It is because we have such difficulty understanding certain aspects of justification by faith and Christ our righteousness that we must deal with some of the fine points. Some people ask if we have to know all the fine points. Perhaps not, but this is the way we think. We have thought ourselves into all these riddles and all these ways of looking at this subject, and somehow we must find the way out because we have so many disagreements about it.
We will continue our study of sanctification by looking first at this statement of Paul: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.” Galatians 5:22,23. Fruit is what you have when you have grown up. It is the harvest. The fruit of the Spirit is another way of describing sanctification, at least the end result. If you have all these things, would you say you are sanctified? Paul’s statement does not describe our problems and some of our habits the way we usually do; but if you are meek, and gentle, and temperate, you will take care of many problems, will you not? If you have love, joy, peace, longsuffering, it takes care of so many things. This is another way of talking about sanctification.
The problem is: How do we produce this fruit? Do we work to produce the fruit of the Spirit? “Yet the Saviour does not bid the disciples labor to bear fruit. He tells them to abide in Him.” DA 677. Jesus talks about being the Vine and we are the branches. He says, “He that abideth in Me, and I in you, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without Me ye can do nothing.” John 15:5. Ellen White’s comment tells us that the Lord does not bid us to labor to bring forth all those fruit mentioned in Galatians 5. Rather, we are to abide in Him, and if you abide in Him and He in you, then you will produce fruit. This is Christian maturity—the fullness of the stature of Christ spoken about in Ephesians 4. These are various ways of looking at sanctification, both the growth and the ultimate result.
We want to add one more step; but first recall that in John 15:5, Jesus says that if we abide in Him and Him in us, we will bring forth much fruit. Then verse 7 says: “If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.” Instead of saying, “If I abide in you,” He said, “If…My words abide in you.”
Perhaps that causes some confusion, so let’s clear it up with this quote: “It is through the word that Christ abides in His followers.” DA 677. Through the word He abides in us. Jesus taught that when He abides in us, His word abides in us, and we will bear much fruit. He abides in us by His word, and that means the Bible. As He abides in us by His word, marvelous things happen. In our Lord’s last prayer, He prayed: “Sanctify them through Thy truth: Thy word is truth.” John 17:17. Then in verse 19 He says, “And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.” This word accomplishes something great in our hearts and our lives. This word has the ability, the effectiveness, to sanctify us—if it abides in us.
The next question is: How does the Bible sanctify us? Many people study and read the Bible, but we can easily see that they do not appear to be sanctified. How does the Bible sanctify us? What is the process that we go through?
“‘Herein is My Father glorified,’ said Jesus, ‘that ye bear much fruit.’ God desires to manifest through you the holiness, the benevolence, the compassion, of His own character. Yet the Saviour does not bid the disciples labor to bear fruit. He tells them to abide in Him. ‘If ye abide in Me,’ He says, ‘and My words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.’ It is through the word that Christ abides in His followers. This is the same vital union that is represented by eating His flesh and drinking His blood. The words of Christ are spirit and life. Receiving them, you receive the life of the Vine. You live ‘by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.’ Matthew 4:4. The life of Christ in you produces the same fruits as in Him. Living in Christ, adhering to Christ, supported by Christ, drawing nourishment from Christ, you bear fruit after the similitude of Christ.” DA 677.
We are to live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. As we feast upon His word and live by it, something happens to us called “Living in Christ, adhering to Christ, supported by Christ, drawing nourishment from Christ,” and then we bear fruit like Him. You can spend all day discussing this one paragraph; and we need to go back and spend much time in some of these deep thoughts. How the word sanctifies us is a unique thing. It is more than reading the Bible, it is more than studying various Bible topics; although those things are good. It is even more than understanding. It is more than a mental acceptance of the fact that the Bible is truth. Having the word abiding is us means receiving Christ in His word--just getting Him right inside of us. It is different than getting thoughts, ideas, principles, concepts, and theories into our minds. Something else takes place as we seek Christ in His word and as we abide in Him through His word. This is what He wants to happen to us. You do not have to labor to bear fruit. You have to abide in Him and have His words abide in you, to live day by day and moment by moment with Him, never getting far away.
Jesus said to Satan that “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.” Luke 4:4. In that word is the way of life, the enabling power, the stimulating power, the motivating power, as well as the principles of everlasting life. This is what the Lord wants us to realize and experience.
“The life of Christ that gives life to the world is in His word. It was by His word that Jesus healed disease and cast out demons; by His word He stilled the sea, and raised the dead; and the people bore witness that His word was with power. He spoke the word of God, as He had spoken through all the prophets and teachers of the Old Testament. The whole Bible is a manifestation of Christ, and the Saviour desired to fix the faith of His followers on the word. When His visible presence should be withdrawn, the word must be their source of power.” DA 390. Christ was endeavoring with all the disciples to fix their attention on the Bible when He physically was taken away. He said He wanted the word to be their source of power. There are two words in the Bible: the written word and the spoken word. Christ is called the Word, and your Bible is called the word. The above quote continues: “Like their Master, they were to live ‘by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.’ Matthew 4:4.”
This is something different. There is some unique quality in the Bible. It is a different book. These are different words. When the people said, “Never a man spake like this Man” (John 7:47), they were not only amazed, but what they said was literally true. This is the Man who spoke all things into existence by the word of His mouth. In the Bible you will find the words, “Let there be light: and there was light.” Genesis 1:3. A different Being is speaking words in the Scriptures than other people who speak or write words in other books. As you by faith abide in Christ through His word, there is a different power there. Therefore, we must read and study in a vastly different way than we have in the past.
Jesus said you must “eat My flesh and drink My blood.” John 6:53. In verse 63, He said, “the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.” Eat it, absorb it, assimilate it, get it inside of you. There are more than thoughts and concepts that come inside. There is a power that comes inside. In order to be sanctified by the word of God, we must do something different with it than we do with most books. It is more than studying and reading and understanding.
Nicodemus had an unusual experience that helps us to understand this more. Christ responded to him when Nicodemus asked difficult questions, such as, “How can a man be born when he is old?” John 3:4. Nicodemus seemed to be in confusion, so “Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?” Verse 10. Are you not a scholar of the Scriptures, one of the elite in Israel and Judah, and you do not understand one of the basic elements of Christianity? How have you missed it? This man had memorized great portions of the Scripture or else he could not have belonged to the Sanhedrin. He was looked upon as a preeminent scholar of the Scriptures. He knew all these things, but somehow he missed the very heart of Christianity. Why?
“Nicodemus had read these scriptures with a clouded mind.” DA 174. Something was wrong; but after this discussion where those unique ideas were proposed to him, we are told that Nicodemus “searched the Scriptures in a new way, not for the discussion of a theory, but in order to receive life for the soul. He began to see the kingdom of heaven as he submitted himself to the leading of the Holy Spirit.” DA 175.
When you study your Sabbath School lessons throughout the week, do you study it so in class you can discuss a theory? Do you study it in order to be right and prove yourself right? Or do you study it for life for your soul? So seldom do we study the Scriptures for life for our souls. We study the Bible to help someone else, and preachers study it for their congregations, but how often do we study it for ourselves? We act starved, spiritually emaciated, and sometimes we are, even though physically we do not look that way. Often we just present the word in Sabbath School classes and sermons and in our Bible studies as nothing but a theory and an argument. Many are always trying to win arguments, but they are dying on the inside.
Nicodemus studied in a new way—for life for his soul; and he submitted to be led by the Spirit of God. This gives us great insight into how we are to study our Bible in a new way and how to be sanctified by the word of God. The word tells us how and what to do. We, like Nicodemus, are to study the word to receive life for the soul, and we are to submit ourselves to be led by the Spirit of God.
“The creative energy that called the worlds into existence is in the word of God. This word imparts power; it begets life. Every command is a promise; accepted by the will, received into the soul, it brings with it the life of the Infinite One.” Ed 126. God’s words are promises, and accepted by the will, received into the soul, it brings with it the life of the Infinite One. As I receive thoughts into my mind and understanding, I must go beyond that. Do I accept it with my will? Not my intellect but my will? Do I do more than say I think it is right? Do I get to where I want to do what the word says? These are choices my will must make. Do I receive every command into my innermost being? When that happens, it brings that creative power that makes me a different person, which I desperately want to be.
“To eat the flesh and drink the blood of Christ is to receive Him as a personal Saviour [personalizing what I read], believing that He forgives our sins, and that we are complete in Him. It is by beholding His love, by dwelling upon it, by drinking it in, that we are to become partakers of His nature. What food is to the body, Christ must be to the soul. Food cannot benefit us unless we eat it, unless it becomes a part of our being. Christ is of no value to us if we do not know Him as a personal Saviour. A theoretical knowledge will do us no good. We must feed upon Him, receive Him into the heart, so that His life becomes our life. His love, His grace, must be assimilated.” DA 389.
Note these terms about eating and digesting and absorbing, assimilating His love and grace, feeding upon Him, receiving Him into my heart so His life becomes my very life. Too often we think that if we will just subject ourselves a little bit to the word and sort of bombard our brain with a few choice thoughts, then something will happen. The word has such power that something does happen, but it is minor compared to what He wants to take place in your life. He wants you to do more than just take a short look at it. He wants you to reach out and embrace the whole thing so that you do more than just think about it. The will must receive and accept it. The soul is to receive it, and there is to be an assimilation of the virtues of His life such as love and grace. He comes to live His very life in me as I study His word in a new way as Nicodemus did. Then something begins to happen.
Sanctification goes even beyond that. Sanctification is more than “eating” the Bible, or the word. Some people live to eat, but a true Christian cannot live only to eat. The eating of the word is a good thing. Eating of physical food is a good thing but it must be used properly. We must eat to live. Spiritually we must eat the word in order to live; and this does not mean just to keep my heart beating and my lungs breathing air. It means I eat to work and to be active. Life produces action, and so as I eat and life comes into me by the word, I become active the way the word directs me and involves me. This action must take place, and this goes beyond the acceptance into the soul and into the will. Those are intermediate steps. All of that gets into me and does something in me.
That is the next step. “The truth of God is to sanctify the soul. The sanctifying power of truth is to abide in the soul and be carried with us to our business, there to apply its continual tests to every transaction of life, especially to our dealings with our fellow men. It is to abide in our households, having a subduing power upon the life and character of all its inmates. I must ever urge upon those who profess to believe the truth the necessity of practicing the truth. This means sanctification, and sanctification means the culture and training of every capability for the Lord’s service.” MLT 261.
Once I get the word inside of me, I must take it to my business or my job or my school, and there it must be put into effect. I must take it home and not leave it at church, or in the study or the bedroom or wherever you did your study. I must take it with me around the house and everyplace. I must take it with me in my neighborhood so that whatever has come inside of me begins to shine out of me.
What we study must be practiced. What do we call all of this? Obedience. We have trouble when we talk about obedience, and right away we arouse certain prejudiced thinking that we do not like. Sanctification is not a theory that gets in your mind and stays there and then you are sanctified because you have it in your mind. It is something that comes out of you if it is in you. It must be in you but it must come out, too. You cannot be the source of it, but He will abide in you and then reproduce His life coming out of you. There must be some activity which we call obedience; and it must be manifested in our business, our dealings with people, in our homes, and everywhere we go.
This obedience is the next step in this process. First absorbing it, receiving it, assimilating it, and then doing it. And right here is where we have problems. We do not like to think about this, and some get into deep ditches saying, “Well then, I must obey.” The Lord did not say that.
I want to show you how obedience to the word plays a part in sanctification. “Just to the degree in which the word of God is received and obeyed will it impress with its potency and touch with its life every spring of action, every phase of character. It will purify every thought, regulate every desire.” MH 136. These things will happen just to the degree that I receive and obey it.
Without the reception it does not get inside, and without the obedience it does not get outside. And without both reception and obedience, there is no sanctification. Without the obedience, and only the reception, it is only a pretense or a profession, and no one will ever see it; and we do not look much different to others, no matter how hard we try. This is a different kind of word and utilization of the word than we have in a math class or reading a book of instruction. It is a different sort of thing. There you only have to say I agree with what the book says. But now we have to do something else. We must not only agree with it, it must come into the will, into the soul, into the heart.
Even the virtues of Christ found in His book— His love and His grace--must come inside and be assimilated; and there it becomes the spring of action and the motivation of the life. Then, because my will has accepted it, I will to do His will. Once I submit my will to His will, action takes place, motivated by His presence in my life. Then comes obedience, which is that action; and that shows sanctification.
What we have said so far leaves much misunderstood, and so we have to go back and look again at this and find out just how it works. Remember, it is more than understanding. It is more than study and it is more than accepting it as truth. You must go beyond that into other dimensions, where it gets inside of you and where it produces action. This is accomplished by accepting, by receiving, by submitting, and by assimilating.
Every command of Jesus, every request, every bit of council, every example, every promise is saying literally to you and to me: “Follow Me.” All through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation the Lord is saying in all these words, “Follow Me.” He does not demand that we follow Him, He does not exact it, He does not restrict us, He only asks if we will choose to follow Him. “If ye love Me, keep My commandments.” John 14:15. He does not say you have to love Him. He does not say you have to obey Him. He only says that if you do love Him, then respond by obedience.
We read this so differently and say, “I must do it.” He does not say that. He says obey if you love Him. You can reason the other way and say that if you do not love Him, do not obey Him; and you probably will not because it is impossible to render genuine obedience to Christ if you do not love Him; although we sometimes think it is possible, but we do not do it very well. Jesus says that if we love Him, then accept His instructions because we know they are wonderful; and if we love Him because He first loved us, then we will follow Him. It is nice to follow someone you love, but it is terrible to follow someone you do not love. When His law is in my heart, I delight to do His will. When His law is not in my heart, I hate to do His will. I want to do my own will.
We do not do what is right in order to be good enough to be saved. It is not trying to climb some ladder of success into God’s favor. It is not trying to earn your way to heaven. It is serving Him because you love Him supremely, with all your heart and mind and strength. All other motivations are wrong.
Here I must walk carefully; and you may be questioning everything I am saying here. When we read in the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy about the commandments and obeying Him, we begin to look at our activities, our works, to see how we are doing or how we are not doing. The Lord says we are to behold Him and abide in Him if we love Him. Loving Him comes first, then the obeying, and not the other way around. All that works can tell you is that you do not love Him or that you do love Him. It is not how good or bad a particular work or activity is. We are always trying to find out if this or that is a good work or a bad one, or if some activity is right or wrong. This is moralizing. It is more a matter of: Do you love Him, and does He love you? Will a particular activity be nice to the One you love, or will it be bad to that One. Are you showing your love for Him or not showing your love for Him? Are you following Him, or departing and going your own way? We are talking about a love affair here. Am I alienating Jesus by my activity, or am I drawing closer to Him?
We have argued too long about what is right and wrong, and left out the love of Christ which makes it all right or all wrong in the first place. If you love Him, do the right things. We are to look at Jesus and behold Him, and not always be looking at our works no matter how good or bad we think they might be. Christ is to be my life, my inspiration, my example, my righteousness, my motivation. It is not just a matter of doing right because it is right. It is not doing what Jesus teaches and commands me because I am trying to show Him I love Him. It is doing it because I do love Him. He came and first loved me that I might love Him and show my love. He motivates me. I do not motivate Him. I do not make Him like me by doing right. He loved me so much in the first place that He brings a different life into my life. And this is all accomplished by beholding Him in the Bible, abiding in Him, feasting on Him in the word. This is a different way of looking at the Bible.
This is the way Jesus lived. He said to Philip, “Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak unto you I speak not of Myself: but the Father that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works.” John 14:10. He said He did not decide what words to say and what works to do, but that the Father is taking care of all that. He said the Father spoke and acted through Him, so if you have seen Him you have seen the Father. This was not slavery. This was an activity of love.
“As the Father hath loved Me, so have I loved you: continue ye in My love. If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love; even as I have kept My Father’s commandments, and abide in His love.” John 15:9,10. Jesus obeyed His Father because He and His Father always loved each other from past eternity. He loved His Father and was happy to obey Him. And if we keep His commandments, we abide in His love. You cannot separate love from the activity of love. If you give your wife a gift, what does she say? “You love me.” The gift is not the love, is it? The gift is because of the love. Wives love the nice things their husbands give them. The Lord gives us nice things to show His love for us, and we respond to His love by showing our love for Him. We do the things that please Him because we love Him.
“He that hath My commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me: and he that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him, and will manifest Myself to him.” John 14:21. John the beloved wrote more about this than all the other apostles put together. He made this clear when he wrote: “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments: and His commandments are not grievous.” 1 John 5:3. We have tried to segregate love and works of obedience, but John said that does not work very well. He said that it is because of our love for God that we keep them. It is all there together—the law is love, and the law is the character of God. He makes it very obvious.
“And hereby we do know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. He that saith, I know Him, and keepeth not His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoso keepeth His word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in Him. He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also so to walk, even as He walked.” 1 John 2:3-6. If Christ has control of me and becomes the King of my life, will He not make me do what He does? Not by force, but by love. How can I say I abide in Him and He in me if I do not do what He does? As soon as He has my heart, I begin to do what He does, because He is in charge and has control of me. He has come to live inside of me.
These Scriptures are quickly and easily misunderstood and distorted. Some read this and say that loving is keeping the commandments. I love you and I love the Lord, so everything is fine. At the same time they say the law is done away with. Those who believe in the law become very critical of them, and they jump in the opposite ditch and say, “I keep the law and that proves I love Him.” But it probably does not prove it. The Jews claimed they kept the law and they killed Him. We can profess to keep the law, then turn and bite and devour one another. And our enemy laughs and laughs and laughs. How can we keep four commandments and not the other six about loving our neighbor as ourselves? How can we say we do not steal from them, but eat up their reputations and characters by gossip? Have you noticed how gullible we are to gossip, especially if one of your best friends tells you? Your best friend cannot be wrong. They do not lie, do they? If they said it, it must be correct, even if it is wrong. The right person told you so it has to be true. Then you go and tell the next person, and you are believed, and then that person goes and tells someone else. We have believed hundreds of lies because the right person told us. You would be amazed at the lies we have believed about other people, and how many people have been ruined by misunderstanding and gossip. We are extremely vulnerable to this activity. Many are busy with the task of rooting out evil amongst the saints. When they see any evil thing in the saints, they root it out by gossip; and they think that is loving them and loving the church.
It is difficult for us to perceive that love is missing while we profess to keep the law. Jesus makes it a different thing by saying that when we love Him, we love one another; and the activity of the last six commandments becomes a reality. If I just receive the law without Jesus and His love, you will not find me very loving. Some people assume that the keeping of the commandments establishes the love for Christ, but that is not necessarily true. Some talk all day long about the requirements of God and almost never about their love for Him. He does not love us because we obey. He loves us in order that we might obey. We respond to His love, and then we obey Him. It is not the rules of life that He tells us to behold. He does not say, “Behold My laws and you will keep them.” It is true that we may see His love and His character in the law, but He says we are to behold Him. He tells us to look unto Him, the Author and Finisher of our faith. This is the way it is accomplished. Then you will find the blessings of sanctification in the word.
This marvelous quote should be locked into the mind: “Obedience is not a mere outward compliance, but the service of love. Obedience--the service and allegiance of love--is the true sign of discipleship.” SC 60. Obedience is not a mere outward compliance to the requirements of God. The Jews claimed to keep the law, but Christ found fault with them. They were most zealous for the law. They feared to be law-breakers, and yet Jesus constantly disputed with them about what constitutes true law keeping. They thought He broke the law. They accused Him of being permissive about Sabbath-keeping when He allowed His disciples to go though the fields and husk the grain in their hands and then eat it. Jesus had answers for that from the Bible. When He healed on the Sabbath, they thought He was desecrating that holy day. They had all kinds of conflicts with the Master who wrote the law because they thought they understood it correctly; and those are the ones who killed Him; and they believed themselves to be right in doing that.
We can profess to be law-keepers and do the same thing if our obedience is merely an outward compliance. Our hearts must be focused on Jesus. I must receive the law in Christ, and never apart from Him. He must come to abide in my heart with His fullness, beauty, and glory. Then He does something in me that brings about obedience. It cannot happen any other way.
This next quotation describes the steps that lead to sanctification in the study of God’s word: “By His perfect obedience He has made it possible for every human being to obey God’s commandments. When we submit ourselves to Christ, the heart is united with His heart, the will is merged in His will, the mind becomes one with His mind, the thoughts are brought into captivity to Him; we live His life. This is what it means to be clothed with the garment of His righteousness. Then as the Lord looks upon us He sees, not the fig-leaf garment, not the nakedness and deformity of sin, but His own robe of righteousness, which is perfect obedience to the law of Jehovah.” COL 312. Do not misunderstand that.
Suppose a woman gets married to a perfect man who is tempted in all the ways she is, but never sins. Suppose that throughout his whole life he has been a flawless human being in every respect. She submits to him and gives her whole heart to that man because she loves him so much. She is devoted to him, and esteems him, and gives him her whole heart until she says, “Not my will but yours be done.” She is wrapped up in him, and absorbed in him, until her heart is entwined with his and she cannot think about anyone else but him. Does being totally absorbed in someone ever happen in love affairs? Have you never been so in love to where you can think about that other person all day long? You have never been in love unless that has happened to you. You are really in love when you cannot get that person out of your mind.
When all this happens by love, what will happen to the woman? She will live his life. I illustrated this from a woman’s standpoint because they are the submissive ones in love by their own natures. Men are more aggressive, so women need to explain to their husbands what it is like to submit. Submission is a quality that is difficult for men to accept. They are taught not to submit and to never give in, even if it kills them. The church is to be the wife of Christ, and we all are to submit to Him. Our wills are to be wrapped up in His will, and our hearts are to be absorbed in Him. Our whole minds are to be so absorbed in Him that we want to see Him every moment all day long. We see Him at night when we go to sleep, and we see Him the first thing in the morning when we wake up.
When, by the study of the word, you find this marvelous Christ, and He abides in you by His word; when He just leaps out at you and you begin not only to believe He is that good and loving, but your will accepts it, you will submit and receive His word into your innermost soul. When your heart is absorbed in Him, and your thoughts are consumed with Jesus in His magnificent love, then you love Him; and then you live His life. The word sanctifies in that respect.
It is because He is so ultimately perfect, the epitome of righteousness, that your union with Him brings about such perfection in you. It is His life that is in you and reproduced in you. Whatever He is, He will make you to be as you are absorbed in Him, enveloped in Him, encompassed in Him, filled with Him. The word tells about this marvelous love. It says that everything else will fail, “But love never faileth.” 1 Corinthians 13:8.
The God of all might and power, the omnipotent One, the omniscient One, knows that the mightiest thing He has is love. Nothing is so great as God’s love. And He said, “I will show them My love and bombard them with My love. I will surround them with My love. I will fill them with My love.” God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, and as they see His love, they will love Him. Then their hearts will be knit with His heart, their wills merged in His will. Then they will submit gladly. They will delight to do His will and His law, because they are just so wrapped up with Jesus. And they always look at Him and cannot take their eyes off of Him.
What a marvelous person He is. God wants us to see Jesus in the Bible, and fall so completely and absolutely in love with Him that we cannot think about another person, until those in our house will get disturbed with us and distressed because we are always sitting at the feet of Jesus looking at Him. And oh, what words you will hear Him say. As you permit yourself to believe that there is One so altogether lovely, One so loving as Jesus, and as you individualize it for yourself and accept Him as your personal Savior and your personal righteousness, as the One who wants to abide in you because He loves you individually, you can say with the apostle Paul, “For me to live is Christ.” Philippians 1:21. This is not self-boasting because you will be bragging about Him. And you will ask others, “Don’t you love Him, too?”
Friend, do you long for Jesus to come? We almost never talk about it. We warn people of His coming, we frighten them and we shock them, but do we teach them to long for Jesus to return and to love His appearing? You cannot wait until He comes because He is your Lover.
Before Jesus returns, all the real Adventists will be lovers of Jesus, and they will spend so much time beholding Him in His word that their very lives will be a demonstration of His presence. “Sanctify them through Thy truth; Thy word is truth.” John 17:17. May God help us to value the precious words of everlasting life, which are the words of the Lord Jesus speaking to our souls.