How May This Be Done?

Pacific Press Publishing Company · OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA · Nov 14, 1900

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 26, No. 46.

How May This Be Done?

LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. No. 6.

How to Obtain Life.

IT has been clearly shown that in righteousness alone is life. Sin tends to death, and when it is finished, brings forth death. It is consistent, reasonable, and Biblical that God gave His own eternal life, flowing from Him, the great Fountain, in harmony with His eternal law. All things in harmony with that law have eternal life.

Sin is the transgression or perversion of God's law of righteousness and life; and sin ends in death. In this world "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God;" and all are subject to death. There is no exception among the children of Adam to this rule. God pours out His life to them freely, but sin within them perverts the law of the life of God, and all are dying creatures, corruptible, mortal. All received this in the physical man by inheritance from Adam. When sin became incarnate, infleshed, in Adam it established in him physically its own law, the perverted law of God. It is God's law of man's life that all blessings and gifts and powers and talents should be diffusive, used for the good of others. Sin turned the flow inward upon the man, and decay and death resulted.

In all natural men, apart from the powers of God, while there are desires for good, the fleshly desires are dominant. Under the dominating influence of sin, love becomes lust, economy becomes avarice, generosity becomes prodigality, self-respect becomes pride, firmness becomes obstinacy, and every good thing becomes perverted. All the power that man has is in the life he possesses, but there is no power in this perverted life to lift him above its perversions. As well could a man lift himself by his boot straps. Moreover, the mind of the man is in harmony with the flesh or in bondage to it; "because the carnal mind ["the mind of the flesh," R.V.] is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they which are in the flesh can not please God." Rom. 8:7, 8.

Then to obtain the life, the life which has power above sin and all inherited tendencies of evil, we must obtain the righteousness. In other words, man's disposition, mind, will, heart must be brought into harmony with God's holy law, the law of His life.

How May This Be Done?

By simple faith in Jesus Christ, the choosing of God's way instead of our own. That is all God asks of man, because it is all man can do. But if man will do the choosing, if he will put his own will in the current of God's will, God's will furnishes the power; for He "worketh all things after the counsel of His own will." Eph. 1:11. "He doeth according to His will; . . . and none can stay His hand." Dan. 4:35.

Then it surely follows that the only wise thing to do, if we wish eternal life, is to come into harmony with God's will, by choosing His own righteous ways with all our heart. Jesus says, "If any man willeth to do His will, he shall know of the teaching." John 7:17. And this is simple faith—choosing God's way, believing God's promises. For it is not faith that believes God's promise and ignores His precept. He who desires His life must yield to His will.

The apostle expresses it in this way: "For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ; for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; . . . for therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, The just shall live by faith." Rom. 1:16, 17. "But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe; for there is no difference." Rom. 3:21, 22.

Faith, willing, glad submission, choosing, believing, opens the soul to the righteous, everlasting life of God. "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh; that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." Rom. 8:2-4.

Faith chooses, receives Christ, and in so doing receives all that Christ wrought. He counts Christ's crucifixion as His, reckoning himself to be dead unto sin; he counts Christ's righteousness as his; and he receives continually from the great Fountain, through the Spirit, the life of Christ. The Spirit, if in power upon the sinner, would be death, even as to Ananias and Sapphira; but to the believer "the Spirit is life because of righteousness." Rom. 8:10. And the believer can joyfully and triumphantly say: "I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me." Gal. 2:20.

Blessed eternal life by faith in God. Actual eternal life by faith in God. The same life, the same power, by which Jesus Christ overcame the world, the flesh, the devil, is given to every one who "believes unto righteousness," who chooses God's way in Christ Jesus. Says our Lord, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on Me hath everlasting life." John 6:47. "And the witness is this, that God gave to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath the life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life. These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God, that ye may know that ye have eternal life." 1 John 5:11-13, R.V.

Why not believe the record which God has given? Why endeavor to console one's self that we have this life in ourselves apart from Christ, whether we are sinners or not, when the Word declares that "he that hath not the Son of God, hath not the life"? Why not yield all the poor, sinful, corrupt being to God, choose His ways, open the heart to all that He has to give, and let the stream of living waters flow from His throne in ever-increasing measure into the dry, sterile, barren ground of our heart, bringing life and healing and fruitage wherever they go? See Eze. 47:8, 9.

Only in receiving His life by faith shall we have power over sin and Satan. But in receiving it by faith it will be dominant in our lives, even as it was in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. The flesh will no longer be master but servant, and Christ will be magnified in us. So let it be with every one to whom this comes.