Question Corner by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, Cal. · Sep 20, 1905

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 31, No. 38.

Question Corner

By Editor

1720.—Did Christ Have an Advantage Over Us?

Did not Christ have an advantage over us by being sinless during childhood, while the power of sinful habits become so strong in us, before we are converted? We are not as strong to resist evil as we would be, if we had never sinned. Also, we have no record in the Scriptures that Christ was ever sick, while we are often weakened by sickness. Is not this an advantage? Why is it that, having the power that Christ had to live a sinless life, all of His followers have sinned?

When Christ came into this world, He took the body God had prepared Him (Heb. 10:5), into which the evil inheritance of many generations had been poured; for He was made of the seed of David according to the flesh (Rom. 1:3). The strongest sins which the child has to meet are the inherited sins. But whatever our condition may have been, whatever sinful habits we have formed, God takes us just as we are, under the promise that where “sin abounds, grace doth much more abound.” Rom. 5:20. One difficulty is that our faith does not grasp God’s word. First, we do not see sin to be “exceedingly sinful,” as He declares, and thus do not repent of it; and, secondly, as a result, we do not grasp the holiness of God’s law and cause and the necessity of whole-hearted, daily consecration as we ought; and therefore, thirdly, our faith does not appropriate the fulness of God’s keeping promises in Christ Jesus as it should. We do not feed upon the Word, and therefore we grow poor and lean and weak. Would we live the Christ-life; we must surrender, must pray, must appropriate truth, even as Christ did. He is “able to keep us from falling.” Do not look at the human failures, but to the divine fulness which awaits appropriating faith. We are weaker to resist, but is He less strong?

Yes, Christ was sick; for “Himself took our infirmities, and bare our diseases.” Matt. 8:17. “He poured out His soul unto death.” Isa. 53:12. Read, also, the twenty-second, thirty-first, and sixty-ninth psalms. Let us not fear because of our sinfulness or past failures; let us know that He gives to us freely all His “advantages.”