p. 195 | SAVING GRACE

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 26, 1901

SAVING GRACE

The King's Messenger

SAVED by grace through faith, “and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast.”

Many of God’s children make a good start on the path of salvation. By believing in the Lord Jesus Christ and venturing upon His finished work on the cross, they are justified by faith, and have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. And if they would continue their walk by faith, they would rapidly advance into all the fullness of God by faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Having begun in the Spirit, many are foolish enough to try to make themselves perfect by the flesh, and they are thus taught by their teachers to do and strive and struggle instead of believe God. We receive the “promise of the Spirit through faith.” Gal. 3:14. He is given to lead us into all truth, for He is the “Spirit of truth,” not the spirit of error. Now, we can not receive the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error at the same time. When the Spirit of truth comes in, He comes to lead us into all truth, not error. He comes to guide and instruct, to comfort, to mother the children. In a life of sanctification and holiness, God seeks a believing faith that will not doubt God. We are sanctified by faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Yes, we repeat it: We are sanctified by faith in our Lord Jesus Christ—simple, childlike faith.

The struggle and worry and effort to be good that one sees in some of His consecrated ones is not of faith, and whatsoever is not of faith is sin, S-I-N, sin. By faith we receive Christ as our sanctification (1 Cor. 1:30), or sanctifier; by faith we know that He sanctifies and keeps. He went away, but not to leave us comfortless or orphans. He sent us another Comforter, that He may abide with us forever. He comes to magnify Jesus, to reveal Jesus, to manifest the Christ in us.

We must let Him have full possession of spirit, soul, and body; let Him run His own business, His own house. “Whose house are we if”—if, this is the condition—“if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end.” Heb. 3:6. We are kept by the power of God through faith, not worry, nor works; for faith rests in God, and “he that is entered into His rest [God’s rest], he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from His.” Heb. 4:10.

When we cease to do the keeping by our own human powers, then He keeps us from all sin (unbelief), and works in us to will and to do of His own good pleasure. We work out in our lives of simple, childlike obedience what He works in by His Spirit, who writes His laws, His will, for us on our hearts. That is where He writes His new covenant. The first tables of the law, were broken; the second were kept—because, placed in the will, under the mercy seat, they were kept in unbroken covenant-keeping with God.

We are kept by trusting His power to keep us, not by efforts of our own. “Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works.” He wants to have all the care and responsibility of our lives, “He careth for you;” the government of your life shall be upon His shoulders, not yours. O beloved! let Him have all the care; let Him do His own housekeeping, and you the obedient child that just lives with Him, and runs His errands as He may require of you.

Abraham, the father of all the faithful, is a grand type. He believed God. As he believed and obeyed, his faith grew and developed till he could pass without wavering through the greatest test of all—the offering up of the beloved Isaac. When the command came, “Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, . . . and offer him there for a burnt offering,” he did not hesitate, nor look around to see if Satan, as an angel of light, had come to deceive or lead him astray. He did not consult Sarah, nor go to the minister to see what he thought about it. He conferred not with flesh and blood, or he would have failed God. But he rose up early in the morning, and did what he was told, in the mighty, supernatural faith of God. Oh, for the same childlike simplicity of trust and obedience! People say, How do you know the voice of the Lord? And I say, How do you know the voice of your father or mother or your dearest friend?—By living with them and being acquainted with them.

Live in daily, secret communion with God, and you will know His voice. Yield all to God, without one reservation of any kind, and you will know the leadings of the Holy Ghost. Come into the conditions of discipleship, and you will know what it is to be led continually by the Holy Spirit. Read Isa. 58: 1-11, and see there the conditions of continual filling and guidance. Bring in all the offerings, and the outpouring of the Spirit will come upon you.

If we know God as our most real, intimate friend, we shall know His voice, because we are used to hearing Him speak to us. To know Him is eternal life, and this life is in His Son. “He that hath the Son hath life”—the life of God revealed in His mortal flesh by the Spirit that raised Jesus from among the dead.