Living Without Sin

QUESTION: Are we to understand that the regenerated can live without sin?

ANSWER: They can live much better without it than with it. The eccentric Billy Hubbard was once asked this question. His reply was: "Yes, I can get along without sin first-rate." According to 1 John 3:9, 10, this is the boundary line between the children of God and the children of the devil. There is grace enough to keep every child of God from ever stepping over the fiery boundary between the known right and the known wrong.

— Steele's Answers p. 67.

Pit

QUESTION: Will you express your opinion of the popular game of pit?

ANSWER: I have not become acquainted with the pit, and am traveling in the other direction.

— Steele's Answers, p. 67.

Is Self-Loathing Piety Necessary?

Growth in grace, while accompanied by increasing power to abstain from actual sin, has no power to annihilate the spirit of sin, commonly called original sin. The revelation of its indwelling is more and more perfect and appalling as we advance from conversion.

Hence, in Calvinistic writings especially, we find that the measure of true piety is self-abhorrence. The more entire the consecration, the more vile in their own eyes do eminent saints appear. This standard of piety is a peculiarity of all the truly devout souls who were taught to believe that there is no power to deliver from inborn depravity this side of the grave. To these persons a piety which is not self-loathing and self-condemning is as contradictory as a piety which is not penitent.

But the sinless Jesus exhibited the marvelous proof of an impenitent piety. May not they who have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb stand forth, even on earth, as specimens of a piety which glorifies God without self-vilification? Does God get the highest revenue of glory from us while we perpetually proclaim that the blood of Christ fails to reach the root of evil in our natures? If not, then the self-loathing style of piety, like that of David Brainerd in his early ministry, who saw so much corruption in his heart that he wondered the people did not stone him out of the pulpit, is a mere initial and rudimentary form, reflecting not the highest honor upon its Author.

— Love Enthroned, Chapter 18.

Luke 22:32

QUESTION: Explain Luke 22:32: "When thou are converted, strengthen thy brethren."

ANSWER: "Converted" literally means turned about. Peter was going the wrong way when he denied his Lord. The reproving look of Jesus broke his heart. He bewailed his sin, weeping bitterly. He was converted. He obeyed his Master's order, "Right about face."

— Steele's Answers p. 67.

Grace First, Then Knowledge

We are exhorted to grow in grace and in the knowledge of Jesus Christ.

Some tell us that we find the true philosophy of Christian growth by reversing this order, and putting the knowledge of Christ first, as the means of increasing in grace. But the order of the apostle — grace first and knowledge second — is the most philosophical. We grow in the knowledge of Christ through the heart, and not through the head.

We do not know Jesus till we love him, and the more we love the more intimate our knowledge of him.

The more we familiarize ourselves with the perfect character of Jesus, the more we shall admire him, just as by studying the works of Angelo we come to admire him the more. But admiration is not love. It kindles no furnace-glow in the affections; it impels the soul onward through no losses and labors, self-denials and persecutions, to the martyr's stake. As the character of Christ folds its splendors beneath the long and earnest gaze of the student, he may be growing esthetically by familiarity with so many moral beauties, and he may become more perfectly grounded in his theological beliefs respecting the Divinity of the man of Nazareth, and yet he may, in his own heart, be refusing to receive and enthrone him as his rightful king.

— Love Enthroned, Chapter 18.

Why Did Jesus Not Know the Hour of His Return?

QUESTION: Explain Mark 13:22, "But of that day or that hour knoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son, nor the Father."

ANSWER: It seems to have been a part of the humiliation of the Son of God while on the earth that there should be a limit to his knowledge, not of future events, but of the dates of certain great crises such as the destruction of Jerusalem and his own second coming to judge the world. Why? It has not been revealed. Perhaps it was to bring him into perfect sympathy with us who know that certain events are in the future, but we do not know when. No man, except condemned murderers, knows the date of his future death, though he is certain of the event.

— Steele's Answers p. 66.

John the Baptist's Asceticism

QUESTION: Explain Matt. 11:18, 19, "John came neither eating nor drinking," etc. "The son of man came eating and drinking" etc.

ANSWER: John was a rigid ascetic, practicing periodic fasting as specially meritorious, though of course he had to eat and drink to live. Jesus Christ did not periodically fast. He was not an ascetic, nor did he teach his disciples to fast, because it did no more harmonize with the Good News he proclaimed than would a patch of new cloth on an old garment or new wine in old and brittle wine-skins. His eating and drinking were natural, a model of temperance. Fasting is nowhere taught in the New Testament as a Chrisitan duty.

— Steele's Answers pp. 65, 66. 

How Do We Consecrate Our Possessions to the Lord?

How may I consecrate all to the Lord, and yet retain the control over all? How, for instance, can I surrender all my property to God and still retain some of it for life's uses?

The question is pertinent. No man can live without appropriating something to his own personality. Property is one of the great natural rights with which we have been invested by our Creator. We could not exist without it.

What are we to do when we consecrate possessions to the Lord? Not to shovel our money into the streets, or to pour it indiscriminately into the treasuries of the nearest institutions, but to become Christ's stewards for the faithful custody and expenditure of this property, making it accomplish the greatest possible good in the well-being of men and the glory of Christ. So much as we can spare from our business and the proper maintenance of our families we must make immediately productive for good in some department of Christ's service, for the Lord at all times condescends to use consecrated substance. But so much as is requisite for the conduct of our business and decent support of those dependent on us may be retained and administered solely for the glory of Him who gave himself for us. Here we must depend each on his own Judgment under the illumination of the word and the Spirit of God.

How may I know that I have laid all on the altar? Self generally rallies on some one point — defends itself in some last ditch. When that is surrendered, the struggle is felt to be over. We know that we have yielded and hung out the white flag, the token of our capitulation. Besides, with all honest souls God is under covenant to reveal to them the state of their hearts. It is the office of the Holy Spirit to hold up a mirror and to furnish a lamp with which we may see our exact visage.

— Love Enthroned, Chapter 17.

Sanctification and the Theory of Temptation

An exhaustive discussion of the relation of a completely sanctified soul to the possibility of sinning, involves the theory of temptation.

Some teach that sin enters the soul when the sensibilities are stirred by the cognition of the forbidden object by the intellect. We are not of that class. The activity of the emotional nature in the presence of its proper objects is just as inevitable as that of the perceptive faculties. An apple presented to the gaze of a hungry child necessarily awakens, not only a perception, but a desire. This desire is as innocent as the impression on the retina, or the cognition in the mind. Sin comes in when the will indulges the desire, or even fosters it against the remonstrance of conscience. Yet this state of excited sensibility in the presence of a forbidden object is full of peril, for here is where sin is conceived. "Lust when it is conceived bringeth forth sin."

Is Perfect Love a Special Charism?

We find in some honest minds a theoretical difficulty which constitutes a stone of stumbling in the way of their seeking full salvation. It is the notion that the grace of perfect love is of the nature of a charism, or special gift of the Holy Ghost, dispensed by the Father according to his own will, and hence not attainable by all believers.

Are there not instances in which the fullness of the Spirit, or perfect love, is dispensed in a sovereign manner without compliance with the usual conditions? We dare not say that there are not; for (1.) We read in the Scriptures of one who was to be filled with the Holy Ghost from his mother's womb. (2.) We believe that the souls of infants, defiled by inborn depravity, are, without faith on their part, entirely cleansed before death by the blood of sprinkling because they are included in the new covenant which is ratified by that universal atonement which saves all souls which do not willfully reject it by unbelief. (3.) For the same reason we believe that all justified souls, all persevering believers in Jesus Christ, who, through imperfect apprehension of the "exceeding greatness of his power" to save to the uttermost," are painfully conscious that they are not cleansed from all inward unrighteousness, are, before death, entirely sanctified by the sovereign will of Him who stands pledged "to finish the good work which he has begun" in them, and "to present them faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy "