ALWAYS WHITE | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Dec 20, 1905

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 31, No. 51.

"ALWAYS WHITE."

LET the words of the ancient preacher apply in the moral field. "Let thy garments of character be always white." To the physical eye no garment is more pleasing, more inviting, more becoming. White speaks of purity, of cleanliness. Yet no garment so clearly shows the staining, the soiling. All matter foreign to its purity stands out in sharp and ugly contrast to its immaculate whiteness.

MAN'S garment of character is not naturally that color. We talk many times of the blank pages of the child's heart upon which we are to write all good things; but the heart of no child of the human is a blank page. Rather it is like the soil of the mother earth—full of the seeds of noxious plants and fruits, waiting only opportunity to spring into life, flower, and fruitage.

IT is a great fact of God's Word that the human "heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked" (Jer. 17:9); that "all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23); that "from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness; all these evil things come from within and defile the man" (Mark 7:21-23); that "the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, sedition, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revelings, and such like. . . . They which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God." Gal. 5:19-21.

YET this is a truth which the religious world to-day in its teaching has put a long way off. Men are shocked and appalled at the constant revelation of guilt and crime and corruption. Various reasons are assigned and speculations indulged; but man in his folly and self-exaltation is loath to confess the indictment of Jehovah, let the logic of facts demonstrate the truth as it will. Every man who will honestly, faithfully, single-heartedly, stand face to face, heart open, before God's throne, and let the light of the sacred law, and the blameless unselfishness of Jesus Christ shine into his heart and life, will echo the cry of the leper, "Unclean, unclean," and in despairing agony will wail, "O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" Who will wash the stains of sin from my robes of character, so that I shall be clean, without stain of sin upon my garment?

THERE is but one answer; there must be a radical change in the nature of the individual. It is thus expressed by Jesus to the outwardly highly-moral Pharisee, "Ye must be born again;" or "Ye must be born from above," "born anew," created a new man in Christ Jesus. John 3:3-7; 2 Cor. 5:17; Eph. 2:10. Thus much for the moral nature of the man; and this regarding the cleansing of sin: "Come now, and let us reason together, saith Jehovah; tho your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; tho they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool."

MAN knows no alchemy which can wash white the scarlet and crimson stain without injury to the fabric; but the alchemy of God can wash from the vilest sinner's heart the deepest stains, and make "whiter than snow" the garments stained by sin.

WHEN Jesus was seen up on the Mount of Transfiguration, "His raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow; so as no fuller on earth can whiten them." Mark 9:3. That outward cleanness was but the shining forth of the righteousness within. That was His heart's condition; and for the benefit of all who should come after, God permitted it to shine out in all its native, heavenly purity.

WHAT God wrought in Jesus Christ He is anxious to do in us through Christ. The mighty power of God that kept Him from sin and moulded a divine-human character, which is the admiration of the ages, will, if we are positively willing, cleanse us from every stain of sin and clothe us in the white garments of the righteousness which is in Christ Jesus. Nay, more; He who has cleansed can keep even to the end, blameless and undefiled, His own. Day by day, with humility of heart, as we lay

our sins and imperfections before Him, and by simple faith grasp the cleansing word, we shall go clean, and the heart which rejects and abjures and hates the sin will be brought more and more into harmony with God.

“Let thy garments be always white.” If they are not, they are saying to the great unsaved multitude, You are the same as we. You are witnesses to self and its utter weakness and inability to do right. But if Christ shall be permitted to work for you, He will make your garment white, and will enable you to walk so as to keep it pure and clean.

It is the clean garment from within which is needed to-day. The preacher needs it, the politician needs it. Our legislators need it. Our judges need it. Lawyers and merchants and farmers and employers and employees need it. All need the white garments of God’s righteousness. And these need it all the time. It is a sad thing to witness of Christ yesterday and witness against Him to-morrow. “Let thy garments be always white.”