sees a stream of spray arising from a whale expelling the foul air from his lungs, preparing to inhale several cubic yards of pure air. So you see, there was a good chance for Jonah to live without any great draft upon the supernatural. Moreover, we have a historic proof that Jonah did not die, in the fact that he made a long prayer, in answer to which he was permitted to go ashore without a gang plank. Judging by the length of their prayers, Jonah was more alive than Peter was, who had only breath enough to say, "Lord, save me." Jonah dead is a very shaky foundation for the Romish doctrine of a post-mortem purgatory, with its back door opening heavenward. But it is the best they have. There is but one purgatory, for sin, the blood of Jesus Christ (I John 1:7), applied in this life.

— Steele's Answers, pp. 228-230.

About Madam Guyon's Commentaries

QUESTION: What is known of Madam Guyon's commentaries on the Holy Scriptures?

ANSWER: She was highly imaginative and naturally began with Solomon's Song and the Apocalypse. Afterwards she wrote much on the other Books of the Bible under what she thought was inspiration. "Before I wrote," she says, "I knew nothing of what I was going to write, and after I had written, I remembered nothing of what I had penned." Her commentaries are of little value and are found only in antiquarian libraries. Through all her writings runs the capital mistake that God never does, never can, purify a soul but by inward and outward suffering. This led her into the Romish practice of bringing suffering upon herself by bodily austerities. But with this dross much pure gold was mixed.

— Steele's Answers pp. 202, 203.

The Roman Catholic Scheme of Perfection

QUESTION: What is the Roman Catholic scheme of perfection?

ANSWER: By fulfilling "the three counsels of perfection," the vow of poverty, of obedience to the superior of the monastery or nunnery, and chastity. The priests promise only subordination to the hierarchy and celibacy — a far different thing from chastity. Neither the secular priests nor the laity can attain perfection, except by going through purgatory.

— Steele's Answers pp. 199, 200.

The False Christs

QUESTION: What are the principal false Christs?

ANSWER: A Jew called Simeon assumed the title BarCochba, Son of the Star, from the prophecy of Balaam, cut a great swath in Judea, in A. D. 131-135 took Jerusalem, defeated the Romans in battle, was finally conquered and beheaded by Severus. Another was Serenus of Syria, about 720 A. D., followed by David Alrui (Alroy) about 1150; then came Abraham Abulafia of Spain, born in 1240; followed by Sabbathai Zebi, born in Smyrna in 1626, styling himself king of kings of whom "miracles" were related. From Poland, Hamburg and Amsterdam treasures were poured into his court; young men and women prophesied before him, some refused to till the fields, saying, "We will pay no more tribute, our Messiah is come." He was conquered by the Turks and compelled to choose between death and Islam. Although he chose the latter, many still believed in him, and, after his death as a professed Mohammedan, they insisted that he would rise from the dead and liberate Palestine. The next pretender was Jacob Frank, who lived in royal state in Austria. After burning the Talmud in public he ended his career as a Roman Catholic. The gullibility of the Jew is accounted for when we consider the dreadful oppressions they have suffered and the daily prayer for the coming of the Messiah, which every Israelite is required to offer. The false Christ which Christians in our times are setting up is Liberalism, so called, which pays divine honors to a false concept of Jesus Christ as the Revealer of the love of God, ignoring his holiness, justice and truth and disobeying his law. They are described and their doom is foretold in Matt. 7:22-24. "Many will say unto me in that day," etc.

— Steele's Answers pp. 180, 181.

Does John 6:48-58 refer to Holy Communion?

QUESTION: Does John 6:48-58 have reference to the Lord's Sup­per, especially these words, "except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood ye have not life in yourselves"?

ANSWER: To say that it does would make that rite absolutely necessary as a saving ordinance. In the formal institution of the holy eucharist a year afterwards, no such idea is suggested. The idea is that as the body contains the blood and the blood contains the life we must appropriate Christ's entire humanity in order to receive and maintain spiritual life. We obtain this life, not by eating the symbols, but by eating or appropriating Christ himself. This view is that of Origen, Basil the Great, Augustine, Calvin, Luther most emphatically, and. Wesley with less emphasis, saying, "It refers remotely, if at all, to the Lord's Supper," and such modern exegetes as Adam Clarke, Moses Stuart, Alford and Meyer. On the other side of this question are all the ritualistic sacramentarians, both Roman and Anglican. We regret to say that American Methodism is committed to the ritualistic and not the spiritual interpretation by this prayer in the communion service: "Grant us. . . so to eat the flesh of thy Son Jesus Christ and drink his blood that we may live and grow thereby." If American Methodism ever backslides so far as to become ritualistic, it will be through this unfortunate connection of these words with the Lord's Supper, which is not the source of life, but a means of grace, as everything is which brings Christ into our minds as our atoning Savior.

— Steele's Answers p. 123, 124.

Purgatory?

QUESTION: What do you think of the following: "If a man will not let the Holy Spirit burn his selfishness out of him in this life, it will have to be done in the next"?

ANSWER: This is the doctrine of the Roman Catholics, who have borrowed from Grecian paganism purgatorial fires for curable sinful souls. It is also the teaching of modern Universalism that all the souls unfit for heaven when they leave the body will be purified by a limited punishment and will then be admitted to the life everlasting. The Scriptural basis for this doctrine is lack­ing. There is not the remotest hint that the work of the Holy Spirit in the sanctification of believers can be done after death, nor is there anywhere in the Bible any intimation that saving faith in Christ, followed by the new birth, is possible after the spirit becomes disem­bodied. There is positive proof that the sentences on the day of judgment are final and irreversible. It is equally certain that repentance and regeneration do not take place between death and the resurrection, for Christ says, "they that have done evil shall come forth unto the resurrection of damnation." The idea that good men will arise from bad men's graves implies the possibility that wicked men may arise from graves in which righteous men were buried! This is preposterous. The extension of probation till the day of judgment might solve some theological difficulties, but it would greatly weaken, if not destroy, the motive to repentance in the present life. Nothing that we have here said con­tradicts the possibility of a believer aspiring after perfect purity finding on his death-bed. All persevering believers belong to the new covenant which insures not only heaven but a fitness for heaven as the gift of God in probation.

— Steele's Answers pp. 122, 123.

The Pope

QUESTION: When was the first Pope made in the Roman Catholic Church, and how was the papacy begun? 

The Roman Catholic contention is that Peter was designated by Christ as the earthly head of the universal church, and under Divine guidance Peter, accompanied by Paul, went to Rome, where he presided as bishop twenty-five years, from A. D. 41 to 67. But when we ask for the scriptural proof of events so fundamental to church history, to the question of the genuineness of modern Christianity, and of the way of salvation, we find not a particle of evidence that Peter was ever in Rome, or Italy, or Europe. The Acts of the Apostles begins with giving Peter prominence, but soon drops him as not specially important, and notes minutely the history and journeys of Paul till his death in Rome. The Papacy seems to have arisen on this wise: Rome was the dominant city in the world. The church in Rome came to be regarded as the most important and its bishop the highest in dignity. To sustain this dignity the legend of Peter as first bishop was concocted and repeated to subsequent generations of Romans ambitious for the greatness of their city, till it became an accredited tradition. To find a historical basis, fabulous histories were written and genuine annals were interpolated by putting "et Petrus" (and Peter) after the name of Paul in Rome. Thus a stupendous falsehood was foisted upon the church and the world. But it took several centuries, and the invention of the Isidorean Decretals, forged decrees of early Christian Ecumenical Councils, to make the bishop of Rome king of all other bishops and to make his diocese absorb all of their dioceses.

— Steele's Answers pp. 83, 84.