Basic HTML Version
We May Overcome as Christ Overcame, March 17
[He] was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.
Hebrews 4:15
.
Christ, at an infinite cost, by a painful process, mysterious to angels as well as
to men, assumed humanity. Hiding His divinity, laying aside His glory, He was
born a babe in Bethlehem. In human flesh He lived the law of God, that He might
condemn sin in the flesh, and bear witness to heavenly intelligences that the law
was ordained to life and to ensure the happiness, peace, and eternal good of all
who obey....
This is the mystery of godliness, that One equal with the Father should clothe
His divinity with humanity, and laying aside all the glory of His office as Com-
mander in heaven, [should] descend step after step in the path of humiliation,
enduring severe and still more severe abasement. Sinless and undefiled, He stood
in the judgment hall, to be tried, to have His case investigated and pronounced
upon by the very nation He had delivered from slavery. The Lord of glory was
rejected and condemned, yea, spat upon. With contempt for what they regarded as
His pretentious claims, men smote Him in the face....
Pilate pronounced Christ innocent, declaring that he found no fault in Him.
Yet to please the Jews, he commanded Him to be scourged and then delivered Him
up, bruised and bleeding, to suffer the cruel death of crucifixion. The Majesty of
heaven was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and amid scoffing and jeers, ridicule and
false accusation, He was nailed to the cross. The crowd, in whose hearts humanity
seemed to be dead, sought to aggravate the cruel sufferings of the Son of God by
their revilings. But as a sheep before His shearers is dumb, so He opened not His
mouth. He was giving His life for the life of the world, that all who believed in
Him should not perish....
Christ bore the sins of the whole world. He endured our punishment—the
wrath of God against transgression. His trial involved the fierce temptation of
thinking that He was forsaken by God. His soul was tortured by the pressure of a
horror of great darkness.... He could not have been tempted in all points like as
man is tempted had there been no possibility of His failing. He was a free agent,
placed on probation, as was Adam and as is man. Unless there is a possibility
of yielding, temptation is no temptation. Temptation comes and is resisted when
man is powerfully influenced to do a wrong action, and knowing that he can do it,
resists by faith, with a firm hold upon divine power.—
Manuscript 29, March 17,
1899
, “Sacrificed for Us.”
[91]
86