ALTHO man is a sinner and a child of death, yet there is hope; for Jesus “came into the world to save sinners.” 1 Tim. 1:15.
Even if sin be death, the dying for sin has been done by Him who knew no sin. 2 Cor. 5:21; Rom. 5:6. Besides this we may become the righteousness of God in Him, and thus be connected again with eternal life. Rom. 5:21. It has been shown that righteousness is life; therefore we have life, because the righteousness in Christ is ours. For “this is His name whereby He shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.” Jer. 23:6.
Christ is made unto us righteousness (1 Cor. 1:30); for both in His living and in His dying all was done for us. So it is written that “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us;” and “being reconciled [by His death], we shall be saved by His life.” Rom. 5:8, 10.
The obedience of Christ in the flesh was performed for us; for “by the obedience of One shall many be made righteous.” Rom. 5:19. But His righteousness is also built up within the believer. As expressed by the apostle, it is “even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe.” Rom. 3:22.
All that Christ was when here in the flesh, and all that He is now, is imputed to the believer upon the exercise of faith. Following that event, the Gospel work of grace builds the righteousness of Christ into the life of him to whom it is imputed. Rom. 8:2-4. Faith begins a new life. “Ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.” Gal. 3:26. We are then baptized into Christ, and put on Christ. Verse 27. We are in Christ—joined to Him, and live by Him. Rom. 6:10, 11. Then His righteousness becomes ours. His standing in the law, and all His fulness, are gifts of His grace. The gift is not bestowed as something of only property value; but it is to be inwrought, and grown into the very being of the receiver. It becomes that “good part” which can not be taken away. By this gift of imparted righteousness a man is made “more precious than fine gold; even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir.” Isa. 13:12.
Earthly treasures and worldly blessings, such as money, houses, lands, stocks, reputation, and friends, are but transient, and may pass in one day, to come to us no more. But the true riches are to become a part of the eternal completeness of man. Through the righteousness which is now ours in Christ, we are to be made enduring as eternity.
“He hath made Him to be sin for us, . . . that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” To do this for us, it became necessary for the Son of God to take man’s place in the flesh, and under the law, and stand for him, and actually become man. To reach those far down in the fall, He left riches, glory, honor, and6strength. “Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same. . . . For verily He took not on Him the nature of angels; but He took on Him the seed of Abraham. Wherefore in all things it behooved Him to be made like unto His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people.” Heb. 2:14-17.
The prophet in vision (Isa. 53:2-8) saw our Saviour in this humble condition. He says: “He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him.” Tho noble in bearing and countenance, yet He had not beauty to attract; so He was despised and rejected. He was not possessed of wealth to recommend Him to the favor of the great. He was poorer than the beasts and the birds. Heaven, with its glory and riches, was given up that He might reach us. “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities.” “The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” “And with His stripes we are healed.” “For the transgression of my people was He stricken.” The stroke fell upon Him that was due to us for our disobedience.
Having identified Himself with us, and become one of us, He really gave Himself to us and for us. As told by words inspired, He “gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.” Titus 2:14. Well then might the prophet say, “In the Lord have I righteousness and strength;” for Jesus Himself is ours. His righteousness in all its fulness He freely gives. “It pleased the Father that in Him should all fulness dwell.” “Full of grace and truth.” “Of His fulness have all we received.” John 1:16.
He is now in heaven, to appear in the presence of God for us. Heb. 9:24. He is there to answer to our names, to stand in our stead. He is there to pass us through the judgment in His own righteousness—our Surety, our Advocate, our Obedience. In truth, He is everything to us and all for us.
That righteousness made it impossible for Christ to be held in death; and if our faith holds to Him, we shall just as certainly pass through the portals of the tomb, or experience the transition from mortal to immortality at His coming. Only our choice to leave Him and trust in self can separate us from the power and the joy of that righteousness.
The Christ Mission
Author Unknown
“He brought us out . . . that He might bring us in.” Deut. 6:23.
Out of the distance and darkness so deep,
Out of the settled and perilous sleep,
Out of the region and shadow of death,
Out of its foul and pestilent breath,
Out of the bondage and wearing chains,
Out of companionship, ever, with stains.
Into the light and glory of God,
Into the holiest made clean by blood,
Into His arms, the embrace and the kiss,
Into the scene of ineffable bliss,
Into the quiet and infinite calm,
Into the place of the song and the psalm.
Wonderful love, that has wrought all for me!
Wonderful work, that has thus set me free!
Wonderful ground, upon which I have come!
Wonderful tenderness, welcoming home!
Out of disaster and ruin complete,
Out of the struggle and dreary defeat,
Out of my sorrow, and bondage, and shame,
Out of the evils too fearful to name,
Out of my guilt and the criminal’s doom,
Out of the dreading, and terror, and gloom.
Into the scene of forgiveness and rest,
Into inheritance with all the blest,
Into a righteous and permanent peace,
Into the grandest and fullest release,
Into the comfort without an alloy,
Into a perfect and confident joy.
Wonderful holiness bringing to light!
Wonderful grace, putting all out of sight!
Wonderful lowliness, draining my cup!
Wonderful purpose, that ne’er gave me up!
Out of the horror of being alone,
Out, and forever, of being my own;
Out of the bitterness, madness, and strife,
Out of myself and all I called “life,”
Out of the hardness of heart and of will,
Out of the longings that nothing could fill.
Into communion with Father and Son,
Into the sharing of all that Christ won,
Into the ecstasies full to the brim,
Into the having of all things with Him,
Into Christ Jesus, there ever to dwell,
Into more blessings than tongue can e’er tell.
Wonderful Person, whose face I’ll behold!
Wonderful story, there all to be told!
Wonderful, all the dread way that He trod!
Wonderful end that He brought me to God!
A Lesson in Economy
By Ellen G. White
By Mrs. E. G. White
THE Lord would have His people exercise carefulness in the use of all His gifts. It is the duty of all who are seeking to advance the kingdom of Christ in the earth, to be saving and economical. We are to save that we may give. “It is more blessed to give,” the Saviour said, “than to receive.”
The Saviour taught a precious lesson in economy when, after performing the wonderful miracle by which He fed the multitude with five loaves and a few small fishes, He commanded that all that was left over from the feast should be carefully gathered up. He would show that the bounties of Providence are not given to be squandered, or to be used in an aimless or wasteful manner.
Christ’s care of the fragments is a striking evidence of His divinity. It was as essential for Him to bid the disciples gather up the fragments, as it was for Him to create the food to feed the multitude. He must point the people to God’s standard of economy in the saving of food as well as of money. There was use for it all.
The lesson was twofold. In spiritual as in temporal things, nothing is to be wasted. We are to let slip no temporal opportunity, no spiritual advantage; we are to waste nothing that will tend to benefit a human being or that will help to relieve the necessities of earth’s hungry ones.
When the baskets of fragments were collected, the people thought of their friends at home. They wanted them to share in the bread that Christ had blessed. The contents of the baskets were distributed among the eager throng, and were carried away into all the region round about. So those who were at the feast were to give to others the bread that comes down from heaven, to satisfy the hunger of the soul. They were to repeat what they had learned of the wonderful things of God. Nothing was to be lost.
The lesson should be carefully studied. The Lord values every gift that He bestows upon man, and His command on this occasion demonstrated to the whole multitude the value He places on His blessings. We are dependent upon God for life, for means, for health, for food, for the very air we breathe. Christ’s own example of industry and frugality teaches us to use with care the gifts we receive at His hand.
Often those who are favored with wealth act as if they had a right to use with prodigality the gifts that God entrusts to them to be used wisely. They walk and talk as if riches entitled them to high honor. Sometimes the poor are favored by them, but more often the moneyed men waste their Lord’s goods in selfish indulgence. They forget that all their treasures are entrusted gifts, and that they must render to God a strict account of the use they have made of His property.
Willingly and cheerfully the true Christian will bind about his inclinations to expend his means; and when he sees his fellow laborers in other portions of the field distressed and perplexed for lack of proper facilities, he will7willingly impart to them a portion of what the Lord has entrusted to him. As he shows by his unselfishness that he loves his neighbor as himself, the Lord says of him in the councils of heaven: “He is My faithful steward. I can trust him to handle My goods. He keeps My fear before him. His works of righteousness will be a continual stream flowing to the desert portions of My vineyard. He will not claim what he has as his own, to use as the human agent shall please; but will heed My counsel, and do with My goods as I shall choose.”
My brethren and sisters, shall we not deny ourselves, in order that we may help to send the present truth to needy fields? We have very little time now in which to work. Let us deny ourselves for the building up of the cause of God. The money we invest in this work will be returned to us with large interest. Let us take hold in faith. Let us pray and believe. Let us act, and the Lord will encourage and strengthen us in the way. The Lord expects His human agencies to do their best. The fragments are to be gathered up. All needless expenditures for selfish gratification are to be cut off. Let self-denial and the cross become a part of our individual experience.
Many despise economy, confounding it with stinginess and narrowness. But economy is consistent with the broadest liberality. Indeed, without economy there can be no true liberality. We are to save that we may give.
None can practise real benevolence without self-denial. Only by a life of simplicity, self-denial, and close economy, is it possible for us to accomplish the work appointed us as Christ’s representatives. Pride and worldly ambition must be put out of our hearts. In all our work the principle of unselfishness revealed in Christ’s life is to be carried out. Upon the walls of our homes, upon the furnishings, we are to read the command, “Bring the poor that are cast out to thy house.” On our wardrobes we are to see written, as with the finger of God, “Clothe the naked.” In the dining-room, on the table laden with food, we are to see traced, “Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry?”
A thousand doors of usefulness are open before us. Often we lament the scanty resources available; but were Christians thoroly in earnest, they could multiply the resources a thousandfold. It is selfishness, self-indulgence, that bars the way to our usefulness.
How much means is expended for things that are mere idols, things that engross time and thought and strength, that should be put to a higher use. How much money is wasted on expensive houses and furniture, on selfish pleasures, luxuries, and unwholesome food. How much is squandered on gifts that benefit no one. For things that are needless, often harmful, professed Christians to-day are spending more, many times more, than they spend in seeking to rescue souls from the tempter.
Christ bids us, “Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.” While thousands are every day perishing from famine, bloodshed, fire, and plague, it becomes every lover of his kind to see that nothing is wasted, that nothing is needlessly expended, whereby he might benefit a human being.
It is wrong to waste our time, wrong to waste our thoughts. We lose every moment that we devote to self-seeking. If every moment were valued and rightly employed, we should have time for everything that we need to do for ourselves and for the world. In the expenditure of money, in the use of time, strength, opportunities, let every Christian look to God for guidance. And “if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.”
The Voices, the Light
By Felicia Hemans
O LOVELY voices of the sky,
That hymned the Saviour’s birth,
Are ye not singing still on high,
Ye that sang “Peace on earth”?
To us yet speak the strains
Wherewith, in days gone by,
Ye blessed the Syrian swains,
O voices of the sky!
O clear and shining light, whose beams
That hour heaven’s glory shed
Around the palms and o’er the streams,
And on the shepherd’s head,
Be near, through life and death,
As in that holiest night
Of hope, and joy, and faith,
O clear and shining light!
O star which led to Him whose love
Brought down man’s ransom free,
Where art thou? ’Midst the hosts above
May we still gaze on thee?
In heaven thou art not set;
Thy rays earth might not dim;
Send them to guide us yet,
O star which led to Him!
— Felicia Hemans.
The Hope of Evolution
By L. A. Reed
From Sin to Righteousness
By Prof. L. A. Reed
The Hope of Evolution
One of the great teachers of the world to-day gave expression not long ago to the idea that the world was to have soon a new religion.
One of the fundamental tenets of this new religion is that a man can make no sudden change in his life or character.
“No sudden change!” A slow, gradual, almost imperceptible growth is the doctrine of evolution. It must hold for the plant, the animal, and man, as well as for the construction of worlds. And as evolution is, in the eyes of the new religion, the absolutely unchallengeable truth, everybody must take the consequences.
And so, poor sin-sick man, if unfortunately you have lived for years a life of sin, there is for you no hope in the new religion, no hope for any sudden change. If in line with the teachings of evolution, you will now begin to struggle upward toward the “fittest.” It may be that you will come out all right in this “struggle with environment,” and in this “survival of the fittest,” if your life will only last a century or so.
And yet we must not indulge false hopes. Character perpetuates itself; even evolution can not deny that. And since we start only with a life lived in sin for years, and something can not come from nothing, what is there with which to build for righteousness?
Even evolution acknowledges that we can develop only what is already in the germ, and that time merely gives opportunity to bring out what is already there. Then commencing with sin, we can develop only sin, and end only with sin. Hope dies in the heart of him who struggles on, and life ends in despair.
But the great teacher of the new religion (and in the eyes of the world he must be a great teacher, having been president of the greatest American college for half a century) is not the only one who has passed by in ignorance the simple8yet mighty miraculous possibility of a sudden change in the life of a human, a change so sudden and at the same time so radical that the mind of God denominates it a “new birth;” “birth” because it is sudden, “new” because it is so completely different from the old.
And when Nicodemus, the great teacher of his time, stumbled over the astounding proposition of this which is at once so radical, so complete, so sudden, the Greatest of all Teachers rebuked him with the words, “Art thou the teacher of Israel, and understandest not these things?”
The Hope of the Gospel
But the truth is nevertheless truth. There is hope for a man, but that hope does not lie in human effort or evolutionary development. The Ethiopian can not change his skin, nor the leopard his spots. No more can the sinner alone change his life; having been accustomed to evil, he can not do well. Habit is an iron chain in such case; it holds its prisoner. And looking merely at this natural law, it is not surprising that even great men should teach that a sudden change of life is an impossibility. The Word of God is even more emphatic in declaring that the sinner relying on only natural forces can not become a saint.
But the Word of the Lord rings clear and emphatic. “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that which we know, and bear witness of that which we have seen.” “Except one be born anew, he can not see the kingdom of God.”
While the Word is clear and direct in averring that a man can not naturally change his mode of life from sin to righteousness, that Word is just as clear and direct and emphatic in asserting that man must change, he must “cease to do evil” and “learn to do well,” or he will be eternally lost in consequence of his perversity.
And now how shall a man change? By what means may he “pass from death to life?” What is the process of this “new birth”?
Steps in the Change
The first step is the conviction that he is wrong, that his present course is inexcusable, that it is folly and self-destruction to continue as he is, that he must turn to a better and higher mode of life. Until this conviction prevails, no effort will be made; no change will take place while the agent sees no need of a change. But the holy law of God, studied with humility and faith, the Word of God read with sincerity and trust, will show the great gulf that lies between the life of that law and Word, and the life of him who is in sin.
And then as the conviction of sin fastens upon the soul, the sinner acknowledges his folly, his evil course; in other words, he confesses his sins. To confess sin is to say just what God says of sin, that it is inexcusable transgression of the law of the eternal kingdom, that it is rebellion against a faultless Ruler, that it is anarchy where there is no possible cause for anarchy; it is subversion of government where there is positively no misrule. To confess in the full sense is to renounce, to agree so far as the will is concerned that there shall be no more of sin. This is the second step.
And when the sin has been seen, when the sin has been confessed, then God forgives and justifies. By this the power of God operates in the life to produce righteousness; and what the man could not do before, he now does by the operation of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. “There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. . . . For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” makes “free from the law of sin and death.” Rom. 8:1, 2. And this is the man’s justification, his being made righteousness. And it comes suddenly and certainly, and works its change completely, when man has been first convinced of sin and confessed and renounced it.
For the Spirit “will convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.” John 16:8. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:9. “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. . . . For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.” Rom. 8:1, 2, 15.
Our Saviour and King
By J. G. Holland
THERE'S a song in the air!
There's a star in the sky!
There's a mother's deep prayer
And a baby's low cry!
And the star rains its fire while the beautiful sing,
For the manger of Bethlehem cradles a King!
There's a tumult of joy
O'er the wonderful birth,
For the virgin's sweet boy
Is the Lord of the earth.
Ay! the star rains its fire, and the beautiful sing,
For the manger of Bethlehem cradles a King.
In the light of that star
Lie the ages impearled;
And the song from afar
Has swept over the world.
Every hearth is aflame, and the beautiful sing
In the home of the nations that Jesus is King.
We rejoice in the light,
And we echo the song
That comes down through the night
From the heavenly throng.
Ay! we shout to the lovely Evangel they bring,
And we greet in His cradle our Saviour and King.
— J. G. Holland.
Adversity and Impatience
ADVERSITY borrows its sharpest sting from impatience.— Bishop Horne.
