The Truth and the Life

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 24, 1907

The Truth and the Life

WE may understand what God is by what he requires us to be in order to reveal his image. Whatever he requires of us, is simply a statement of what he, the Holy One, is. Learn of God by what he requires of us. “Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine. And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation.” This is to be an actual result; for we read in the Revelation, “And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation; and hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth.” It is God's purpose to have a people who shall be unto him kings and priests; but to show what it is to be a king and a priest unto God, Jesus Christ came as both. He was indeed king, but his kingdom was not of this world. He was God manifest in the flesh, that we might see in him both God's image and our image; because in his divinity Jesus Christ was wholly God, and in his humanity he was wholly man. Both in his divinity and in his humanity he revealed to the universe what God intends that man shall be. In giving his Son to the world God set before humanity his ideal man. Would you know what true manhood is? See it in the life of Jesus Christ, the God-man. Would you know the character of God? See it as revealed to the world by his Son. Jesus Christ was the truth before man and before God, in order that man might be the truth before God and before his fellow men; that humanity might be restored to true manhood, in the exemplification of that truth which is holiness from God.

Let us observe now in what special way it was that Jesus Christ was the truth, how he revealed truth by being truth to the world. He was truth to the world, because he was God manifest in the flesh, because he was the manifestation in life of the very law of God, which is the truth. He revealed truth to the world because he was the revelation of God, who is himself truth. John tells us that “the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” The law was given, grace and truth came. What was it that came by Jesus Christ, that did not come in the law as given by Moses? “Behold,” said Paul, “thou art called a Jew, and restest in the law, and makest thy boast of God, and knowest his will, and approvest the things that are more excellent, being instructed out of the law; and art confident that thou thyself art a guide of the blind, a light of them which are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, which hast the form of knowledge and of the truth in the law.” The law as given by Moses, which law is holy, just, and true, outside of Christ is simply the dead form of the truth; but in Christ it becomes the living law, the reality. What the law says, that Christ was. Every one who takes the law outside of Christ, although it is holy, just, and good, and attempts to conform his life to it, is simply a formalist. That is what the Pharisees were. They had lost sight of the spiritual character of the law, and seeing only the form of the truth, set themselves to work to conform themselves to that form, and they succeeded just as well as any one ever can succeed,—they simply made themselves formalists. But when we see the law in Christ, who is himself the truth of which that law is the form, it is our privilege to receive the very life of the character of God in him, and to reflect that character as revealed by Christ.

Had there not been need that man should have something besides the form of the truth, there would have been no need for the gospel; for the gospel is God's plan by which the truth of which Jesus is the embodiment, shall be revealed in humanity. It is the plan of God to call us from darkness into his marvelous light. And so Christ came to be the revelation of the truth of God, both as a means of telling the world what the truth is and of bringing to humanity that truth.

Thus in the revelation of the image of God in Christ we learn what God is, and what he expects us to be; and through Christ, the power of God, we are enabled to show forth his praises. This is the substance and the purpose of the gospel of Christ.