WHAT WE BELIEVE AND TEACH ABOUT HUMAN INFIRMITIES

"Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities." Rom. 8:26.

We, the Holiness People, while declaring the possibility of deliverance from sin, are fully aware of our human frailty with its infirmities and limitations. All these entail humiliation, confession, and regret, but need not bring condemnation. They demand the efficacy of the atoning blood of the crucified, risen, and ascended Redeemer, but they are not accounted to us as sin. On this point we quote four reputable historic leaders among the Holiness People, whose teaching we wholeheartedly endorse.

JOHN WESLEY

"Question: Do you affirm that this perfection excludes all infirmities, ignorance, and mistakes?

"Answer: I continually affirm quite the contrary, and have always done so.

"Question: But how can every thought, word, and work be governed by pure love, and the man be subject at the same time to ignorance and mistake?

"Answer: I see no contradiction here. A man may be filled with pure love and still liable to mistake. Indeed I do not expect to be freed from actual mistakes until this mortal puts on immortality. I believe this to be a natural consequence of the soul's dwelling in flesh and blood. For we cannot now think at all, but by the mediation of these bodily organs, which have suffered equally with the rest of our frame. And hence we cannot avoid thinking wrong, till this corruption shall have put on incorruption.

"We may carry this thought further yet. A mistake in judgment may possibly occasion a mistake in practice. For instance, Mr. DeRenty's mistake touching the nature of mortification, arising from prejudice of education, occasioned that practical mistake, his wearing an iron girdle. And a thousand such instances there may be, even in those who are in the highest state of grace. Yet where every word and action springs from love, such a mistake is not properly a sin; however, it cannot bear the rigor of God's justice, but needs the atoning blood.

"Question: But how can a liableness to mistake consist with perfect love? Is not a person who is perfected in love every moment under its influence? And can any mistake flow from pure love?

"Answer: I answer, 1. Mistakes may consist with pure love. 2. Some may accidentally flow from it. I mean love itself may incline us to mistake. The pure love of our neighbor springing from the love of God, 'thinketh no evil,' 'believeth and hopeth all things.' Now this very temper, unsuspicious, ready to believe and hope the best of all men, may occasion our thinking some men better than they really are. Here is a manifest mistake, accidentally flowing from pure love." (Plain Account of Christian Perfection)

JOHN FLETCHER

"An infirmity is a breach of Adam's paradisiacal perfection, which our covenant God does not require of us now; and evangelically speaking, a sin for a Christian is a breach of Christ's evangelical law of Christian perfection; a perfection this, which God requires of all believers.

"An infirmity, considering it with the error which it occasions, is consistent with pure love to God and man; but a sin is inconsistent with that love: an infirmity is free from guilt, and has its roots in our animal frame, but a sin is attended with guilt, and has its roots in our moral frame, springing either from the habitual corruption of our heart, or from the momentary perversion of our tempers: an infirmity unavoidably results from our unhappy circumstances, and from the necessary infelicitous weakness of our present state; but a sin flows from the avoidable and perverse choice of our own will: an infirmity has its foundation in an involuntary want of light and power; and a sin is a willful abuse of the present light and power we have. The one arises from involuntary ignorance and weakness, and is always attended with a good meaning, a meaning unmixed with any bad design or wicked prejudice; but the other has its source in voluntary perverseness and presumption, and is always attended with a meaning altogether bad; poor at least, with a good meaning founded on wicked prejudices."

J. A. WOOD

"Question: Does Christian perfection exclude the infirmities of human nature?

"Answer: It does not. Freedom from these is not to be expected in this world. We must wait for deliverance from these until this mortal puts on immortality. These infirmities, so numerous and various, are the common inheritance of humanity. They are not sins; they are innocent; although they may be our misfortune, they are included in the 'all things' which, by the grace and blessing of God, shall work together for our good. Although Christian perfection does not admit of any outward or inward sin, properly so called, yet it does admit of strong convictions of numberless infirmities and imperfections, such as slowness of understanding, errors of judgment, mistakes in practice, erratic imaginations, a treacherous memory, etc. If it be claimed that these innocent infirmities need the blood of atonement, praise the Lord, the blood of Jesus meets every demand.

"Question: Is it important to distinguish between inbred sin and the innocent infirmities of fallen human nature?

"Answer: It is; otherwise we may on the one hand blame and afflict ourselves needlessly; or, on the other, excuse ourselves from blame when we are really culpable. An intelligent, faithful Christian will wisely discriminate between them, and seek the extirpation of the one, and patiently endure the burdens of the other. Mr. Wesley says, 'Let those who do call them sins beware how they confound those defects with sins, properly so called.'

"Inbred sin is a carnal principle or root remaining in the unsanctified heart, sending up sprouts of bitterness which cling to the desires and appetites. It is the source of moral evils, such as envy, pride, stubbornness, malice, anger, jealousy, unbelief, fretfulness, impatience, revenge, covetousness -- everything opposed to the will of God.

"Human infirmities are various and numerous, such as mental aberrations, sophistical reasonings, treacherous memory, erratic imaginations, involuntary ignorance, and all those frailties and defects which may co-exist with the very best intentions.

"St. Paul recognizes this distinction; he writes to Timothy, "Them that sin rebuke before all, that others may also fear," and yet he writes to the Romans, "We that are strong should bear with the infirmities of the weak." Here are two plain commands; the first, not to bear with sins, and the second, to bear with infirmities.

"Many who reject the doctrine of Christian perfection confound infirmities and sins. Infirmities may entail regret and humiliation, but not guilt. Sin always produces guilt" -- Perfect Love, pp. 65, 66).

DANIEL STEELE

"Infirmities are failures to keep the law of perfect obedience given to Adam in Eden. This law no man on earth can keep, since sin has impaired the powers of universal humanity. Sins are offenses against the law of Christ, which is epitomized by John, 'And this is the commandment, that we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another' (1 John 3:23).

"Infirmities are an involuntary outflow from our imperfect moral organization. Sin is always voluntary.

"Infirmities have their ground in our physical nature, and they are aggravated by intellectual deficiencies. But sin roots itself in our moral nature, springing either from the habitual corruption of our hearts or from the unresisting perversion of our tempers.

"Infirmities entail regret and humiliation. Sin always produces guilt.

"Infirmities in well-instructed souls do not interrupt communion with God. Sin cuts the telegraphic communication with heaven.

"Infirmities, hidden from ourselves, are covered by the blood of Christ without a definite act of faith, in the case of the soul vitally united with Him. On the great Day of Atonement the errors of the individual Hebrew were put away through the blood of sprinkling, without offering a special victim for himself. 'But unto the second (tabernacle) went the high priest alone once every year, not without blood, which he offered for himself, and for the errors of the people.' (Heb. 9:7). Sins demand a special personal resort to the blood of sprinkling and an act of reliance on Christ.

"Infirmities are without remedy so long as we are in this body. Sins, by the keeping power of Christ, are avoidable through every hour of our regenerate life. Both of these truths are in Jude's ascription, 'Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling (into sin, or as the Vulgate reads, sine peccato, without sin) and present you faultless (without infirmity, not here, but) in the presence of his glory with exceeding joy.' Jude understood the distinction between faults, or infirmities, and sins. In this scheme of Christian perfection, faults are to disappear in the life to come, but we are to be saved from sins now.

"A thousand infirmities are consistent with perfect love, but not one sin.

"Thus we see on undisputed authority we may be conscious of human weakness yet well pleasing to God." (Mile-Stone Papers, pp. 44-47).