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Preparation to Meet God

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 30, 1908

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 85, No. 18.

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Preparation to Meet God

By S. B. Whitney

S. B. WHITNEY
A PREPARATION for the Lord's coming is of the first and greatest importance to every human being just now. In it is included every duty and privilege connected with Christian life and experience. No development nor activity of Christian living can be named which is not included in the character of one who is ready to meet the Lord when he comes. The sum total of this preparation is expressed in the one word, holiness, or wholeness; in another word, perfection.
This wholeness, or perfection, is nothing short of the righteousness of Christ, of which the perfect and holy law of God is the standard. Therefore it must consist in a perfect obedience to that perfect law, or keeping the “commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.”
The eternal purpose of God is that ultimately the inhabitants of this world shall be “holy and without blame before him in love,” and this is the object for which the elect are chosen. Eph. 1:4. “God sent his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, “that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us” (Rom. 8:3, 4); and without holiness no man shall see the Lord. Heb. 12:14. The one hundred forty-four thousand will be “without fault before the throne of God.” Rev. 14:5.
But how is this righteous character to be obtained? Not by any good deeds that we may do. Any attempt to secure that righteousness by efforts of ours, will be only to put on “filthy rags” instead of “white raiment,” to linger in bondage, instead of emerging into the liberty of the children of God. But when by faith we take Christ with his righteousness into our hearts and lives, the “law of the Spirit of life,” which is in him, makes us free from the “law of sin and death” (Rom. 8:2); and we enter into the relations of the new covenant, whereby the law of God is put into our minds and written on our hearts. Heb. 8:10. Then, and then only, there will be no condemnation; then the fruits of faith will appear; then shall we have a righteousness which will be witnessed by the law and the prophets (Rom. 3:21), and will give us a “right to the tree of life,” and an entrance “through the gates into the city.” Rev. 22:14.
Rome, N. Y.