The Third Angel's Message

IN briefest outline we have studied the great central thought of the Third Angel’s Message—“Here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.”

We have studied, “What are the commandments of God that must be kept to keep the faith of Jesus?” and have found them to be nothing else than the ten commandments, which God spoke from heaven with a voice that shook the earth, and which he twice wrote with his own hand on two tables of stone. We have studied, “What is the faith of Jesus that must be kept to keep the commandments of God?” and have found it to be nothing else than the faith which brings into the life of the believer in Jesus the righteousness, the virtue, the very character, of God—the faith that brings into the life of the believer the power of God to perform there the will of God.

The power of God comes to us in no other way than through the righteousness of God. The gospel is “the power of God,” only because that “therein is the righteousness of God revealed.” This righteousness reaches the believer only through faith, because it is revealed only “from faith to faith” (Rom. 1:16, 17). And this faith is the faith of Jesus, which he brought to the world, which he tested victoriously to the uttermost in every species of temptation that can ever be known to man, and which is freely given to every man in the world as the gracious gift of God. (Eph. 2:8-10).

The righteousness of God, being the character—the very quality—of God, is nothing apart from the very personality of God himself, and cannot be had apart from the personality of God himself. Thus in Christ, by the faith which he exercised in the world, it was God who was manifest in the flesh, and who was reconciling the world unto himself. And in the believer in Jesus, in him who keeps the faith of Jesus, it is still God manifest in the flesh; for it is “Christ in you, the hope of glory,” and it is only God that is found in Christ.

Thus the faith of Jesus is that which brings God to men and men to God: it is that which joins the divine to the human, making men “partakers of the divine nature:” it is that by which God dwells in the heart and works in the life, “working in you that which is well pleasing in his sight;” working in you “both to will and to do of his good pleasure:” it is that by which “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” This, and this alone, is the faith of Jesus that must be kept in order for a person to be indeed a keeper of “the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus,” in order to be a true believer of the Third Angel’s Message.

And now it comes before us to study this great and important question of How to Keep the Faith of Jesus.

Since the commandments of God can be kept only “by faith of Jesus Christ,” the whole question of the Third Angel’s Message as it is in truth, the whole question of the real keeping of the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus, turns indeed upon the keeping of the faith of Jesus.

And since the real keeping of the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus—the real keeping of the faith of Jesus—is God manifest in the flesh, is Christ in you the hope of glory, the great and important thing for every believer of the Third Angel’s Message to know is, How is God manifest in the flesh? What is “Christ in you, the hope of glory”?

This is the great and important thing to know, because for anyone to be a true keeper of the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus, God must be manifest in his flesh: Christ must be in him the hope of glory.

And in order to know this great and important thing it is essential for us to “consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus.” He is the answer to those all-important questions; he is the solution of this great problem; for he is the revelation of the mystery of God; he is God manifest in the flesh; he trusted in God with a faith that wrought the keeping of the commandments of God. (Heb. 2:13; John 15:10).

Accordingly, next week we shall begin a study of the faith of Jesus as it is in Jesus himself, a study of God manifest in the flesh, as in Jesus himself. And this is a study of the Third Angel’s Message as it is in truth; it is the study of the mystery of God, which should be finished “in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound” (Rev. 10:7). Come; let us study it all together.