“The heart of God yearns over His earthly children with a love stronger than death. In giving up His Son, He has poured out to us all heaven in one gift. Through that gift there comes to us day by day the unfailing flow of Jehovah’s goodness. Every flower, with its delicate tints and sweet fragrance, is given for our enjoyment through that one Gift.
The sun and moon were made by Him; there is not a star that beautifies the heavens which He did not make. There is not an article of food upon our tables that he has not provided for our sustenance. The superscription of Christ is upon it all. Everything is supplied to man through that one Unspeakable Gift, the only-begotten Son of God. He was nailed to the cross that all these bounties might flow to God’s workmanship.
“In taking our nature, the Savior has bound Himself to humanity by a tie that is never to be broken. Through the eternal ages He is linked with us. ‘God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son.’ He gave Him not only to bear our sins, and to die as our sacrifice; He gave Him to the fallen race. To assure us of His immutable counsel of peace, God gave His only-begotten Son to become one of the human family, forever to retain His human nature.
This is the pledge that God will fulfill His word. ‘Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder.” Isa. 9:6. God has adopted human nature in the person of His Son, and has carried the same into the highest heaven. Heaven is enshrined in humanity, and humanity is enfolded in the bosom of Infinite love. Christ bowed down to unparalleled humility, that in His exaltation to the throne of God, He might also exalt those who believe in Him, to a seat with Him upon His throne.”—The Faith I live By, p. 45.
A.T. Jones, in his sermon on Galatians 5:3 given under the 1888 Messages, wrote:
“But, thanks be to God, whosoever has the righteousness of God, which is by the faith of Jesus Christ, whosoever depends only on the Lord Jesus and that which Jesus has done, though he be of himself debtor, yet, in Christ, he has wherewith abundantly to pay all the indebtedness. Christ has expiated, by punishment and satisfaction, all the guilt of every soul: and by the righteousness of God which He brings, Christ supplies abundance of righteousness to pay all the demands that the law may ever make in the life of him who believes in Jesus.
Thanks be to God for His unspeakable gift of the unsearchable riches of Christ. Oh, believe it! Oh, receive it! Poor, overwhelmed, lost ‘debtor,’ ‘buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed.’ ‘Yea, come buy. . without money and without price.’”—Review & Herald, Aug. 21, 1900.
Thus to receive Christ by living faith as the “unspeakable gift” (2 Cor. 9:15), is to receive Him by faith as our only Savior and Mediator, and by living a new life patterned after His life by “faith that works by love” (Gal. 5: 6). This is what assures us a life of victory, like the life He lived while on earth in His adopted human nature. This gift is received by faith in three stages:
1. First, by leaving behind, to “come out of” the old life of bondage to sin and the attractions of the world to a new life of growth in the grace and knowledge of Christ by a continuous, progressive, and then at some time, an uninterrupted victorious life by dying daily to self by the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. This character-perfecting wok is also known as the “early rain experience.”
2. Second, “sanctification” is what prepares us to receive the seal of the living God, and, if still alive by the time the “latter rain” or “the refreshing from the presence of the Lord” is poured out for the final test, and harvest.
3. Then the crowning reward of eternal life in immortal, incorruptible glorified flesh given at “the resurrection of the just,” “in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump.”
(to be continued…)