“But ye did not so learn Christ; if so be that ye heard him, and were taught in him, even as truth is in Jesus: that ye put away, as concerning your former manner of life, the old man, which waxeth corrupt after the lusts of deceit .
”
We must forsake all our fears and distrusts for Christ. We must receive his teaching heartily, and not let the interpretation of it attributed to his apostles make us turn aside from it. I say attributed to them, for what they teach is never against what Christ taught, though very often the exposition of it is. We may be sure of this, that no man will be condemned for any sin that is past; that, if he be condemned, it will be because he would not come to the light when the light came to him; because he would not cease to do evil and learn to do well; because he hid his unbelief in the garment of a false faith, and would not obey; because he imputed to himself a righteousness that was not his; because he preferred imagining himself a worthy person, to confessing himself everywhere in the wrong, and repenting. If we do what the Lord tells us, his light will go up in our hearts. Till then we could not understand even if he explained to us. So long as a man will not set himself to obey the word spoken, written, read, of the Lord Christ, I would not take the trouble to convince him concerning the most obnoxious doctrines that they were false as hell. It is those who would fain believe, but who by such doctrines are hindered, whom I would help; those whom the false teaching has driven away from God. Any man who has been strenuously obeying Jesus receives the truth that God is light, and in him is no darkness—a truth which is not acknowledged by calling the darkness attributed to him light, and the candle of the Lord in the soul of man darkness.