THE LIFE OF GOD | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 18, 1903

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 29, No. 11.

THE LIFE OF GOD.

Does the Christian possess a life which the worldling—the unbeliever—does not? Nay, more, is he a Christian if he does not possess a life which the unbeliever does not? We do not mean by these questions the hope of a life to come, or the promise of a life to come, but life now, actual and manifest.

“But is there more than one source of life?” “Does not all life come from God?” “Are not all living things, then, partakers of His life?” “And do not all, therefore, have the same life?”

These are all pertinent questions, and are worthy of candid consideration. Let us study the matter.

1. There is but one source of life—God; for “with Him is the fountain of life.” Ps. 36:9. “As the Father hath life in Himself, even so gave He to the Son also to have life in Himself.” John 5:26. And from the Father and Son, through the Spirit, life pulses out to all parts of God’s living universe. For “by His Spirit the heavens are garnished” (Job 26:13); “by the word of Jehovah were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath [Spirit] of His mouth” (Ps. 33:6); “Thou sendest forth Thy Spirit, they are created; and Thou renewest the face of the earth” (Ps. 104:30).

2. The life of “the everlasting God” is everlasting life. We could not conceive of it as otherwise. From His throne flows out unceasingly, eternally, unfailingly the river of life. Rev. 22:1, 2.

3. But His life is given in different ways, conditioned upon different laws. The life in the mineral follows its forms of crystallization, always reproducing with more or less modification the characteristics of that mineral. The earth, too, is alive, and the life received from the great Fountain follows the perverted law of a sin-cursed planet. The life is given to the vegetable, according to a different law, which forever perpetuates vegetables, but each vegetable according to its kind. One step higher, in numerous species and kinds, is the manifestation of life in the animal, each according to the law of its physical being, each perpetuating its kind and receiving the life according to that law.

4. So far as this world is concerned the highest creature is man, the link between all lower creatures and the Creator, possessing both physical and spiritual natures, having moral sense and conscience, with implanted divine aspirations after the infinite.

5. The life of all the lower orders of creation was perpetuated through physical food. The vegetable fed upon the mineral and upon sunlight, air, and water. The animal fed upon the vegetable, and received life therefrom. Man fed upon the vegetable for the sustenance of his physical being, drank in the sunshine, breathed the air, and quaffed the sparkling water. But all these lower laws were subject to the higher law of man’s spiritual nature, his moral image in God. That nature could not be fed on physical food. It must receive God’s life according to a higher law, which is the only law of unending existence—righteousness. And, therefore, it is written: “In the way of righteousness is life; and in the pathway thereof there is no death.” Prov. 12:28. “The Spirit is life, because of righteousness.” Rom. 8:10. Man’s higher nature, receiving the words of God, receiving them by living faith from the great Fountain, through them, fed directly upon the life of God, drank directly from the unadulterated streams of the living Fountain.

6. Man’s spiritual life—the life of God in man—sanctified, shaped, controlled all lower life. As long as man’s heart was in harmony with the law of his existence—God’s righteousness—all life to all things was eternal life in all; for life in all was flowing in perfect harmony with the laws of being in all.

7. But when man sinned, when he broke his connection with God, and transgressed the law of His spiritual life, all laws beneath him were perverted. “The creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but by reason of Him who subjected it.” Rom. 8:20. When man, the king of the world, under God, failed to recognize his Creator and Ruler, failed to recognize his responsibility to the creatures under his care, he cut off from the world eternal life by perverting every law through which life came. Righteousness perverted became sin, and life perverted became death.

8. From the great Fountain of God, life—His life—still flows. It leaves Him as eternal life, as it must, but it is received by perverted channels of law. Hence we see written on rock and tree and bird and animal disease, decay, death. Only from lower creatures subject to decay, can each order in God’s creative plan obtain its life, life sooner or later to end. Unbelieving man stands on the same plane. From vegetable and animal, from water, air, and sunshine—all existing under perverted law—he receives a perverted life. Men live and move and have their being because of God’s goodness and mercy in prolonging life, but the life is not God’s life; they are “alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of their heart.” Eph. 4:18. Therefore, it is true that as regards future life, man of himself has no pre-eminence above a beast. “As the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath [margin, spirit].” Eccl. 3:18–20.

9. Man’s only hope is that the broken channel of everlasting life be restored. This God has done in Jesus Christ. He is the Righteous One; therefore, He is the Living One, the Quickening One. He not only has life, but gives life. The law in the sinner is perverted, and is a law of sin and death. The law in Christ Jesus was and is normal, and is the law of righteousness and life. As by faith God’s life was in the beginning perpetuated by man, and as by unbelief man lost it, so by faith in Jesus Christ harmony is restored between man and God; man accepts, receives the righteousness of God in Christ, and the life of God is restored in the restored law of righteousness. “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” Rom. 8:1, 2.

10. That life, that higher life, that all-sufficient, eternal life of God, comes to us only through Jesus Christ, through perfect submission to God’s will. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.” John 3:16. “He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood hath eternal life.” John 6:54. “And the witness is this, that God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath the life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life. These things have I written unto you that ye may know that ye have eternal life, even unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God.” 1 John 5:11–13.

11. Surely this is conclusive. The true believer in Jesus Christ has a life which the unbeliever knows not. Like Paul he can say: “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me; and that life I now live in the flesh, I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself up for me.” Gal. 2:20. It is this life which makes a man a new creation; which takes from him the love of the world and implants in its place the love of God; which makes the drunkard a temperate man; which makes of the profane swearer a reverent man; which makes the lustful man a pure man; of the stingy man a liberal man, which enables a man to pass through the world and not be moulded by the world. O that God’s people might know that this life were theirs, actual, genuine, mighty, as long as faith was in exercise. How that life would move the world!