FOR CHRIST’S SAKE

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 17, 1898

FOR CHRIST’S SAKE.

What Are Your Object and Motive?

A BROTHER in the East sends us the following communication. We print it here, hoping that both it and its setting may be helpful:—

Cold-blooded reasoner as I am, I could not suppress the tears as I read the article in No. 1 of the SIGNS entitled “Just around the Corner.” It brought to my mind the scene of a few months ago, when kind neighbors contributed a profusion of flowers on the occasion of the death of a little one in our own household. The fact that we were Seventh-day Adventists was for the time forgotten. We were one family in a community of neighbors. The thought occurred to me, Would it not be well for us all to forget for the time that we are engaged in a theological war, and cease our efforts to make proselytes, and in our attempts to raise the fallen or comfort the afflicted, do so for humanity’s sake, because they are human beings like ourselves? No one need to compromise a particle of his faith.

The above note suggests three questions: (1) What should be our highest motive in labor? (2) What should be our object as Christians and church-members? (3) What is the object of our faith?

1. The highest motive. The higher is often an enemy to the highest, because we become content with the higher. God desires we should know and work from the highest motive, and the Christian should ever keep it in mind. It is good for humanity that they are helped for “humanity’s sake;” but it is better that they should be helped for Christ’s sake. He who labors alone for humanity’s sake will find in his labors those who are seemingly less than human. They have fallen so low that even the semblance of humanity scarce remains. And yet these poor victims of sin, in whom almost the only trace of humanity is flesh and blood and human form, are among those for whom Christ died.

The heathen world had in the days of the apostle Paul sunk into the lowest depths of degradation, as he describes in the first chapter of Romans; yet he counted himself for Christ’s sake a “debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise.” Verse 14. In all his labors it was “the love of Christ” which constrained him. 2 Cor. 5:14. In love Christ died for sinners. As Paul was the purchase of Christ’s blood, he counted himself a debtor to all others for whom Christ died. He who labors for Christ’s sake will therefore see the purchase of Christ’s blood in every soul; and believing in Christ’s power to “save to the uttermost,” he will put forth his hand to help every one whom he can. He will not stop to inquire his nation, his race, his creed, or color. “Does he need help?”—“Yes.” “Then for Christ’s sake I will help him.”

2. His object in doing it will not be to win a name or fame for himself; it will not be to build up a denomination, or obtain converts to a sect. His object will be to save the man for Christ’s sake. He will be burdened for the man’s soul, not to carry a theological argument. He will desire to advance Christ’s kingdom, not to get converts to a sect, or denomination, or creed. His message will not be a belligerent one, but a message of peace to all sinners. He will preach the truth; he will compromise none of it; for the only means of saving men from error is to save them to the truth.

3. The object of our faith is to do God’s will, to witness for Him by teaching and living His truth. The teaching of the truth is not for the purpose of making proselytes; it should be taught for the one sole purpose of saving men. The Sabbath truth, for instance, is to be given to the world, not to get men to keep a different day, not to build up a seventh-day body of people, but to save men by bringing them back to the truth as taught and practised by Jesus Christ, that they may know Him, His power to save, and the sweetness of His rest. This is the message God has given us to give to the world. It is His means of saving men from delusive errors of Church and State union, from man-worship, from sin, and from death, and to prepare them for the mansions of light. If it separates them from the world, from former associates in the church, and unites them with the bearer of the message, that is incidental not objective to him. For this the messenger of truth is not responsible. If the message leads men to break away from hoary traditions and man-made institutions, the message, not the bearer of the message, is responsible. God gave the seventh-day Sabbath, and it should be preached not as a proselyting dogma, but as an eternal, helpful, saving truth. Any man who is laboring from lower motives and objects is not truly witnessing for Christ.

Every true, loyal child of God will labor to save men, and leave results with God. If he makes only proselytes, he has no cause of rejoicing. If Christ through him separates men from sin, whether that sin be in the world or in a church, even to separation from the church, the truth is responsible, not the messenger. It is the messenger’s duty to be loyal to God, and loyalty to God will neither compromise faith, nor refuse the sympathy and help which every soul needs. To compromise faith is treason to God, and to refuse to help the needy of every class when in our power, is to deny our Lord.