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Love: The Best Advertisement for Truth, June 21
By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one
to another.
John 13:35
.
Man may become a fellow laborer with God in carrying out the great
work of redemption. God allows each man his own sphere of action while
He has given His Word as the guide of life. He has also given the Holy Spirit
as a sufficient power to overcome all hereditary and cultivated tendencies to
evil, and to impress His own character on the human agent, and, through him,
upon all who shall come within the sphere of his influence.
The human agent is urged to cooperate with God, to work out His mercy,
His goodness, and His love, thus impressing other minds. Every man is
to become an instrumentality through which the Holy Spirit can work. He
can become this only by yielding all his capabilities to the control of the
Spirit. God gave His Spirit upon the day of Pentecost, and through [the
Spirit’s] working upon receptive hearts [God] could impress all with whom
the believers came in contact.
Through our relation of friendship and familiarity with human beings like
ourselves, we may exert an uplifting influence. Those who are united in a
common hope and faith in Christ Jesus can be a blessing to one another. Jesus
says, “Love one another; as I have loved you” (
John 13:34
). Love is not
simply an impulse, a transitory emotion, dependent upon circumstances; it is
a living principle, a permanent power. The soul is fed by the streams of pure
love that flow from the heart of Christ, as a wellspring that never fails.
Oh, how is the heart quickened, how are its motives ennobled, its af-
fections deepened, by this communion! Under the education and discipline
of the Holy Spirit, the children of God love one another, truly, sincerely,
unaffectedly, “without partiality, and without hypocrisy” (
James 3:17
). And
this because the heart is in love with Jesus. Our affection for one another
springs from our common relation to God. We are one family, we love one
another as He loved us. When compared with this true, sanctified, disciplined
affection, the shallow courtesy of the world, the meaningless expressions of
effusive friendship, are as chaff to the wheat.—
The Ellen G. White 1888
Materials, 1508, 1509
.
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