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Jesus Showed That We Can Obey, February 5
Now he who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. And
by this we know that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us.
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John 3:24
, NKJV.
“He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me:
and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will
manifest myself to him” (
John 14:21
).
“He that hath my commandments” means a person that hath light upon what
constitutes the commandments of God, and will not disobey His commandments,
although it might seem an advantage to do so....If it were not possible for us to
keep the commandments of God, we should all be lost. But under the Abrahamic
covenant, the covenant of grace, every provision for salvation has been made. “By
grace ye are saved.” “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to
become the sons of God.” ...
There are but two classes in our world, the obedient and the disobedient, the holy
and the unholy. When our transgressions were laid upon Jesus, He was numbered
among the unholy on the sinner’s account. He became our substitute, our surety,
before the Father and all the heavenly angels. By imputing the sins of the world to
Jesus, He became the sinner in our stead, and the curse due to our sins came upon
Him. It becomes us to contemplate Christ’s life of humiliation and His agonizing
death; for He was treated as the sinner deserves to be treated. He came to our world,
clothing His divinity with humanity, to bear the test and proving of God. By His
example of perfect obedience in His human nature, He teaches us that we may be
obedient.
And the apostle writes, “Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the
knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord, according as his divine power hath given
unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him
that hath called us to glory and virtue: whereby are given unto us exceeding great
and precious promises; that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature,
having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.” It is here plainly
revealed that all who believe in Jesus Christ become partakers of the divine nature.
Let divinity and humanity cooperate, and fallen human beings may be more than
conquerors through Christ Jesus.—
The Signs of the Times, April 24, 1893
.
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