LIFE AND FORM | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 7, 1897

LIFE AND FORM.

CHRISTIANITY is not a creed or a theory, or a mere form; it is a life, a power, a divine energy working out righteousness and life in its possessors.

But this is not to say that it does not have its forms; for life is ever manifest to the material man in form. The forms of Christianity are set forth in God’s holy word. Illustrations of it are Sabbath observance and baptism. The mere resting or refraining from ordinary labor on the seventh day is not Bible Sabbath-keeping. Doing that alone is coming short of God’s glory, and is therefore sin. Rom. 3:23. Depending upon the mere letter means death. One may be immersed in water in the words of the Gospel formula, but there is no saving power in the act, if the life be wanting. To observe the strict form alone leads to Pharisaical self-righteousness.

He also places himself in the way of deception who ignores the divine forms and talks of “the life,” “the Spirit.” He stands where his own conceptions and thoughts and fancies come to him as the voice of God, and God’s word becomes nothing.

The Spirit of God did not find fault with the Jews because they had “the form of knowledge and of the truth in the law” (Rom. 2:20), but because they did not have that form filled with the righteousness—the life of God (Rom. 10:3). Jesus Christ does not say that we should worship in Spirit alone, but “they that worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in Truth.” John 4:24.

Life has its forms; and departure from the form shows imperfect life. This is manifest throughout nature. Sin has marred God’s handiwork there; and almost every leaf and flower and blade of grass show some imperfection in lack of development or premature death. These are indications that its life is not full and free.

Christianity is life. Its forms are expressed in the word of God. If it be in the heart of the professed Christian to make light of the divinely given forms, to ignore them, to transgress them, it reveals, and should reveal to his conscience, that the life within him is perverted; sin and selfishness are bearing sway. The divine life will follow the divine forms. “This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments.” Reader, think of these things.

A Blessed Better Thing.—When the truth of God takes from us a tenderly cherished tradition; when it strips from our idol the gorgeous, sanctified dress in which our uninstructed and devoted fancy has clothed it; when we find that our hope is based in the hoary error of tradition instead of the word of God; when we learn from that word that our credulity and presumption were founded in the wisdom of man, rather than in the power of God; when God teaches that all the ornate ritual of sacerdotalism, all the creeds of men, all the orders of priests, all the succession of priesthood, are of themselves of no account,—he does not strip us of all these to leave us naked, barren, or hopeless; but that he may give us what is better. God would give us living truth in place of tradition. He would enshrine himself in our hearts in the place of the idol we have worshiped. He would give us the hope based on his immutable promise, “an anchor to the soul, both sure and steadfast.” He would found our faith on the rock of eternal truth, in the wisdom and power of God. He would come in and dwell with us by his Holy Spirit, place in our hearts his Real Presence, connect us with himself by his own life, and be a mighty Helper, a safe, wise, and loving Friend and all-sufficient Saviour all the way to the kingdom of God. God the Father and Jesus Christ would be all of this to us if we desired it enough to choose them. Will we not do it? Will we not choose the blessed, better thing of righteousness, life, and salvation in him?