And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. John 17:3.

Wait not for some magical change to be wrought in you, without taking the requisite steps yourself. Life must be with you a humble working out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in you to will and to do of His good pleasure. Halt not, but escape for your life….

Christ requires that we shall press together, that we shall be one with Him as He is one with the Father. You must depend on God, be disciplined and trained for the higher life. Yes, depend on God; wait His pleasure; follow Him; rely in obedience on the strength of His Word.

To obey when it seems the hardest is true surrender to God. This will quicken your moral nature and subdue your pride. Learn to submit your will to God’s will, and you will be made meet for the inheritance of the saints in light.—Manuscript 12, 1888.

A general faith is not enough. We must put on the robe of Christ’s righteousness and wear it openly, bravely, decidedly, exhibiting Christ, and not expect too much of finite man, but keep looking unto Jesus, and become ravished with the perfections of His character. Then we shall individually make manifest the character of Jesus, and make it evident that we are invigorated by the truth; because it sanctifies the soul and brings into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.—Letter 14, 1891.

Every missionary will have hard battles to fight with self, and these combats will not become fewer. But if we are constantly growing in Christian experience, if we continue to look to Jesus in faith, strength will be given us for every emergency. All the powers and faculties of a regenerated nature must be brought into constant, daily exercise. Every day we shall have occasion to crucify self, to war against inclination and a perverse temperament that would draw the will in a wrong direction. The repose and triumph of victory are not yet ours, except as we by faith enter into the victory that Christ has gained for us.—Letter 4, 1892.

The promises of God accepted in genuine faith have a fragrant influence upon the life and the character, making the human agent to reflect the image of the Divine…. God works on His part …, imparting grace to the one who imparts in his life the graces given him in representing genuine sanctification to the world in his own character.—Manuscript 45, 1900.

From Reflecting Christ

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth 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. Galatians 2:20.

As a Christian submits to the solemn rite of baptism, the three highest powers in the universe—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—place Their approval on his act, pledging Themselves to exert Their power in his behalf as he strives to honor God. He is buried in the likeness of Christ’s death, and is raised in the likeness of His resurrection….

The three great powers of heaven pledge Themselves to furnish the Christian with all the assistance he requires. The Spirit changes the heart of stone to the heart of flesh. And by partaking of the Word of God, Christians obtain an experience that is after the divine similitude. When Christ abides in the heart by faith, the Christian is the temple of God. Christ does not abide in the heart of the sinner, but in the heart of him who is susceptible to the influences of heaven.

The light that shines forth from the life of the true Christian testifies to his union with Christ. Self is hidden from view, and Christ is revealed…. “Now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). Then those whose lives have been hidden with Christ, those who on this earth have fought the good fight of faith, will shine forth with the Redeemer’s glory in the kingdom of God.

My brother, my sister, God’s purpose for you is that you shall live a life that will make others better—a life which will show that Christ is formed within, the hope of glory. It is His purpose that you shall be able to say with the apostle Paul, “I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me” (Galatians 2:20). In perfect content, resting in the love of Christ, trusting the Redeemer and Life-giver to work out for you the salvation of your soul, you will know, as you draw nearer and still nearer to Him, what it means to endure the seeing of Him who is invisible…. The contentment that Christ bestows is a gift worth infinitely more than gold and silver and precious stones….

Our lives are pure only when we are under the control of God, and happy only when we hold communion with Him. The luster possessed by those who have gained the richest experience is but the reflection of the light of the Sun of Righteousness. He who lives nearest to Jesus shines the brightest.—The Signs of the Times, August 16, 1905.

From Reflecting Christ

For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. 2 Corinthians 4:6.

By sin man was shut out from God. Except for the plan of redemption, eternal separation from God, the darkness of unending night, would have been his. Through the Saviour’s sacrifice, communion with God is again made possible. We may not in person approach into His presence; in our sin we may not look upon His face; but we can behold Him and commune with Him in Jesus, the Saviour. “The light of the knowledge of the glory of God” is revealed “in the face of Jesus Christ.” God is “in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself” (2 Corinthians 4:6; 5:19)….

“In him was life; and the life was the light of men” (John 1:4). The life and the death of Christ, the price of our redemption, are not only to us the promise and pledge of life, not only the means of opening again to us the treasures of wisdom: they are a broader, higher revelation of His character than even the holy ones of Eden knew.

And while Christ opens heaven to man, the life which He imparts opens the heart of man to heaven. Sin not only shuts us away from God, but destroys in the human soul both the desire and the capacity for knowing Him. All this work of evil it is Christ’s mission to undo. The faculties of the soul, paralyzed by sin, the darkened mind, the perverted will, He has power to invigorate and to restore. He opens to us the riches of the universe, and by Him the power to discern and to appropriate these treasures is imparted.

Christ is the “Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world” (verse 9). As through Christ every human being has life, so also through Him every soul receives some ray of divine light. Not only intellectual but spiritual power, a perception of right, a desire for goodness, exists in every heart. But against these principles there is struggling an antagonistic power. The result of the eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil is manifest in every man’s experience. There is in his nature a bent to evil, a force which, unaided, he cannot resist. To withstand this force, to attain that ideal which in his inmost soul he accepts as alone worthy, he can find help in but one power. That power is Christ. Cooperation with that power is man’s greatest need.—Education, 28, 29.

Christ stands as the representative of the Father, the connecting link between God and man; He is the great teacher of mankind. And He ordained that men and women should be His representatives.—Education, 33.

From Reflecting Christ

And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. Genesis 3:8.

In a knowledge of God all true knowledge and real development have their source. Wherever we turn, in the physical, the mental, or the spiritual realm; in whatever we behold, apart from the blight of sin, this knowledge is revealed. Whatever line of investigation we pursue, with a sincere purpose to arrive at truth, we are brought in touch with the unseen, mighty Intelligence that is working in and through all. The mind of man is brought into communion with the mind of God, the finite with the Infinite. The effect of such communion on body and mind and soul is beyond estimate.

In this communion is found the highest education. It is God’s own method of development. “Acquaint now thyself with him” is His message to mankind. The method outlined in these words was the method followed in the education of the father of our race. When in the glory of sinless manhood Adam stood in holy Eden, it was thus that God instructed him….

When Adam came from the Creator’s hand, he bore, in his physical, mental, and spiritual nature, a likeness to his Maker. “God created man in his own image” (Genesis 1:27), and it was His purpose that the longer man lived the more fully he should reveal this image—the more fully reflect the glory of the Creator. All his faculties were capable of development; their capacity and vigor were continually to increase. Vast was the scope offered for their exercise, glorious the field opened to their research…. Face-to-face, heart-to-heart communion with his Maker was his high privilege. Had he remained loyal to God, all this would have been his forever…. More and more fully would he have fulfilled the object of his creation, more and more fully have reflected the Creator’s glory.—Education, 14, 15.

The laws and operations of nature, and the great principles of truth that govern the spiritual universe, were opened to their minds by the infinite Author of all. In “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God” (2 Corinthians 4:6), their mental and spiritual powers developed, and they realized the highest pleasures of their holy existence….

The Garden of Eden was a representation of what God desired the whole earth to become, and it was His purpose that, as the human family increased in numbers, they should establish other homes and schools like the one He had given. Thus in course of time the whole earth might be occupied with homes and schools where the words and the works of God should be studied, and where the students should thus be fitted more and more fully to reflect, throughout endless ages, the light of the knowledge of His glory.—Education, 22.

From Reflecting Christ

The wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace. James 3:17, 18.

Wherever there is union with Christ there is love. Whatever other fruits we may bear, if love be missing, they profit nothing. Love to God and our neighbor is the very essence of our religion. No one can love Christ and not love His children. When we are united to Christ, we have the mind of Christ. Purity and love shine forth in the character, meekness and truth control the life. The very expression of the countenance is changed.

Christ abiding in the soul exerts a transforming power, and the outward aspect bears witness to the peace and joy that reign within. We drink in the love of Christ, as the branch draws nourishment from the vine. If we are grafted in Christ, if fiber by fiber we have been united with the Living Vine, we shall give evidence of the fact by bearing rich clusters of living fruit. If we are connected with the Light, we shall be channels of light, and in our words and works we shall reflect light to the world.

Those who are truly Christians are bound with the chain of love which links earth to heaven, which binds finite man to the infinite God. The light that shines in the face of Jesus Christ shines in the hearts of His followers, to the glory of God.

By beholding we are to become changed; and as we meditate upon the perfections of the divine Model, we shall desire to become wholly transformed, and renewed in the image of His purity. It is by faith in the Son of God that transformation takes place in the character, and the child of wrath becomes the child of God. He passes from death unto life; he becomes spiritual and discerns spiritual things. The wisdom of God enlightens his mind, and he beholds wondrous things out of His law…. In becoming a man of obedience to God, he has the mind of Christ, and the will of God becomes his will.

He who places himself unreservedly under the guidance of the Spirit of God will find that his mind expands and develops. He obtains an education in the service of God which is not one-sided and deficient, developing a one-sided character, but one which results in symmetry and completeness. Weaknesses that have been manifested in a vacillating will and powerless character are overcome, for continual devotion and piety bring the man in such close relation to Christ that he has the mind of Christ. He is one with Christ, having soundness and strength of principle.—Selected Messages 1:337-338.

From Reflecting Christ