Look and live
“But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” (2Cor. 3:18).
This open face Paul refers to stands opposed to “the vail” that “is upon their [the Jew’s] heart.” “But their minds were blinded: for until this day remaineth the same vail untaken away in the reading of the old testament; which vail is done away in Christ.” (vs. 14,15). And, referring again to that veil, a few sentences later Paul says that “the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not.” (2Cor. 4:4).
Here we see the power and successfulness of Satan’s best tool, idolatry. Through thousands of forms, in objects and practices, this enemy of the everlasting gospel has presented itself. Thousands of distractions to side-tracked the soul, subtle and transparent, have been laid in the path of the unsuspecting children of Adam. The road to forgetfulness of God has been broad, and the vast multitudes have gone in thereat.
This is the science of damnation. Simply give something self-satisfying to the sinner, let it touch the deepest recessed of his brain in the form of pleasure, and he will faithfully follow after that forever, all the while it shaping his thought patterns, and thus his character.
It is a law both of the intellectual and the spiritual nature that by beholding we become changed. The mind gradually adapts itself to the subjects upon which it is allowed to dwell. It becomes assimilated to that which it is accustomed to love and reverence. Man will never rise higher than his standard of purity or goodness or truth. If self is his loftiest ideal, he will never attain to anything more exalted. Rather, he will constantly sink lower and lower. The grace of God alone has power to exalt man. Left to himself, his course must inevitably be downward. GC p.555.
Similar to the science of damnation is the science of salvation. If we want to ever overcome our weak and corrupted human nature, we must place before our mind’s eye the beauty of holiness shown in Jesus. He must be our focus. Written words aren’t enough; principles delineated ever so deeply and comprehensively will never give us the fullness of truth and power, as will one scene of Jesus’ life or death. The Holy Spirit will come and paint us a picture of Jesus if we Him seek with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength.
What this world needs today is more than a picture painted. What it needs is more than a motion picture; even one with a sound track. What this world needs today is a living Savior, in a living scene, with His thoughts flooding ours, His love penetrating our dead hearts. We need to feel His feelings; we must understand His burden, the ache in His heart to break the spell Satan had cast on humanity, the yearning for all night communion with His Father.
We don’t need to re-read the gospel accounts, as if they were simply history relegated to the fiction side of the library. We need to re-live His experiences, both in the New and Old Testaments. We need to see Him and unite with Him. This is why it was all written down. “Now all these things happened unto them for examples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.” (1Cor. 10:11). We need to follow the Lamb around whithersoever He goeth.
It was thus that the early disciples gained their likeness to the dear Saviour. When those disciples heard the words of Jesus, they felt their need of Him. They sought, they found, they followed Him. They were with Him in the house, at the table, in the closet, in the field. They were with Him as pupils with a teacher, daily receiving from His lips lessons of holy truth. They looked to Him, as servants to their master, to learn their duty. Those disciples were men “subject to like passions as we are.” James 5:17. They had the same battle with sin to fight. They needed the same grace, in order to live a holy life. SC p.72.
Even though we don’t have the same advantage of physical contact with Christ as the first disciples had, through the Holy Spirit we still have great advantages. As we read the Bible we slowly begin to see the matchless charms of Jesus lift off the pages and come to life; we see that the holiness and love and grace, that were uniquely His, are the only panacea for all of this world’s ills. The words of scripture become more and more believable. Soon, if we continue to follow after Jesus, the stories begin to form pictures in our minds. Details begin to take shape that the Holy Spirit pulls from elsewhere in the law, prophets, psalms, and epistles. In the hands of the Spirit of truth, the Bible becomes a living document, and we are able to discern the spiritual things resonating from it. The thoughts and feelings and intents of the heart of Jesus and all His followers from Abel to John begin to fill in the structure provided by the written document carved in stone.
The leper demonstrates the powerful principle of appropriating scenes of salvation. When the leper heard of Jesus healing other lepers, in his desperation to be healed all he could do was see himself standing before the great Healer ridding him of his horrid disease. Please join me in watching him in the scene below:
The leper is guided to the Saviour. Jesus is teaching beside the lake, and the people are gathered about Him. Standing afar off, the leper catches a few words from the Saviour’s lips. He sees Him laying His hands upon the sick. He sees the lame, the blind, the paralytic, and those dying of various maladies rise up in health, praising God for their deliverance. Faith strengthens in his heart. He draws nearer and yet nearer to the gathered throng. The restrictions laid upon him, the safety of the people, and the fear with which all men regard him are forgotten. He thinks only of the blessed hope of healing.
He is a loathsome spectacle. The disease has made frightful inroads, and his decaying body is horrible to look upon. At sight of him the people fall back in terror. They crowd upon one another in their eagerness to escape from contact with him. Some try to prevent him from approaching Jesus, but in vain. He neither sees nor hears them. Their expressions of loathing are lost upon him. He sees only the Son of God. He hears only the voice that speaks life to the dying. Pressing to Jesus, he casts himself at His feet with the cry, “Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean.”
Jesus replied, “I will; be thou made clean,” and laid His hand upon him. Matthew 8:3, R. V.
Immediately a change passed over the leper. His flesh became healthy, the nerves sensitive, the muscles firm. The rough, scaly surface peculiar to leprosy disappeared, and a soft glow, like that upon the skin of a healthy child, took its place. DA p.263.
If we will ever know the victory over sin, it will only be through beholding Him “who loved me, and gave Himself for me.” (Gal. 2:20).
“And the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live.” (Num. 21:8). “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: That whosoever” “looketh upon” “Him should not perish, but have eternal life.” (Jn. 3:14,15). Where there is no vision, we perish.
This open face Paul refers to stands opposed to “the vail” that “is upon their [the Jew’s] heart.” “But their minds were blinded: for until this day remaineth the same vail untaken away in the reading of the old testament; which vail is done away in Christ.” (vs. 14,15). And, referring again to that veil, a few sentences later Paul says that “the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not.” (2Cor. 4:4).
Here we see the power and successfulness of Satan’s best tool, idolatry. Through thousands of forms, in objects and practices, this enemy of the everlasting gospel has presented itself. Thousands of distractions to side-tracked the soul, subtle and transparent, have been laid in the path of the unsuspecting children of Adam. The road to forgetfulness of God has been broad, and the vast multitudes have gone in thereat.
This is the science of damnation. Simply give something self-satisfying to the sinner, let it touch the deepest recessed of his brain in the form of pleasure, and he will faithfully follow after that forever, all the while it shaping his thought patterns, and thus his character.
It is a law both of the intellectual and the spiritual nature that by beholding we become changed. The mind gradually adapts itself to the subjects upon which it is allowed to dwell. It becomes assimilated to that which it is accustomed to love and reverence. Man will never rise higher than his standard of purity or goodness or truth. If self is his loftiest ideal, he will never attain to anything more exalted. Rather, he will constantly sink lower and lower. The grace of God alone has power to exalt man. Left to himself, his course must inevitably be downward. GC p.555.
Similar to the science of damnation is the science of salvation. If we want to ever overcome our weak and corrupted human nature, we must place before our mind’s eye the beauty of holiness shown in Jesus. He must be our focus. Written words aren’t enough; principles delineated ever so deeply and comprehensively will never give us the fullness of truth and power, as will one scene of Jesus’ life or death. The Holy Spirit will come and paint us a picture of Jesus if we Him seek with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength.
What this world needs today is more than a picture painted. What it needs is more than a motion picture; even one with a sound track. What this world needs today is a living Savior, in a living scene, with His thoughts flooding ours, His love penetrating our dead hearts. We need to feel His feelings; we must understand His burden, the ache in His heart to break the spell Satan had cast on humanity, the yearning for all night communion with His Father.
We don’t need to re-read the gospel accounts, as if they were simply history relegated to the fiction side of the library. We need to re-live His experiences, both in the New and Old Testaments. We need to see Him and unite with Him. This is why it was all written down. “Now all these things happened unto them for examples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.” (1Cor. 10:11). We need to follow the Lamb around whithersoever He goeth.
It was thus that the early disciples gained their likeness to the dear Saviour. When those disciples heard the words of Jesus, they felt their need of Him. They sought, they found, they followed Him. They were with Him in the house, at the table, in the closet, in the field. They were with Him as pupils with a teacher, daily receiving from His lips lessons of holy truth. They looked to Him, as servants to their master, to learn their duty. Those disciples were men “subject to like passions as we are.” James 5:17. They had the same battle with sin to fight. They needed the same grace, in order to live a holy life. SC p.72.
Even though we don’t have the same advantage of physical contact with Christ as the first disciples had, through the Holy Spirit we still have great advantages. As we read the Bible we slowly begin to see the matchless charms of Jesus lift off the pages and come to life; we see that the holiness and love and grace, that were uniquely His, are the only panacea for all of this world’s ills. The words of scripture become more and more believable. Soon, if we continue to follow after Jesus, the stories begin to form pictures in our minds. Details begin to take shape that the Holy Spirit pulls from elsewhere in the law, prophets, psalms, and epistles. In the hands of the Spirit of truth, the Bible becomes a living document, and we are able to discern the spiritual things resonating from it. The thoughts and feelings and intents of the heart of Jesus and all His followers from Abel to John begin to fill in the structure provided by the written document carved in stone.
The leper demonstrates the powerful principle of appropriating scenes of salvation. When the leper heard of Jesus healing other lepers, in his desperation to be healed all he could do was see himself standing before the great Healer ridding him of his horrid disease. Please join me in watching him in the scene below:
The leper is guided to the Saviour. Jesus is teaching beside the lake, and the people are gathered about Him. Standing afar off, the leper catches a few words from the Saviour’s lips. He sees Him laying His hands upon the sick. He sees the lame, the blind, the paralytic, and those dying of various maladies rise up in health, praising God for their deliverance. Faith strengthens in his heart. He draws nearer and yet nearer to the gathered throng. The restrictions laid upon him, the safety of the people, and the fear with which all men regard him are forgotten. He thinks only of the blessed hope of healing.
He is a loathsome spectacle. The disease has made frightful inroads, and his decaying body is horrible to look upon. At sight of him the people fall back in terror. They crowd upon one another in their eagerness to escape from contact with him. Some try to prevent him from approaching Jesus, but in vain. He neither sees nor hears them. Their expressions of loathing are lost upon him. He sees only the Son of God. He hears only the voice that speaks life to the dying. Pressing to Jesus, he casts himself at His feet with the cry, “Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean.”
Jesus replied, “I will; be thou made clean,” and laid His hand upon him. Matthew 8:3, R. V.
Immediately a change passed over the leper. His flesh became healthy, the nerves sensitive, the muscles firm. The rough, scaly surface peculiar to leprosy disappeared, and a soft glow, like that upon the skin of a healthy child, took its place. DA p.263.
If we will ever know the victory over sin, it will only be through beholding Him “who loved me, and gave Himself for me.” (Gal. 2:20).
“And the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live.” (Num. 21:8). “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: That whosoever” “looketh upon” “Him should not perish, but have eternal life.” (Jn. 3:14,15). Where there is no vision, we perish.
posted by David | 3:56 PM
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