Your ShelfYour Projects

Untitled article

20%

Untitled article

J. P. HUNTING

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · July 23, 1867

FromReview and Herald, Vol. XXX, No. 6

Read the full edition
“In this we know love, that because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.”
THE common version, by supplying words which are not implied in the original, mistakes and misrepresents the sense. The loving and beloved disciple is saying that there is no true religion without love like God’s in Christ. It may be safely affirmed that every convert to Christ is a living example of this; so that, as John says, to him this assertion is no new thing, for he has an anointing from the Holy One, and knows all things. The love spoken of is not our pleasure in, and approval of goodness, but it is the self-sacrificing goodness which we should exercise toward all, like the love that died for us while yet enemies. It is like His who makes his sun rise on the evil and the good.
According to this test we may easily determine the character of our personal religion. Therefore “let us not love in word, but in deed and in truth;” and in this we “shall assure our hearts before him,” “that we may have confidence in the day of judgment.” Do our plans show such love? Is our business for the good of men? How do we rule the tongue and the eye in our homes? What are we doing for the spiritual good of men? Would one think from our life that we are full of and ruled by a love like that of Jesus? Are we wholly his to finish his work, and in our business, with our means, our talents, our time, our influence, trying to please him in the good of men?
J. P. HUNTING