p. 4 | The Way of the Lord by L. A. S.

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 29, 1902

The Way of the Lord

By L. A. S.

“As for God, his way is perfect.” “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” 2 Sam. 22:31; Matt. 5:48.

The Creator has no use for imperfections. Common as these are in this world, they are altogether unnatural and unnecessary from the standpoint of him to whose creative power all things owe their existence. From God’s standpoint, which is the only true and right standpoint, it is just as easy to be perfect as to be imperfect, and even easier, because perfection is God’s own way in everything.

It is not, therefore, a strange, unnatural, or unreasonable thing which God requires of us, in the admonition, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”

But how are we to be perfect—we who are by nature imperfect, and without either the wisdom or the power to raise ourselves to the high plane of a perfect life? Upon the face of all nature we may read the answer to our query. Nature speaks to us with the voice of God, and the words which nature speaks are the same words which come to us from the lips of him whose life was a perfect revelation of God to men—“Be ye therefore perfect.” All nature speaks to us of God’s perfection. Everywhere upon the face of God’s handiwork the

testimony is written, the way of the Lord is perfect.

Why do we find so much to admire in nature?—It is because we find in nature so much perfection. We cannot suggest any improvement upon nature,—upon the texture, coloring, and fragrance of rose and violet, of lily and hyacinth and carnation, or upon the foliage of tree and bush, or the fresh green of the springing grass, or the inimitable coloring of the sunset. We cannot imitate such workmanship; we are conscious that it is altogether beyond us, that it could not be better than it is; and it is from this consciousness of its perfection that we draw our delight in beholding it. It would be a sad blow to our enjoyment of life were the trees, the grass, the flowers, to transgress the laws of their being, and fail to reflect the glory of the Creator. We realize the necessity that nature should be perfect; while at the same time we live as if imperfection were an inevitable, if not a desirable, state of existence for ourselves.

But there is but one God; the God of nature is our God, and he will have nothing short of perfection in all his works. And so he has admonished us, both in his written Word and in all nature, that we should be perfect; and not only does he admonish us of our duty, but he continually demonstrates before us, in his works, the possibility of its realization. He continually tells us, if we read aright his message through his handiwork, that perfection is a natural state,—a state ordained from the first, and the one that must result from the operation of the laws that are eternal.

“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard [or, “without these their voice is heard”]; their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. . . . The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul.” Ps. 19: 1-7. The heavenly bodies are governed by the law of the Lord, and they testify that his law is perfect. They are perfect in all their movements; they never fail; they never disappoint the calculations of the astronomer. There is no variation, no flaw, in the performance of their divinely appointed functions. Thus they testify to the perfection of the law of him by whom they were ordained.

The only reason that man is not perfect is that the law of God does not have free course in him, as it has in the things of nature. The law is perfect, and would produce perfection in man, as in the things of nature, if man would let it. But man resists it. He has no power to make himself perfect, but he has power to shut away from himself the perfection of his Creator. He has power to shut God out of his heart, so that the perfect life of God cannot be revealed in his daily walk and conversation, but instead, only the deformed life that springs from self. This, man has the power to do, and this it is his nature to do, until he experiences the transformation of the new birth.

“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” They do not resist God; they do not hold back the working of his perfect law in them. This is the secret of their perfection, and this is the message they mutely bear to us, if we will consider it: “Be ye therefore perfect.” Thus they speak to us, and not only in admonition of God’s will, but in promise of that which he is able and ready to perform. L. A. S.