The New Birth and It's Aftermath

Regeneration, or the New Birth, is a change wrought within the soul by the power of the Holy Ghost, creating within the soul a new spiritual life, a life of loyalty and love.

By nature men are the children of wrath. They are spiritually dead. The faith faculty exists, but is in a paralysis so far as spiritual objects are concerned. The divine life begins with the seed of God implanted in the soul. This is the new principle of love. "For the love of God is shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Ghost." [Romans 5:5] The phrase "love of God" may signify either God's love to me or my love to God. In this quotation it has the former meaning. The Scriptures teach us that God is love. But this is not enough to give me assurance of his favor so long as I read that he is angry with the wicked every day. Therefore, so long as I have a tormenting sense of guilt, I must be filled with painful forebodings till I have a positive and personal assurance that I am taken out of the class of the condemned, and am reconciled to God, who loves me, even me.

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.

The Spirit Can Qualify You to Preach

QUESTION: Being filled with the Spirit and entirely sanctified, though without education, except the ability to read, I feel called to preach. Cannot the Holy Ghost qualify me for this work?

ANSWER: Yes, he can bless your attempts at a thorough mastery of the Word of God and the art of speaking. God sometimes takes "the weak things of the world to confound the mighty," as in the cases of Benjamin Abbott and Bud Robinson, whose experiences you should read. God helps those who help themselves. A knowledge of the Holy Scriptures and a heart experience of  Christ's saving power are two cardinal elements of success. In this age of brain-worship and excessive leaning on education God likes to skip the universities and endow an ungrammatical Moody with the power to reach and save the multitudes. Such an act shows the church that her power lies not in the dead languages but in the living Christ. If the whole world is to be speedily evangelized the whole church must become preachers by precept and example. Our streets are becoming full of people whose only Gospel is the Sunday newspaper. The harvest is truly great and the laborers — wholly consecrated — are few. Hence I feel like encouraging every saved person to consecrate his or her gift of speech to the salvation of all for whom Christ died. Don't wait for a license, but begin now from the tail of a plow or cart and from the side of the washtub or sewing machine. Tell everybody of Christ's great salvation, backing up the message with your own experience. This was the way in which Christianity triumphed over all its persecutors and mounted the throne of the Caesars in 300 years.

— From Steele's Answers pp. 33, 34.

Forbidden to Speak

QUESTION: My pastor has forbidden my speaking in the social meetings. What am I to do?

ANSWER: Perhaps you have unconsciously fallen into a censorious, fault-finding style. This is neither agreeable not edifying. If this is your habit, try to change by striking the key-note of praise and thanksgiving to God in your heart experiences. It is more safe to do this than to exhort.

— From Steele's Answers p. 33.

No Confidence in the Preacher?

QUESTION: I have no confidence in the piety of my preacher. What do you advise me to do?

ANSWER: Pray for him. Do not pray at him in public by asking the Lord to convert him. Pray for him in your closet. do not abandon the house of God because the preacher is not as pious as you wish he was. Attentively listen to his sermons and appropriate all the truth he utters. Do not imitate his example if you think his conduct is not right. This is the sum of Christ's advice in Matt. 23:2, 3, "All things whatsoever they bid you, these do and observe; but do not after their works; for they say and do not." John Wesley always attended the Church of England and attentively listened to men who excited mobs against him and his people.

— From Steele's Answers pp. 32, 33.

Conditional Immortality in Scripture?

QUESTION: Do these texts prove the doctrine of conditional immortality: (a) I Tim. 6:16, "Who only hath immortality" and (b) I Cor. 15:53-4, "And this mortal shall have put on immortality."

ANSWER:  (a) "God is said alone to have immortality, because he has it not from another's will, as other immortals have, but from his own essence" (Justin Martyr), "underived, independent immortality" (Wesley's note). (b) This is quoted from a chapter in which the future destiny of the righteous only is described. Paul believed in the resurrection of the unjust (Acts 24:15), as did Daniel in 12:2, and as Christ asserted in John 5:29. But Paul had no occasion to discuss the future of the unjust in this passage. Hence this omission does not disprove their endless existence. Study "eternal punishment" in Matt. 25:46 and Rev. 20:10, where two men "shall be tormented day and night forever and ever."

— From Steele's Answers pp. 31, 32.

God Has Begun to Save Everyone

God has begun to save every human soul.

He has already saved the entire race from the extinction threatened in the instantaneous execution of the death penalty upon Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden in the moment of their first transgression.

The remedial dispensation began with the promise that the Seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head. The children of the pair banished from Eden, and fallen from their high estate, are born in the likeness of their sinful parents, with tremendous proclivities toward sin in the strength of their passions and the bent of their wills. Yet they come into being under the dispensation of mercy. They have a gracious ability to repent. They are saved from that complete moral inability which paralyses the will of the fallen angels in the direction of obedience to the moral law. This ability to resist the downward tendency of their nature, and to turn from sin, is, through the influences of the Holy Spirit, procured by Jesus Christ for all the race. "He will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgement."

Dr. Steele Discusses His Book "Love Enthroned"

This is the second in my ongoing series of necro-interviews with holiness writers of the past. Today our own Dr. Daniel Steele talks with us about his 1875 book Love Enthroned.

 

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Dr. Steele, in the era in which you lived there were many books written about the deeper Christian life (what followers of John Wesley call Entire Sanctification or Christian Perfection). Why did you feel there was a need for another?

For the same reason that I should preach another Gospel sermon.

Why should you read it? For the same reason that you should hear again "the old, old story of Jesus and His love."

Doesn't it still seem strange that so many books on this subject were written in your era?

Mary's Davidic Descent

QUESTION: Where in Scripture do we find proof that the mother of Jesus was of the seed of David?

ANSWER: In Luke's genealogy of Mary, the name of Joseph is substituted for hers, because it was not customary to write a woman's name in the list. Read Luke 3:23 thus, "Joseph the son-in-law of Heli."

—From Steele's Answers p. 31.

Sin & Law

QUESTION: Harmonize these verses, Rom. 5:13 and 14, "For until the law, sin was in the world; but sin is not imputed, when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression."

ANSWER: Adam sinned against an express, revealed command. There was no other command like this till the giving of the Decalogue after 2,500 years. But men continued to sin, by transgressing their own inward moral sense. This kind of sinning is not against any revealed command, as Adam's was; and for this reason it was not so severely punished by God, as Paul said to the Athenians, "The times of ignorance God overlooked." (Acts 17:30.)

— From Steele's Answers p. 31.