Editorial by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 31, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 38.

Editorial.

By Editor

"All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable."—2 Tim. 3:16.

MANY persons suppose that there were two very different arrangements for developing character and saving man before he fell and afterward; that before he fell he was to develop character and be saved by obedience, but since the fall, by faith. But God's plan has been and ever will be the same in principle.

THIS principle of salvation is stated in Heb. 10:38, "The just shall live by faith," and in Heb. 11:6, "Without faith it is impossible to please Him." If, therefore, it is by faith that one lives, and if to have no faith is displeasing to God, it follows that there is no other way or means of living, or salvation, except that of faith. And this was true of Adam. He did not know of himself that disobedience would bring death. He only knew it because God told him that if he ate of the forbidden fruit, he would die. He even then did not know unless he believed God. But this he did not do. He believed the tempter instead of God, and therefore fell because of unbelief, even as the Israelites failed to enter into the promised land for the same reason. See Heb. 3:19.

THAT obedience entered into the matter of Adam's character is true. God would ever and always have obedient children. But obedience is not primary; it is only the necessary result of faith, faith's legitimate fruit, faith in exercise. If Adam had believed God, he would never have partaken of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. He would have said that the Creator knows, and I will believe him, and will leave it all in his hands. Not for one moment would Eve have considered the temptation of the enemy if she had believed God. She would have seen, not the outward beauty of the forbidden fruit, but the fruit of death. True, she did not know what death was as it has since been known, but she knew if she believed God that it was the opposite of the bright and blessed life she then enjoyed. Faith would have resisted the temptation; faith would have obeyed God.

THIS faith, without which it was and is impossible to please God, was and is for man's best and highest good, for his broadest development and richest enjoyment. If man could have been saved by obedience, he could have boasted of his work, have felt that his salvation was owing to his own exertions. His whole thought would thus have been centered on self. Jealousy and envy would have risen between him and his fellows over the degree of respective merits and awards, and Paradise would have soon become a scene of strife, confusion, and desolation. Man would have had self for his center and circumference, and his character would have remained forever dwarfed. But the blessedness of faith as a means of salvation came in in order to save man from disaster. Faith in God's wisdom, power, and love would have led him to place no degree of merits on his own works, and would also lead him to reach out to grasp more of the infinite perfections. He would thus continually have been led out of the narrow sphere of self to the greater, limitlessly greater, sphere of the infinite; and in that continual development would he have found forever increasing love, wisdom, and power, opening new fields of forever increasing happiness, and consequent upspringing songs of ceaseless praise to the Giver of all good.