[This article appeared in The Review and Herald, June 25, 1895.]
"As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you" (John 20:21). We are to bear as definite a testimony to the truth as it is in Jesus, as did Christ and His apostles. Trusting in the efficiency of the Holy Spirit, we are to testify of the mercy, goodness, and love of a crucified and risen Saviour, and thus be agents through whom the darkness will be dispelled from many minds, and cause thanksgiving and praise to ascend from many hearts to God. There is a great work to be done by every son and daughter of God. Jesus says, "If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever" (John 14:15, 16). In His prayer for His disciples, He says that He not only prayed for those in His immediate presence, but "for them also which shall believe on me through their word" (John 17:20). Again He said, "Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you. If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I" (John 14:28). Thus we see that Christ has prayed for His people, and made them abundant promises to ensure success to them as His colaborers. He said, "Greater works than these [those He did] shall he do; because I go unto my Father" (John 14:12).
O what great privileges belong to those who are believers and doers of the words of Christ! It is a knowledge of Christ as the sin bearer, as the propitiation for our iniquities, that enables us to live a life of holiness. This knowledge is the safeguard for the happiness of the human family. Satan knows that without this knowledge we should be thrown into confusion and divested of our strength. Our faith in God would be gone, and we should be left a prey to every artifice of the enemy. He has laid subtle plans by which to destroy man. It is his purpose to cast his hellish shadow, like the pall of death, between God and man, in order that he may hide Jesus from our view, so that he may cause us to forget the ministry of love and mercy, cut us off from further knowledge of God's great love and power to usward, and intercept every ray of light from heaven.
Christ alone was able to represent the Deity. He who had been in the presence of the Father from the beginning, He who was the express image of the invisible God, was alone sufficient to accomplish this work. No verbal description could reveal God to the world. Through a life of purity, a life of perfect trust and submission to the will of God, a life of humiliation such as even the highest seraph in heaven would have shrunk from, God Himself must be revealed to humanity. In order to do this, our Saviour clothed His divinity with humanity. He employed the human faculties, for only by adopting these could He be comprehended by humanity. Only humanity could reach humanity. He lived out the character of God through the human body which God had prepared for Him. He blessed the world by living out in human flesh the life of God, thus showing that He had the power to unite humanity to divinity.
Our Mission for Christ
Christ said: "No man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him" (Matthew 11:27). O how dimly the exalted work of the Son of God is comprehended! He held the salvation of the world in His hands. The commission given to the apostles is also given to His followers in this age. "Repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem" (Luke 24:47). Our Saviour has "all power in heaven and in earth" (Matthew 28:18), and this power is promised unto us. "Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth" (Acts 1:8).