On Ecclesiastes 7:20

QUESTION: Explain Eccl. 7:20, "For there is not a just man upon the earth that doeth good and sinneth not."

ANSWER: This is a defective translation for "may not sin." There is no just man who is impeccable, or infallible. The mistake arises from the fact that in the Hebrew language there is no potential mood, but the future tense of the indicative is used instead. When the Hebrew wished to say, "It may rain to-day," he had to say "It will rain to-day." Thus the hearer or reader was left in doubt whether a certainty or uncertainty is intended; and he must use his wits to determine by studying the context. Thus in Solomon's dedicatory paper in I Kings 8:46, II Chron. 6:36, it is evident that the Hebrew future means "may sin." It is thus translated in the Vulgate, the Syriac and Arabic, in the London and Paris Polyglots, in Castalid's, Osiander's and Francis Junius's versions, and in the Antwerp interlineal translations and in the marginal note in the Miniature Quarto of the Baxters, high Calvinists though they are. If Solomon had been dedicating an insane hospital and had said: "If any man becomes insane, for there is no man who will not become insane, let him come here and be cured," most people would say that the "will not" here means "may not." It is thus translated in Gen. 3:2, 27:25, Job 13:13, 14:6, in our English Bible. This text correctly translated gives no support to the pernicious doctrine of the necessity of sin in the believer, or in any man on the earth, I am suspicious that this error is perpetuated by translators by reason of the general dislike of holiness as possible in human experience this side of the grave. It is natural to the heart of man to desire a Scriptural excuse for sin. It is a nice pillow on which the carnal mind may slumber.

— Steele's Answers pp. 209, 210.

Two Meanings of "Sanctify"

QUESTION: I have just listened to a preacher who said there are two words in Greek for sanctify, one signifying to set apart, and the other to make holy. Which of these is used in John 17:19, "For their sakes I sanctify myself that they themselves may be sanctified in truth." (R.V.)

ANSWER: There are not two words, but one word with two meanings, both of which are in this text: "I set apart of consecrate myself to the salvation of believers in order that they may be truly sanctified, cleansed from all defilement." This is the meaning of "in truth," as also in Matt. 22:16, Col. 1:6, II John 1:1, III John 1. In Luke 17:33 Christ uses "life" with two meanings. In II Cor. 5:21, "sin" is used first as guilt and secondarily as a sin-offering. This use of a word with two meanings was regarded by Hebrew writers as rhetorical elegance. Christ had no need to be truly sanctified because he had no sin. The depraved tendencies of believers need entire sanctification.

— Steele's Answers pp. 208, 209.

A Text Against Life Insurance?

QUESTION: Does not this text rebuke life insurance: "Leave thy fatherless children, I will preserve them alive; and let thy widows trust in me." (Jer. 49:11.)

ANSWER: It does not teach that we should neglect the helpless. God cares for them through human agency. He awakens the altruistic spirit of compassion and charity in Christians who found asylums for orphans and homes for widows. He also gives most people sense enough to save part of their earnings and make deposits in the savings bank or some reliable life insurance company, instead of living from hand to mouth in utter disregard for the future. The Bible nowhere teaches improvidence, though infidels say it does, and therefore its teachings are impracticable and irrational.

— Steele's Answers pp. 208.

Does God Override Human Freedom in Answer to Prayer?

QUESTION: Since the Question Box denies conversion by a temporary suspension of freedom, how do you explain John 15:7, "If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you?"

ANSWER: At first sight this looks like a reckless promise, but a closer study discovers safeguards, one of which is "unto you," implying the gift of grace, strength and all the fruit of the Spirit to those who do the asking. Another safeguard is in "abide in me," implying such a union with Christ as to ask for nothing unwise, and not in accord with his will expressed in "my words abide in you." Now we know that he said, "Ye will not come to me that ye may have life," and we know that Christ will not do so foolish a thing as to dehumanize a saloon-keeper and turn him into a machine and thrust him neck and heels into his kingdom against his will, though all the saints on earth are asking to save him. What is salvation but the awakening of love, free and spontaneous in a wicked heart? Can love be forced? What crude theological ideas some people have! They think it is the office of the Holy Spirit to take every stubborn sinner by the coat collar and drag him to Christ in answer to prayer. This is inherited from predestinarianism.

— Steele's Answers pp. 207, 208.

Pew Rent

QUESTION: Is it right to patronize or worship in churches which require payment for the sittings?

ANSWER: It is not the way to reach and save the unchurched masses. It gives them an excuse for nonattendance. It keeps alive the idea that the church is a sort of club in which none but "our set" are wanted; and gives scope for class distinctions, the rich in the best pews and the poor in the less desirable. If pews are given to the very poor, they very naturally shrink from sitting in the seat of the paupers. Hence it is exceedingly difficult to keep a pewed church full of hearers. These are very grave objections which are not obviated by the arguments in favor of this practice such as that it is easier to finance, family sittings are more favorable to the attendance and good behavior of the children, a place for one's hymnal, psalter and Bible. I cannot say that it is not right to attend such a church, for in many cases it is the only open communion church in that place. This is the writer's situation. The most I can say is that it is not the best way to promote the kingdom of Christ. The Protestant Episcopal Church is worthy of commendation for bravely attempting to make all their churches free. I hope their great success will be complete.

— Steele's Answers pp. 206, 207.

The Central Idea of Christianity

Guest blog by Bishop Jesse T. Peck (1811 – 1883)

What is the central idea of Christianity?

First, we shall consult the Scriptures. The doctrines, institutions, and obligations included in Christianity, are discussed, separately and combined, in the Holy Bible, in a great variety of forms. But he must read very superficially who can regard them as detached and independent truths. The more profoundly we study the sacred volume, the more clearly we shall see that it embodies and illustrates a splendid scheme of remedial government. Not a thought, not a fact, not a truth, bears a foreign stamp, or indicates in the slightest degree that it exists for itself alone, or for any other system whatever. The great idea which originated the several parts of this amazing scheme, is to be ascertained, not by accidental reading or limited study of the Bible, but by the strictest attention to its drift. Principles, in the abstract and in the concrete, must be collated with the utmost care. The minutest particulars, as well as the most prominent and extensive, must be viewed in their relations to each other, and the grand scope of the whole divine teaching ascertained. whoever does this, will, we think, find the following truths, tending to a solution of our problem, clearly established:

The Expulsive Power of a New Affection

In entire sanctification the Holy Spirit violates no law of mental philosophy, but strictly conforms His work to the nature and faculties of the mind. The stronger affection expels the weaker. Drop golden eagles plentifully in the paths of beggars scrambling for cents, and the awakened thirst for gold will cure the mania for copper. The superior banishes the inferior. It was Dr. Chalmers who eloquently discoursed on "The Expulsive Power of a New Affection." To expel all proneness to sin, all that is required is to inspire an unconquerable love of holiness, not in the abstract, but as embodied in a person in the sphere of the human affections, a person who by his self-sacrifice has laid in our minds a foundation for eternal gratitude. Then will this new affection instantly expel all base loves and keep them out so long as this new affection is enthroned within. Now it is the office of the Paraclete to inspire this affection. This He does by pouring light upon the person of the divine Christ, making Him a bright reality, a sun above the king of day, infinitely superior in splendors. This manifestation of Christ in the heart was an experience of Paul in addition to His revelation of Himself to the eye and the ear of the chief persecutor as he drew near to Damascus. The outward manifestation arrested his career of hostility to Christ; the inward revelation awakened an undying love, the motive power of that heroic course of labors, privations, perils and sufferings which ended when Rome's imperial axe severed his head from his body. During all this period, as Chrysostom says, "Paul had Christ speaking within himself." Thus by deep inward revelations, as well as by outward manifestations, was the great apostle prepared, as every preacher should be, for the work of the ministry. Well does Bengel argue that the Son of God must first be revealed in the preacher before He can be revealed by him. This revelation of Christ in Paul's consciousness was the sum and substance of that "excellency of knowledge of Jesus Christ, for whom he suffered the loss of all things." The time of this inward revelation of Christ by the Holy Spirit is unknown. The exegetes agree that it is not identical with Saul's vision of the risen Christ, and that it must have occurred afterward, either in Damascus, in Arabia, or after his return from that country, while sojourning in his native Tarsus.

— The Gospel of the Comforter, Chapter 8.

The Three Convictions of the Holy Spirit

"Nevertheless I tell you the truth: It is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I go, I will send him unto you. And he, when he is come, will convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, because they believe not on me; of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and ye behold me no more; of judgment, because the prince of this world hath been judged." — John 16:7-11 ASV

The discussion of the three convictions which the Paraclete effects in men, especially men who are enlightened by gospel truth, shows in what way He glorifies the Son of God. The first question is, Why does He not glorify the Father? He does. If the Father and Son are one in nature, as the Son asserts (John xiv. 9), it follows that honors ascribed to the Son glorify the Father. "He that acknowledgeth the Son Hath the Father also" (I John ii. 23). There can be no jealousy between them, because they are one in divinity, and in their distinct personalities they aim at one purpose in the scheme of redemption.

The Spirit's Conviction of Judgement

"Nevertheless I tell you the truth: It is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I go, I will send him unto you. And he, when he is come, will convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, because they believe not on me; of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and ye behold me no more; of judgment, because the prince of this world hath been judged." — John 16:7-11 ASV

Judgment is the sanction of law. Since Jesus came not to destroy the law but to fill it full of meaning, His commission to the Paraclete must effect the same purpose to honor the law by declaring its sentence against sin. Says Tholuck:

The meaning of our Lord's words is, When the divine principle of the Spirit shall spread among my disciples and produce its extraordinary effects in mankind, people will be forced to confess that the power of the evil spirit which opposes me in the ungodly feelings of men is broken. By the incarnation and coming of the Savior an inward judgment was commenced in the hearts of men of which the last judgment is only the outward manifestation.

The Conviction of Christ's Righteousness

"Nevertheless I tell you the truth: It is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I go, I will send him unto you. And he, when he is come, will convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, because they believe not on me; of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and ye behold me no more; of judgment, because the prince of this world hath been judged." — John 16:7-11 ASV

The Spirit's conviction of righteousness — His exhibition of a perfect model of righteous human character — was as necessary for the moral recovery of fallen men as the conviction of sin. By the dark picture of what the sinner is, must be suspended the bright ideal of what he ought to be. This ideal no fallen man is able, without the Spirit's aid, correctly to portray. He alone can photograph it upon the prepared tablet of the soul. Conviction of sin prepares the tablet. In the normal unfolding of the child there arises the ability to discover the distinction between right and wrong. But this moral sense is so drugged from childhood upward with the threefold opiates, selfishness, worldliness and fleshly-mindedness, that the soul has no conception of the high moral attainments for which it was created, and comes to look upon it as becoming and inevitable to desire sensual pleasures, to seek after them and indulge in them with only such limitation as self-love may suggest. The ordinary course of education in all pagan families, and in many homes nominally Christian, is such as tends more and more to inflame the worldly and fleshly stimulants of action, more and more to draw the youth out of quiet meditation into the race-course of intellectual emulation, athletic strife, business, competition, or the whirlpool of sensual pleasure. The world is full of false notions of honor and false estimates of interest. Hence the natural man knows nothing of a perfect attainable righteousness. Study the moral character of the pagan gods of the most cultured nations; for here, if anywhere, we may find among the gods worshiped by these nations an expression of their highest ideals of righteousness. But we find on Mount Olympus among the gods of Grecian and Roman mythology only deified lust, deified hatred, deified theft, deified jealousy and deified bloodthirstiness.