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Humanity, Allied With Divinity, Can Keep the Law, December
10
Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan to be baptized by him.
And John tried to prevent Him, saying, “I need to be baptized by You, and
are You coming to me?” But Jesus answered and said to him, “Permit it to be
so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he
allowed Him.
Matthew 3:13-15
, NKJV.
In fulfilling “all righteousness,” Christ did not bring all righteousness to an
end. He fulfilled all the requirements of God in repentance, faith, and baptism,
the steps in grace in genuine conversion. In His humanity Christ filled up the
measure of the law’s requirements. He was the head of humanity, its substitute and
surety. Human beings, by uniting their weakness to the divine nature of Christ, may
become partakers of His character.
Christ came to give an example of the perfect conformity to the law of God
required of Adam, the first man, down to the last person that shall live on the earth.
He declares that His mission is not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it in perfect and
entire obedience.
In this way He magnified the law and made it honorable. In His life He
revealed its spiritual nature. He revealed to heavenly beings, to worlds unfallen, to a
disobedient, unthankful, unholy world, that He fulfilled the far-reaching principles
of the law. He came to demonstrate the fact that humanity, allied by living faith to
divinity, can keep all God’s commandments.
The typical offerings pointed to Christ, and when the perfect sacrifice was made
the sacrificial offerings were no longer acceptable to God. Type met antitype in
the death of the only begotten Son of God. He came to make plain the immutable
character of the law, to declare that disobedience and transgression could never be
rewarded by God with eternal life. He came as a man to humanity, that humanity
might touch humanity.
But in no case did He come to lessen the obligations of mortals to be perfectly
obedient. He did not destroy the validity of the Old Testament Scriptures. He
fulfilled that which was predicted by God Himself. He did not come to set human
beings free from the law: He came to open a way by which they might obey that
law and teach others to do the same.—
Manuscript Releases 10:292, 293
.
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