Spiritual Reckoning by A. H. Rogers

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 30, 1903

Spiritual Reckoning

By A. H. Rogers

“Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Rom. 6: 11.

But to do this we must be ready reckoners in the school of Christ.

To become dead to sin, subtraction is to be applied to the life. “But now ye also put off [or subtract] all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth. Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off [subtracted] the old man with his deeds; and have put on [added] the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him.” Col. 3: 8-10.

This is the restoring of the divine image in man. The individual will continually work on the plan of addition. “Add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; and to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity. For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” 2 Peter 1: 5-8.

When the individual works by this rule, God will work for him by the rule of multiplication. “Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord.” Verse 2.

O for men and women who will become “ready reckoners,” “lightning calculators,” in the things of God! “Then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noonday;” “and the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.”—A. H. Rogers.