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?” We 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 we have found it to be nothing else than the faith, which brings into the life of the believer in Jesus the righteousness, virtue, and the very character of God—the faith that brings into the life 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.” Romans 1:16, 17. And this faith is the faith of Jesus, which he brought to the world, which he tested victoriously in every 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. Ephesians 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.