"Salvation is of the LORD." -Jonah 2:9

"He that saith he abideth in Him, ought himself also so to walk, even as He walked." -I John 2:6 [KJV] Sweet testimony to the truth as it is in Jesus, when, from being in Christ, we are walking with Christ; and one and the same spirit runs through both. As a man never walks as Christ walked, before he is first united to Christ; so when truly united to Christ, the evidence is made to appear by loving what Jesus loves, and hating what Jesus hates. As Ruth said to Naomi, so the believer saith to the Lord Jesus: "Where thou goest, I would go, and where thou lodgest, I would lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God!"   And, my soul, think what a blessed unanswerable proof doth it afford, both to thyself and to the world around, when, from abiding in Christ, we live as Christ; that is, His Holy Spirit moves in us, speaks in us, walks in us, yea, doth all in us; and as the soul of man gives life and action to the body, so Christ, Who is the soul of the be...

"That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works."   -II Timothy 3:17 [KJV] What perfection does the Holy Ghost speak of here? Certainly not perfection in the flesh; that is but a wild dream of free-will and Arminianism. But perfection here and elsewhere means a being well-established and grounded in the faith , as we find the Apostle speaking (Heb. 5:14), "Strong meat belongeth to them that are  of full age"   (literally, as we read in the margin, "perfect"), "even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil." Christian perfection does not then consist in perfection in the flesh, but in having arrived at maturity in the divine life, in being what I may call a Christian adult, or what the Apostle terms "a man in Christ."   When Paul therefore says, "Let us therefore, as many as be  perfect,"   he means "being no more children, tossed to and fro, and ca...