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The Victories of Faith

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 28, 1907

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 84, No. 9.

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The Victories of Faith

(Continued)
Christ, as we have learned again and again, is the revelation of what God designs humanity to be; that is to say, he is the revelation of the character of God as revealed in his law, the standard for man.
I would like to go back a little of the explicit statement of God’s law as set forth in the ten commandments, taking up the underlying principles of that law. The definition of God as to character, is “God is love.” Every revelation of God is but a revelation of his love. This is easy to see in the words of the scripture, “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” In the death of Christ on the cross, it is easy to see the revelation of God’s love; but, on the other side, even in the carrying out of the punishment for sin, God’s love is revealed. There is nothing that God does, there is nothing that he says, that is not a revelation of his character, which is love. We are required by faith to believe this, and to understand that every expression of what God is in any way is to the world an expression of his character.
Before rebellion came into the universe, this was all the statement of law that was necessary. The love of God in the hearts of his creatures led them to be in perfect harmony with him. God revealed himself continually in their lives by the very power of love. But when rebellion came into God’s universe, and a change came over the universe, it became necessary to reveal more definitely the principles which underlie that expression of love, that man might understand more clearly how love to God would reveal itself, that when God gives himself, he gives his very life to us.
When God was creating the world, he placed his love upon nature, and nature responded. To be sure, it has been marred by sin, and the page written by the hand of love has been blurred, yet we have in nature a revelation of the love and life of God. The commandments given to nature were but statements of God’s love. God said, “Let there be light: and there was light;” and light continues because of the obedience of nature to that command. But when man received the commandment to reveal God’s will, he was placed in possession of a voluntary will. Man must co-operate with God, in order that the words, “Let us make man in our own image,” shall be fulfilled. Those words were but another revelation of the love of God, and they contain the life and the power to make man in the image of God, and to keep him there, if man is but submissive to the word of God. All the unfolding of the plan of salvation is but the unfolding of that command, “Let us make man in our image.”
When sin entered the world, and man’s mind was darkened by becoming estranged from God, it became necessary that God should still further unfold his plan of salvation, and this he did by giving the precepts of the law, which are but a revealing of the original command, “Let us make man in our image,” defining plainly what the image is, in order that man may co-operate with God in the carrying out of his thought.
Time goes on, the mind of man still darkened by sin, and the thought of God more and more shut away from the world, and those who professed to teach God, making him one in their minds with the heathen idols; then God revealed his love in life, and what he had revealed to man in the precepts of his law as an unfolding of his thought, “God is love,” he shows to the world in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ in the flesh is but the unfolding, in concrete form, of the statement, “God is love.” The example revealed in the life of Jesus Christ is obedience to God’s commandments, and nothing short of that is obedience. It does not meet God’s mind that we simply attempt to make our lives like the life of Christ. We meet God’s mind only when we submit to the power of his life, that it may work in us the very life of God. That is carrying out the command, “Let us make man in our image;” that is carrying out the law in its perfection. To keep the commandments of God is to reveal the life of God. That is spiritual obedience to a spiritual law.
What Christ did, faith in Christ can do. “If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love.” I want you to take that statement, “I have kept my Father’s commandments,” as a statement of what it means to keep God’s law. The life of Christ simply reveals to humanity what it is to lead a life in harmony with God. When the Pharisees found fault with Christ’s life, he referred them to the Word of God, and showed them that wherein they found fault with him, he was simply revealing in life what God had given in word,—that he was the Truth.
We may distinguish between three phases of truth, so to speak. We may have word-truth, we may have thought-truth, and we may have life-truth. We have word-truth when we take the word of God simply as words, simply as a vehicle in which to convey truth, the description of truth. We take those words into the intellect, and it becomes thought-truth, but it becomes life-truth when revealed in the daily life. Jesus Christ was always life-truth. God’s commandments are truth, but they may be word-truth or thought-truth or life-truth, according as we relate ourselves to them. If we treat them simply aswords, they are to us but word-truth; if we take them into our intellect so far as finite man can do, they become thought-truth; but when they come to us as revealed in Jesus Christ, they become life-truth. It is God’s design that all his truth shall be life-truth, and faith is the principle that changes word-truth and thought-truth into life-truth.
Christ was the embodiment of life-truth, and therefore, when he says, “I have kept my Father’s commandments,” it means that his whole life was simply a revelation of the life-truth of God’s law. Faith is to do for us, and to reveal through us, that very same thing,—the life-truth of God’s law. “Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.” That was exactly what Jesus Christ did. He established the law in his life, and we by our faith do the same thing; we establish the law of God, not as word-truth, not as thought-truth, but as life-truth. Then the renewing power of the life of Christ is seen in the individual, the character is changed, and we are transformed by the renewing of our minds. And nothing short of this meets God’s mind concerning our experience.
(To be continued)