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Life and Law

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Mar 11, 1908

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 34, No. 11.

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Life and Law.

THE thing most longed for by all humanity is life—normal, happy life.
Many long for it still with years of misery behind them, hoping somehow, somewhere, it will issue in happiness. The devil understood this longing in the human heart when he said, “Yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life.” Job 2:4. But the Lord Jesus Christ expressed not merely man’s longing for life, but its exceeding worth when He said: “For what shall a man be profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and forfeit his life? or what shall man give in exchange for his life?” Matt. 16:26, A.R.V. Life is therefore conditional, for man may forfeit the boon.
The source of all life is God; for with Him “is the fountain of life.” Ps. 36:9. He is “the eternal God,” “even from everlasting to everlasting.” Ps. 90:2. His life is therefore everlasting, or perpetual, life; and from that great Fountain wells out for all the universe the eternal life of God.
But in giving that life to man He has made its perpetuity, its continuity, its persistence in man, dependent on law, and that law is His holy, perfect, immutable law of character, prohibiting all sin and embracing in its exceeding breadth all righteousness. For “sin is the transgression of the law,” and “all unrighteousness is sin.” 1 John 3:4; 5:17. Truly the inspired psalmist sings in praise of Jehovah:
“Thy righteousness is an everlasting righteousness, And Thy law is the truth.” Ps. 119:142.
And the Lord thru the evangelical prophet declares:
“My salvation shall be forever, And My righteousness shall not be abolished. Harken unto Me, ye that know righteousness. The people in whose heart is My law.” Isa. 51:6, 7.
His salvation is forever, because it is broad, based in His righteousness; for “in the way of righteousness is life; and in the pathway thereof there is no death.” Prov. 12:28. Therefore God’s prohibition to our first parents: “In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” Gen. 2:17. And therefore our Saviour’s words, “If thou wouldest enter into life, keep the commandments.” Matt. 19:17. In other words, the path, the channel, the current, of life is the righteousness of God.
On the other side, “Sin, when it is full grown, bringeth forth death.” James 1:15. “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” Eze. 18:4, 20. Perverted righteousness is sin; perverted life is death. And therefore when sin entered man’s fair Eden home, death entered, and his awful presence has been an abiding factor in the human problem ever since.
How may man regain the lost life?—The answer is obvious, he must obtain the lost righteousness, he must come into harmony with God’s eternal law of righteousness, the channel thru which flows perpetual life.
By no false claim to immortality can he do this. By no false claim to heirship in the Family of Life can he obtain the boon. By no false faith in that hoary lie of Satan, “Ye shall not surely die,” may he find perpetuity of existence. By no theory that he is a part of the Infinite, and is therefore incapable of destruction, will he persist forever. All these are subterfuges, Satanic lies, devilish deceptions, by which the arch-enemy of God and all good would delude unstable souls in lives of selfish ease and disobedience to the law of faith and life and righteousness.
There is one way, and only one, by which sinful, dying man may hope to live. That is God’s way, the reverse of the way in which man lost the boon of life. When Jehovah pointed out the way of obedience and life, it was man’s privilege as well as duty to BELIEVE, and thru FAITH OBEY. “Without faith it is impossible to please Him.” Heb. 11:6. It is the great universal law of all God’s intelligent creatures. Forever it would lead man from the narrow confines of self-wisdom, self-righteousness, self-praise, self-exaltation, to the great unfenced fields of God’s righteousness and life. Unbelief closed the heart to the inflow of the unperverted Life, and sin and death entered instead of God.
Since that time God has been pouring out of His abundant life to sustain a dying world of dying men, who in great part preferred to live on the low scale of animal existence,—“Let us eat and drink; for to-morrow we die,”—in order that He might win them back to His plan in Christ Jesus. For by the gift of His only-begotten Son has God bridged the chasm. He became sin for us that we might by faith become righteousness in Him. 2 Cor. 5:21. And this is His name, because this is His character and work for us, Jehovah-tsidkenu, “THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.” Jer. 23:6. And all who by purpose and will of the whole heart abjure sin, break from its every bond and tendril, and receive Jesus Christ, in Him receive forgiveness of sin, and the gift of righteousness and life. For “he that believeth on the Son hath eternal life; and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him.” John 3:36.
Reject Him we may; God gives us that awful choice. Identify ourselves with sin and selfishness and error and death we may. The choice is ours, and God gives power to make the choice. But in that choosing we also choose the destruction, everlasting and final, to which sin and error and selfishness and death are eternally and inevitably doomed. “The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life thru Jesus Christ our Lord.” Rom. 6:23.
It is not self-exalting to choose God’s way, but O, it is satisfying and glorious. Then, sinner, choose God’s way. Leave the old serpent falsehood with all its endless and humanly attractive dresses in which error has garbed it, and accept of the life of faith, the faith of obedience, the obedience of righteousness, the eternal righteousness and life of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. In that pathway, and in that alone, is joy supernal and full of glory.