Question: Will you please explain “make your calling and election sure.” (2 Peter 1:10).
Answer: If we follow on after God, adding to our faith as in verses 5-7, we shall make our election of God certain to all (who have to judge us by our fruits), and as to ourselves, shall avoid stumbling and straying.
Question: What is meant by “covering a multitude of sins?” (1 Peter 4:8; James 5:20).
Answer: These are very precious passages; somewhat, though not altogether, similar to the truth in John 13. They are quotations from Proverbs 10:12. As to their meanings we cannot do better than condense the valuable remarks on the subject made by another,
“Love in the Church suppresses the sins which would otherwise destroy union. They are put away by the love which they could not vanquish. This is not as to ultimate pardon, but the present notice God takes in government. If there is variance, if there is little love, if the intercourse is bad, the existing evil and the mutual wrongs, subsist before God; but if there is love which neither commits nor resents these things, but pardons them, it is then the love that God sees, and not the evil.”
In the case of positive evil, it is love that leads us to wash another’s feet, and so the evil is removed and the sin covered.
Question: What is Christ’s yoke? (Matt. 11). Do we get it from Christ or go under it with Him?
Answer: The yoke is entire submission to God’s will, which Christ had manifested so perfectly in this very chapter. Christ asks us to take it; so that it is His as given to us, but also His as having borne it. When we bear it, we have the consciousness that we are walking with Him in His path.
Question: Please explain clearly about the punishment of the heathen (Hindus, Brahmins, etc.) who have never heard the gospel?
Answer: We quote as follows from a well-known work,
“The Gentiles will be judged according to the light of nature and of conscience, neglected and resisted. Paul’s sermon in Athens is no less clear as regards the condition of the heathen. As he said at Lystra (Acts 14:8-18) they were not left without a witness, in that God did good and gave rain and fruitful seasons, filling their hearts with food and gladness. By such things he declares again in another place (Rom. 1:20), God’s eternal power and Godhead are clearly seen, so that they are without excuse, and so here (Acts 17:22-31). God left the heathen to themselves, not that they should forget Him, but that they should seek Him, even though it were in utter darkness, so that they should need to grope for Him, ‘to feel after Him and find Him,’ and though there was ignorance of God, He could wink at the ignorance, and give blessing notwithstanding, for ‘He is a rewarder of diligent seekers.’
If it be asked, whether any have, in fact, been saved thus, I turn from the question, though I have no doubt as to the answer.” (See Acts 10:34, 35).