Chapter 4—Relation of Education to Redemption
“The light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus
Christ.”
By sin man was shut out from God. Except for the plan of redemp-
tion, eternal separation from God, the darkness of unending night,
would have been his. Through the Saviour’s sacrifice, communion
with God is again made possible. We may not in person approach
into His presence; in our sin we may not look upon His face; but we
can behold Him and commune with Him in Jesus, the Saviour. “The
light of the knowledge of the glory of God” is revealed “in the face of
Jesus Christ.” God is “in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself.”
2 Corinthians 4:6
;
5:19
.
“The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, ... full of grace and
truth.” “In Him was life; and the life was the light of men.”
John 1:14
,
R.V.;
1:4
. The life and the death of Christ, the price of our redemption,
are not only to us the promise and pledge of life, not only the means of
opening again to us the treasures of wisdom: they are a broader, higher
revelation of His character than even the holy ones of Eden knew.
And while Christ opens heaven to man, the life which He imparts
opens the heart of man to heaven. Sin not only shuts us away from
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God, but destroys in the human soul both the desire and the capacity
for knowing Him. All this work of evil it is Christ’s mission to undo.
The faculties of the soul, paralyzed by sin, the darkened mind, the
perverted will, He has power to invigorate and to restore. He opens to
us the riches of the universe, and by Him the power to discern and to
appropriate these treasures is imparted.
Christ is the “Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the
world.”
John 1:9
. As through Christ every human being has life, so
also through Him every soul receives some ray of divine light. Not
only intellectual but spiritual power, a perception of right, a desire for
goodness, exists in every heart. But against these principles there is
struggling an antagonistic power. The result of the eating of the tree
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