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| In His human nature He maintained the purity of His divine character. He lived the law of God, and honored it in a world of transgression, revealing to the heavenly universe, to Satan, and to all the fallen sons and daughters of Adam that through His grace humanity can keep the law of God. He came to impart His own divine nature, His own image, to the repentant, believing soul. {ML 323.6} |
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| There are persons professing to be ministers of Christ, who declare with the utmost assurance that no man ever did or ever can keep the law of God. But, according to the Scriptures, Christ "took upon himself our nature," he "was made in fashion as a man." He was man's example, man's representative, and he declares of himself, "I have kept my Father's commandments." The beloved disciple urges that every follower of Christ "ought himself also so to walk even as He walked." All who are Christ's will follow the example of Christ. All who justify the sinner in his transgression of God's law, belong to that class of whom our Saviour said, "Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, shall be called the least in the kingdom of Heaven." They can have no part with Him who came to magnify the law and make it honorable. They are deceiving the people with their sophistry,--saying to the sinner, "It shall be well with thee," when God has declared that "the soul that sinneth ["transgresseth the law"] it shall die." {RH, September 27, 1881 par. 12} |
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| Christ has demonstrated that through his grace humanity can keep the law of God. He has demonstrated to the universe of heaven and to the fallen world, that, by the invitation of our gracious Sovereign, all who will believe on him may receive pardon, and be restored to the favor of God. He would take those whose course had been the most offensive to God, impart to them his divine power, place them in the highest positions of trust, and send them forth into the camp of the disloyal to proclaim his grace, and offer a full pardon to all who will turn from sin unto God. "Ye have not chosen me," he says; "but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain." Some of the very ones that were brought into closest connection with the work of Christ had not only felt, but said, "Come, let us kill him," and had thought that in this act they were doing God service. Our Saviour redeemed them, loaded them with divine favor, and sent them forth as lambs in the midst of wolves. He made them one with himself, and declared that those who refused to accept them and to hear the heaven-sent message, rejected the Lord Jesus himself. "If the world hate you," he said, "ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his Lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also. But all these things will they do unto you for my name's sake, because they know not him that sent me." {RH, October 21, 1902 par. 4} |
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| Enoch was a public teacher of the truth in the age in which he lived. He taught the truth; he lived the truth; and the character of the teacher was in every way harmonious with the greatness and sacredness of his mission. Enoch was a prophet who spoke as he was moved by the Holy Ghost. He was a light amid the moral darkness, a pattern man, a man who walked with God, being obedient to his law,--that law which Satan had refused to obey, which Adam had transgressed, which Abel obeyed, and because of his obedience was murdered. Now God would demonstrate to the universe the falsity of Satan's charge that men could not keep God's law. He would demonstrate that though man had sinned, he could so relate himself to God that he would have the mind and spirit of God. This holy man was selected to denounce the wickedness of the world, and to give evidence that man can keep the law. {RH, April 15, 1909 par. 2} |
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| No man can keep the law of God apart from Christ, and God will not accept his unaided efforts. The nature of man is in opposition to the divine will, depraved, deformed, and wholly unlike the character of God expressed in his law. Man is accepted through the righteousness of Christ, through obedience to God's law. God imputes beauty, excellence, and perfection to man through the merits of his Son, and thus places the highest honor upon Christ by making him the pattern by which he works to fashion the character of all believers. Christ is presented to men that they may catch his temper, his perfection; and as the model is complete and perfect in every part, so, as man is conformed to the image of Christ, he is made complete in him; for aside from Christ there never can be righteousness in the human heart. {ST, June 9, 1890 par. 12} |
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