Basic HTML Version
God’s Law Of Love Perfected In Us, February 28
If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.
1
John 4:12
.
The conditions of eternal life, under grace, are just what they were in Eden—
perfect righteousness, harmony with God, perfect conformity to the principles of
His law. The standard of character presented in the Old Testament is the same that
is presented in the New Testament. This standard is not one to which we cannot
attain. In every command or injunction that God gives there is a promise, the most
positive, underlying the command. God has made provision that we may become
like unto Him, and He will accomplish this for all who do not interpose a perverse
will and thus frustrate His grace.
With untold love our God has loved us, and our love awakens toward Him
as we comprehend something of the length and breadth and depth and height of
this love that passeth knowledge. By the revelation of the attractive loveliness of
Christ, by the knowledge of His love expressed to us while we were yet sinners, the
stubborn heart is melted and subdued, and the sinner is transformed and becomes
a child of heaven. God does not employ compulsory measures; love is the agent
which He uses to expel sin from the heart. By it He changes pride into humility,
and enmity and unbelief into love and faith....
He tells us to be perfect as He is, in the same manner. We are to be centers
of light and blessing to our little circle, even as He is to the universe. We have
nothing of ourselves, but the light of His love shines upon us, and we are to reflect
its brightness. “In His borrowed goodness good,” we may be perfect in our sphere,
even as God is perfect in His.
Jesus said, Be perfect as
your Father
is perfect. If you are the children of God
you are partakers of His nature, and you cannot but be like Him. Every child lives
by the life of his father. If you are God’s children, begotten by His Spirit, you
live by the life of God. In Christ dwells “all the fullness of the Godhead bodily”
(
Colossians 2:9
); and the life of Jesus is made manifest “in our mortal flesh” (
2
Corinthians 4:11
). That life in you will produce the same character and manifest
the same works as it did in Him. Thus you will be in harmony with every precept
of His law; for “the law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul” (
Psalm 19:7
,
margin). Through love “the righteousness of the law” will be “fulfilled in us, who
walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” (
Romans 8:4
).—
Thoughts from the
Mount of Blessing, 76-78
.
[74]
65