Your ShelfYour Projects

Testing Your Work

11%

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 15, 1913

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 90, No. 20.

Read the full edition

Testing Your Work

By C. M. S.

“ALL is not gold that glitters.” Neither is all Christianity that calls itself by that name. “Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is.” 1 Cor. 3: 11-13.
Our Saviour himself speaks of this matter in these words: “If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.” John 15:6. We are familiar with the declaration of our Saviour: “Every plant, which my Heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up.” Matt. 15:13.
The principle of this declaration has its application to individuals as well as to ordinances or institutions. God can not tolerate in his universe that which is out of harmony with his purposes. To set up an ordinance or establish an institution that is in antagonism to God’s purpose is to attempt to perpetuate the intolerable conditions that now exist in the universe, and keep sin forever with us. So God will uproot them all in the day when he makes a full end of the tragedy of sin.
But the individual who is out of harmony with God’s purpose, if admitted into the kingdom of God, would have always in his heart the malignant germs of another rebellion. So God tests men, that their own works may demonstrate their loyalty or disloyalty toward the government of heaven.
God will have love and peace and harmony in his universe. To accomplish that purpose, he must eliminate every element that tends to breed hatred, strife, and discord. It is necessary therefore to destroy sin and the seeds of sin. God could uproot institutions and ordinances and fling them out of his universe; but the seeds of sin are in the human heart. So it is the heart of the individual that must have the close attention of heaven. “By their fruits ye shall know them.” The works of the hands, the words that are spoken, and the thoughts the mind chooses to dwell upon, demonstrate to the heavenly watchers what is the condition of the heart. Therefore we can see the necessity of true heart conversion, of complete surrender to the will of God, of having that mind “which was also in Christ Jesus.” Having experienced that conversion, having made that surrender, having accepted that mind in place of our own will, and having, as a result of that surrender and consecration, borne the “fruits of the Spirit,” we may know that we are his and he is ours, and eternal life is assured.
The work of God in the earth is a work of restoration to the divine pattern. Wherever the observance of God’s ordinances has been neglected, or wherever his institutions have been trodden underfoot, there is the need of a restoration. And wherever self has upreared itself in the human heart; wherever the private interests of the individual have been allowed to crowd out or overtop the interests of God’s cause, there is need of a restoration.
There is no Christianity outside of Christ; there is nothing Christian that is unlike Christ. There is but one true foundation, and the fires of God’s great testing day will consume all that is not built thereon. So he who is following and teaching others to follow human ceremonies and human institutions is not perfectly abiding in Christ, is not building a perfect structure upon the true foundation; and his work, instead of abiding to eternity in the paradise of God, will be uprooted and consumed with all things that displease and dishonor him. The heart that is unregenerate, that prompts the tongue to speak harsh and cruel and cutting words, that prompts the mind to feed upon the husks of fiction and gossip, that causes the individual to be liberal with his means in those things that pander to his own pleasure while he begrudges what he gives to the cause of God,—that heart is leading straight on toward perdition; for the all-wise Father could not give to an individual with such a heart a passport to glory, and at the same time guarantee to his faithful children that “affliction shall not rise up the second time.”
This being a fact, how important it is that we each experience that true heart conversion and surrender of will to Christ which will bring us into harmony with God’s purpose. The Holy Spirit is in the world to-day to help us to gain that experience and to bring us into harmony with the purpose of God. He awaits our demand and reception, and is ever ready to enlist in our behalf. The most solemn question that any human being can ask of himself is this: What will the great test reveal concerning me? It is a question that every one of us should ask; and having asked it, it is our privilege to call upon all the powers Heaven has promised that we may be able to pass that test with the approval of Heaven. C. M. S.