On Galatians 5:17

QUESTION: Explain Galatians 5:17, "For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit and the Spirit (strives) against the flesh; for these are contrary one to the other; that ye may not do the things that ye would."

ANSWER: Flesh is used in a bad sense for evil inclinations. Hence the Holy Spirit after regeneration resists such evil tendencies which still cling to the newborn soul. This produces an inward conflict, the Spirit trying to keep the man from doing wrong and the flesh striving to hinder those Christian acts to which the Spirit prompts. The Revision eliminates the "cannot" which has no place in the Greek, for God's grace superabounds where sin has abounded. 

— Steele's Answers p. 93. 

The Propensity to Sin

QUESTION: Opposers to holiness in our town assert that those who have no bent toward sin are incapable of temptation, that Adam before his fall and that Jesus Christ himself had this bent, otherwise they could not be tempted.

ANSWER: If this reasoning is correct, it follows that the devil and his angels had depraved tendencies before they fell into sin, and that they were created with a propensity to sin implanted in them by God. This makes Him the author of sin. If you ask how a perfectly holy soul can sin, we reply that we do not know. How sin got into a holy universe is a question which puzzles all the sages. To give a good reason for sin would justify sin. Sin is unreason. In the Bible the sinner is properly styled a fool. My mind reposes upon a doctrine I cannot explain, that every sinner is the first cause of his own sin, a cause uncaused which no man can explain or comprehend. Every moral intelligences angel, or man is the absolute creator of his own character and destiny.

— from Steele's Answers p. 40. 

How Could Jesus Be Tempted?

QUESTION: Could Jesus be tempted in all points like as we are tempted without a sinful nature?

ANSWER: Exegetes disagree about the limitation of the phrase "without sin." Some say the temptation left Christ without sin; others say it found him without any inclination to sin and left him sinless. They say this phrase "without sin" is an expressed exception to the words "all points." Jesus was tempted, as we are in all points save one, having inherited no evil inclination. Yet his temptation was real because he was human, possessing those susceptibilities, which pure in themselves, may without the resistance of the free will, be incited to sin.  If this is objected to because it implies the possibility that the Son of God might have sinned, we reply that it was certain that he would not sin, just as certain that God will never sin. There is a great difference between certainty and necessity. God is a free agent. He has a conscience which discerns the distinctions between right and wrong, and he invariably cleaves to the right. This brings us to the ground of moral obligation. He who says God does a thing because it is right stands on the foundation of James Arminius. He who says that a thing is right because God does it, that his will is the ground of right, and that he is a law unto himself, and that he can reverse the ten commandments, if he pleases, takes his stand with John Calvin.

— From Steele's Answers pp. 34, 35.