Ever doubted God’s love for you?
What about His commandments: are they too hard? Is our God too exacting? What principle runs His government? Is it selfishness... or love?
Let’s answer these questions through one of the most beautiful chapters of The Desire of Ages: the chapter titled “God With Us.”
May God bless you as you prayerfully read through...
Christ is God: His hands fashioned the worlds.
“In the beginning, God was revealed in all the works of creation. It was Christ that spread the heavens, and laid the foundations of the earth. It was His hand that hung the worlds in space, and fashioned the flowers of the field. 'His strength setteth fast the mountains.' 'The sea is His, and He made it.'
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Upon all things in earth, air, and sky, Christ wrote the message of the Father’s love: even though sin has marred that handwriting.
“Now sin has marred God's perfect work, yet that handwriting remains. Even now all created things declare the glory of His excellence. There is nothing, save the selfish heart of man, that lives unto itself.
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The central principle of God’s government is self-sacrificing love: but this was broken when Lucifer rebelled...
And so Christ humbled Himself, taking the form of a man.
“Being in the form of God, [He] counted it not a thing to be grasped to be on an equality with God, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men.
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“This was a voluntary sacrifice. Jesus might have remained at the Father's side... But He chose to give back the scepter into the Father's hands, and to step down from the throne of the universe, that He might bring light to the benighted, and life to the perishing.
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What depth of love!
“Since Jesus came to dwell with us, we know that God is acquainted with our trials, and sympathizes with our griefs... every doctrine of grace, every promise of joy, every deed of love, every divine attraction presented in the Saviour’s life on earth, we see ‘God with us.’
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Satan wants us to believe God's law is selfish and impossible to obey.
“Satan represents God's law of love as a law of selfishness... Jesus was to unveil this deception. As one of us He was to give an example of obedience. For this He took upon Himself our nature, and passed through our experiences.
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“In all points tempted like as we are.
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“He endured every trial to which we are subject… He met temptation, and overcame in the strength given Him from God.
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You can overcome, dear reader.
“By His humanity, Christ touched humanity; by His divinity, He lays hold upon the throne of God… As the Son of God, He gives us power to obey.
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He endured the most cruel, shameful death: for you.
“Being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
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“Christ was treated as we deserve, that we might be treated as He deserves… He suffered the death which was ours, that we might receive the life which was His. ‘With His stripes we are healed.’
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If the gospel cannot melt your heart... then you're heartless and hopeless.