The church has no right to make laws for itself, nor for anybody else, for in that case the body would be assuming the functions of the head, and the result would be a monster. The business of the church, and of all in it, is to obey the Head, and not to rule.
There is no difficulty whatever in the Scriptures [regarding this question]; the difficulty comes in the attempt to reconcile the truth of the Bible with an impossible theory of human invention.
There was one thing at which our Lord Himself marveled while here on the earth, and that was unbelief.
One of the most wonderful things about the Gospel is its simplicity. There is nothing complicated about it. It consist of principles, not of rules; and these principles are so few and easily comprehended that children of tender years can understand them.
Whoever therefore is armed with the mind with which Christ resisted temptation, suffers with Him; and he conquers with Him also.
“Christ is primarily the Word of God, the expression of God’s thought; and the Scriptures are the Word of God simply because they reveal Christ. . . . I have always believed that every part of the Bible must set forth, with more or less vividness, that glorious revelation (Christ crucified).”
Only God and His power can put evil out of the heart.
We are exhorted to resist the devil “steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are experienced by your brotherhood in the world” (1 Peter 5:9).
It is not that circumstances determine one’s character, but that they reveal it. Man looks only on the outward act, but God looks at the heart; and in His eyes the man whose heart is impure is equally guilty with the one who commits the open sin.
THERE are few texts that have been the subject of more anxious inquiry than 1 John 3:9: “Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God.”