What Is the Rule?

What is the rule for saintly living? Many are ready to answer, “The Word of God.” But does the Word of God answer every question in life? Not long ago we were asked a number of questions. One was, “Is it wrong to use perfumes?” A second was, “Is it wrong to have the collar and cuffs of a dress of different color from the dress?” A third question was, “Is it wrong to chew gum?” Nowhere in the Bible can I find Scripture texts to answer these questions. I could give reasonings, and I could tell what I believed, and what God had showed me, but this is not God’s Word.

The question now arises: Can I lay down a rule to govern the life of another in all its details? Some have attempted to do this, and have caused endless trouble. Between God and each life there are some secret things in which He would have no other to meddle. As a child of God it is your privilege to know how God wants you to live in those things that belong to your own private life. I will give you a text of scripture to prove this to be true. “But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you.”* (1 John 2:27) These words mean just what they say. This text does not admit of a certain independency, and yet they do grant a certain independency. It is for us to know which independency is right and which is wrong. Let me give another text, “Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord.”* (Ephesians 5:10) The children of light are not to prove what is acceptable unto God in someone else’s life, but in our own. The Twentieth Century translation renders this text in these words, “Always trying to find out what is pleasing to the Lord.”TCNT Weymouth says, “Learn in your own experiences what is fully pleasing to the Lord.”

What I learn in my experiences that is pleasing or displeasing to the Lord is a rule for my life and not for yours. It is a mistake to try to bind on all others what you have learned that pleases God in your life. Some of you would live a great deal differently if I should require you to live to all that God has shown me. Forty-three years ago I learned by experience that it displeased God for me to vote in general political elections. I have not voted in these two-score and three years. Shall I make that a rule for your life? There are some articles in The Gospel Trumpet of thirty-five and forty years ago against voting. I approved of those articles, and yet I never felt like binding this rule on everyone. There are some folks that talk much about the “old-time truth of this reformation,” yet they know but little what it is.

If I were to say that Jesus does not require us all to live alike, there are some who would say that is a compromising utterance. I do say it, and I will go farther and say that God does not require us in all instances to live now what He may have required of us in the past. God may have required a certain sort of life of you in the past that He does not now, and He will require a life of you in the future that He does not now if you walk life’s way hand in hand with Him. Will you please read Matthew 19:12. There Jesus plainly teaches that He does not require us all to live alike. Some are not able to receive what others are able to receive, and never will be. You are to live to all you are able to receive, but you are not to make this the rule for some other life.

I knew a brother and sister (husband and wife) who were called of God to go on an extended evangelistic tour. That their work for God in this capacity be not hindered they covenanted with God and each other that by God’s grace they would abstain from sexual relation while on this tour. For two years they lived in this manner, although sharing the same bed almost every night. When their labor in this capacity was ended God no longer required this sort of life. It would have proved disastrous if they had made their life for this two years the rule for every other life, and even for their own life for all time.

God does not want us to walk in the same path we walked in thirty years ago. He wants us much farther from the world than we were then. He wants us all to live sinless and holy lives, but what was holy living for you thirty years ago is not holy living for you today. Some have gone backward toward the world. God wants us to get farther from the world, but He does not want me to frame a rule for your life in all its details. There are things that He would have you to learn for yourself. You cannot be your own individual self if this be not true. You are so constituted that you cannot live like another and be free. There are only two of us (my wife and I) in our home, and we do not live alike. We do not live alike because we are not alike. My wife does not live like I do, and yet she lives as holily as I do. We are not constituted alike. I am of a quiet, reserved, solitary nature, while she is more sociable, talkative, and laughs where I do not laugh. If I would attempt to bind my life of reticence on her it would take away her individuality and make her into a machine.

Does God concern Himself in all the little things in our life? He certainly does. “Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus.”* (Colossians 3:17) “Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.”* (1 Corinthians 10:31) “Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD.”* (Psalm 19:14) The life God has taught me to live as concerns eating and drinking, I would not bind on you. Many saints would eat and drink differently if I were to do so. This one thing is certain, if you love God you will try to find out what pleases Him, and when you find out, you will be careful to do it. We fear that some are seeking to please themselves instead of pleasing God.

In the following I will bring out some truth which, if obeyed, will save from both fanaticism and compromise. I will also give you some of my own experiences concerning the little things of daily life. But what I by experience have learned is pleasing God, is the rule of saintly living to me, and not a rule for all others.