OBEDIENCE TO GOD by N. W. Vincent

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 19, 1877

OBEDIENCE TO GOD.

By N. W. Vincent

Our Maker is pleased with prompt, trustful obedience. Just as a child shows respect to his parents and teachers by doing cheerfully and faithfully exactly what they bid him, so we honor God when we truly obey him. “This is the love of God that we keep his commandments.” 1 John 5:3.

All transgression of God’s law is sin. By it, Satan and his host lost Heaven. By it, Adam and Eve lost Eden. By sin, the first death came into the world. And on account of it, the second death will be suffered by the enemies of God. While disobeying any divine precept knowingly, we are walking in the steps of Satan, in the broad, fashionable road whose terminus will be the lake of fire. “The wages of sin is death;” but since Jesus, the just and holy, the pitying Son of God, has died in our stead, our sins, though red like crimson, may be as white as snow. Isa. 1:18.

Obedience to the faith of Jesus will lead us to break off our transgressions with sorrow and contrition of spirit, to come to Jesus in earnest prayer and self-yielding, to believe the gospel and be baptized; to be dead to sin and to live to righteousness.

When our hearts are purified through faith in the blood of Christ, and the hope of his kingdom, we then delight in the law of God. We will delight to know God’s will, for we will be willing to do it. We will seek after his commandments; we will make haste and delay not to keep them. Our love to God in Christ Jesus will lead us to choose his way, and our sincere desire to please him will incline us to walk therein. Hos. 14:9. This narrow, unfashionable way leads to life. Matt. 19:17. Rev. 22:14.

Let us walk in it, dear reader, that with our fellow travelers, all who wholly follow God like Caleb and Joshua, we may ere long be partakers of the heavenly inheritance. N. W. VINCENT.