Bear Patiently the Defects of Others

"Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye." — Colossians 3:13 KJV.

There are but few practical directions, which are more important to those who desire to be wholly the Lord’s, than the direction that we should bear with entire meekness and patience the infirmities and defects of others. The adoption in practice of any other principle than this necessarily involves us in continual disquietudes and troubles.
 

We should bear patiently with the infirmities and defects of others in the first place, because the doctrine of faith requires it. The doctrine of faith... will not admit of exceptions and distinctions, We do not, and cannot, have acceptable faith in God, unless we have faith in him to the full extent of what he claims to be, and of what he is. ...faith restores God to events, and makes him present in all things that take place; and also, ...faith identifies every thing with God’s superintendence, and accordingly makes every thing, with the exception of sin, an expression of his will. The doctrine of faith, therefore, requires us to believe, that God, in his permissive will at least if not in his direct agency, sustains a connection, and sustains it for good and wise purposes, even with human infirmities.
 

We should bear with patience the infirmities of others, in the SECOND place, because, in their results to ourselves, they evidently tend to our own purification. And this remark tends to illustrate what has already been said, viz., that God for wise purposes has a connection even with human infirmities. It is very clearly a part of God’s spiritual economy to purify his people by means of the various crosses which he lays upon them. We are not at liberty to make crosses for ourselves, but are cheerfully and quietly to meet and endure them, when they come upon us in the divine providence. Now, the infirmities of men, the many and trying infirmities of all around us, are a cross, which the divine providence lays at our feet at every step of our progress in the path of life. To be obliged to meet and to bear these infirmities is an affliction, oftentimes a heavy affliction. But it has a purifying power. It strikes a blow at self love. It makes us better.

— from The Life of Faith, Part 2, Chapter 6.

Guard Against the Habits of Unbelief

Those, who are in assurance of faith, or who are aiming at and approximating that state, should guard against the influence of former habits of unbelief. The fact, that they have given themselves wholly to God, and that he has promised to accept them, and that he does now accept them, while it furnishes ample basis of the assured belief of their acceptance with God, is not inconsistent with strong temptations to unbelief. Against the influence of these temptations they would do well carefully to guard. They should resist them, not only by prayers to God, but by fixed resolutions, by strong purposes; remembering that the doubts, which are thus suggested, and which they are thus called upon to resist, do not spring from real evidence adverse to their acceptance with God, but chiefly from the influence of a species of infirmity and vacillation of mind resulting from former habits of unbelief.

Assurance and Appropriating Faith

The experience of assurance of faith involves the experience of appropriating faith. Appropriation may exist without assurance; but, such is the relation of ideas and doctrines in the two cases, that assurance cannot exist without appropriation. The person who exercises appropriating faith, believes in Christ, not only as the sacrifice for men generally, and believes in the promises of God not merely as promises available to men generally, but unites the object of faith with the subject of faith; and believes in Christ as a Savior applicable and savingly available in his own case, and in the promises, as belonging to himself. Assurance of faith, without being the same thing as appropriation of faith, includes all this; but it includes also or rather it implies something more. In other words, assurance of faith differs from appropriation of faith, which may be more or less decided and strong according to the circumstances of the case, chiefly in the particular of carrying the act of belief or faith to the highest degree. He, who is in the state of assurance of faith, does not believe in his acceptance with God feebly and inefficiently. The faith, which he exercises, is a strong faith; so much so, as the term assurance itself obviously indicates, as altogether to exclude the feeling of uncertainty.

Confession and Infirmity

There is a propriety and a practical importance in the confession of sin, during the whole course of the present life, because our various infirmities, our defects of judgment, our frequent ignorance of the motives and characters of our fel­low-men, and the relatively wrong acts and feelings which originate in these sources from which no one, in the present period of the history of the church, can reasonably expect to be free, require an atonement, as well as our willful or voluntary transgressions. We do not suppose, that it is necessary here to enter into an argument for the purpose of showing, that such imperfections, originally flowing from our fallen condition and our connection with Adam, require the application of Christ' s blood. Such is not only our own belief; but we have reason to believe, that it is a doctrine which is generally conceded by those, who will be likely to take an interest in these inquiries. There are various passages of Scripture, such as Lev. 4:3, and Numb. 15:27-30, which have relation to such infirmities and sins, and which might be properly consulted, if the present were an occasion to enter into a minute examination of the subject.

Right Disposition

God not only has the disposition to do what is right, but he always does it. Men may have the disposition, and yet fail through physical infirmity, in the realization of the thing; that is to say, in the outward act. But the disposition is accepted.

— Religious Maxims (1846) CXXIII.

Everyone is Subject to Temptation

In the present life, all persons, not excepting those, who are most advanced in holiness, are subject to temptations. Even the truly sanctified person is not exempt. Holy persons like others retain the attributes appropriate to man's nature; differing from the same attributes in others in this respect only, that they are deprived of irregularities of action, and are entirely subordinate to the divine will. Accordingly the holy person, or the person in whom faith and love exist in the highest degree attainable in the present life, hungers and thirsts like any other person; he is the subject of the propensities and affections, which lay the foundation and which furnish the support of the various family relations; he loves his children, parents, and other relatives, and is the subject of other natural ties and sympathies; he suffers from fatigue and sickness; he is grieved, troubled, and perplexed in various ways; and even displeasure and anger, as is evident from what was witnessed in the life of our Savior, are not entirely excluded. While, therefore, it is our privilege, even in the present life to be exempt from the commission of voluntary and known sin, it does not appear, retaining, as we do, our constitutional tendencies and remaining subject to constitutional infirmities, that we either have, or can reasonably expect, any such exemption from temptation. We cannot suppose, that any of us, in the present life, can be in a better situation than our Savior, who was "without sin;" but who, nevertheless "was tempted in all points as we are."

— edited from The Interior of Hidden Life (1844) Part 1, Chapter 19.

Human Infirmity Requires an Atonement

All mere physical infirmities, which originate in our fallen condition, but which necessarily prevent our doing for God what we should otherwise do; and also all unavoidable errors and imperfections of judgment, which in their ultimate causes result from sin, (we have reference here to Adam’s sin) require an atonement. It seems to be clear, that God constituted the human race on the principle of an unity, or perhaps more precisely, of a close connection, of obligations and interests; linking together man with man, as with bands of iron, in the various civil, social, and domestic relations. And in consequence of the existence of the great connective laws of nature, (laws which our own judgments and consciences alike approve,) it seems to be the case, that we may sometimes justly suffer, in our own persons, results which are of a punitive kind, although in their source flowing from the evil conduct of others rather than our own. And hence it is that the head of a family ordinarily does not sin, without affecting the happiness of its members. Nor does any member of the family ordinarily sin without involving others in the consequences of the transgression. Nor does the head of a community, or of a State, or of any other associated body, commit errors and crimes without a diffusion of the attendant misery through the subordinate parts of the association. In other words, an union or association of relations and interests, whether it be established by ourselves or by that higher Being with whose wisdom we ought ever to be satisfied, necessarily induces a common liability to error, suffering, and punishment.

Present Holiness Is Not the Holiness of Heaven

The holiness which, in accordance with the principles of the gospel, is required to be exercised in the present life, differs in some respects from the holiness or sanctification of a future life. It is important to add, however, that it does not differ in its nature; but only in some of its accessories or incidents. In its nature holiness ever will be, and ever must be the same; but it may differ in some of the attendant circumstances or incidents, under which it exists. One of the particulars of an accessory or incidental character, in which the holiness of the future life may be regarded as differing from that of the present, is, that it is not liable, by any possibility whatever, to any interruption or suspension. No physical infirmity, no weariness or perplexity, of body or of mind, nothing will ever, even for a moment, either vitiate or weaken the purity of its exercises. The spiritual body, which constitutes the residence of the soul in its heavenly state, accelerates and perfects its operations, instead of retarding and perplexing them; so that its purity is always unstained, its joy always full, the song of its worship always new.

Another ground of difference between the sanctification or holiness of the present and that of the future life is to be found in the circumstance, that in the present life we are subject to perpetual and heavy temptations. No one, however advanced in religious experience, is wholly exempt from them. On the contrary, persons, who are the most holy, often endure temptations of the severest kind. But it is not so in the heavenly world. In that happier place the contest ceases forever. There is not only no sin, and no possibility of sinning; but no temptation to sin. While, therefore, we hold to the possibility of a freedom from actual voluntary transgression in this life, it ought to be understood that we do not hold to a freedom from temptation. So that we may speak of the continuance of the spiritual warfare in the present life, as a matter of necessity, but not of the continuance of sin as a matter of necessity.

— Edited from The Interior of Hidden Life (1844), Chapter 2.

Holiness Does Not Imply Physical Perfection

The holiness, which Christ requires in his people, and which, in order to distinguish it from Adamic perfection, is sometimes designated as evangelical or gospel holiness, does not necessarily imply a perfection of the physical system. Adam, before his fall, was a perfect man physically as well as mentally. His senses were sound; his limbs symmetrical; his muscular powers uninjured; and in all merely corporeal or physical respects, we may reasonably suppose, that he possessed all that could be desired. But this is not our present condition. Far from it. In consequence of the fall of Adam, we inherit bodies that are subject to various weaknesses and infirmities. 

Many are called, in the Providence of God, to endure a great degree of suffering through the whole course of their days. These weaknesses and infirmities, which are often the source of great perplexity and suffering, are natural to us. To a considerable extent at least, we cannot prevent their coming; nor, when they have come, can we, by any mere voluntary acts, send them away. We admit, therefore, if gospel holiness necessarily implies physical perfection, that none can be holy. But this is not the case.

— from The Interior or Hidden Life (1844).