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Power for Obedience, October 13
If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I
have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love.
John 15:10
.
Some who claim to believe in Jesus Christ as their Saviour have said,
“No one can keep the law.” On this point the words of Christ are deci-
sive. He states, “I have kept my Father’s commandments.” And He is our
example in all things....
In the Sermon on the Mount Christ plainly declared His mission.
“Think not,” He said, “that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I
am not come to destroy, but to fulfil” (
Matthew 5:17
). He came to carry
out literally every specification concerning which the prophets had borne
testimony. He who existed with the Father before the creation of the world,
Himself gave the prophecies recorded by holy men—the prophecies that
He came afterward to fulfill....
Christ’s position with His Father is one of equality. This enabled Him to
become a sin offering for transgressors. He was fully sufficient to magnify
the law and make it honorable.... He separated the precepts of Jehovah from
the maxims and traditions of men. He held up the Ten Commandments as
an expression of truth in all its purity....
Christ came to the world to counteract Satan’s falsehood that God had
made a law which men could not keep. Taking humanity upon Himself, He
came to this earth, and by a life of obedience showed that God has not made
a law that man cannot keep. He showed that it is possible for man perfectly
to obey the law. Those who accept Christ as their Saviour, becoming
partakers of His divine nature, are enabled to follow His example, living in
obedience to every precept of the law. Through the merits of Christ, man is
to show by his obedience that he could be trusted in heaven, that he would
not rebel.
Christ possessed the same nature that man possesses. He was tempted
in all points like as man is tempted. The same power by which He obeyed
is at man’s command
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15
Manuscript 48, 1893
.
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