We are not to set our stakes and then interpret everything to reach this set point. Here is where some of our great Reformers have failed, and this is the reason that many who today might be mighty champions for God and the truth are warring against the truth. Let every thought, every word, and the deportment savor of that courtesy and Christian politeness toward each other which the Scriptures enjoin. God designs we should be learners, first from the living oracles, and second from our associates. This is God's order.
The Word of God is the great detector of error; to it we believe everything must be brought. The Bible must be our standard for every doctrine. We must study it reverentially. We are to receive no one's opinion without comparing it with the Scriptures. Here is divine authority, which is supreme in matters of faith.
It is the Word of the living God that is to decide all controversies. It is when people mingle their own human smartness with God's words of truth, in giving sharp thrusts to those who are in controversy with them, that they show that they have not a sacred reverence for God's Inspired Word. They mix the human with the divine, the common with the sacred, and they belittle God's Word.
We must in searching the Scriptures be filled with wisdom and power that is above the human, which will so soften and subdue our hard hearts that we will search the Scriptures as diligent students and will receive the ingrafted Word, that we may know the truth, that we may teach it to others as it is in Jesus.
The correct interpretation of the Scriptures is not all that God requires. He enjoins upon us that we should not only know the truth, but that we should practice the truth as it is in Jesus. We are to bring into our practice, in our association with others, the spirit of Him who gave us the truth. We must not only search for the truth as for hidden treasures, but it is a positive necessity, if we are laborers together with God, that we comply with the conditions laid down in His Word, and bring the spirit of Christ into our hearts, that our understanding may be strengthened and we become apt teachers to make known to others the truth revealed to us in His Word. All frivolity, all jesting and joking, all commonness, and cheapness of spirit, must be put away by Christ's ambassadors. All pride, all envy, all evil-surmisings and jealousies, must be overcome by the grace of Christ, and sobriety, humility, purity, and godliness must be encouraged and revealed in the life and character. We must eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of God. This is in doing His Word, in weaving into our lives and characters the spirit and works of Christ. Then we are one with Christ, as Christ was one with the Father. Then we are partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
There is no assurance that our doctrine is right and free from all chaff and error unless we are daily doing the will of God. If we do His will, we shall know of the doctrine. We shall see the truth in its sacred beauty. We shall accept it with reverence and godly fear, and then we can present to others that which we know is truth to others. There should be no feeling of superiority or self-exaltation in this solemn work.
The soul that is in love with God and His work will be as candid as the day. There will be no quibbling, no evading the true bearing of Scripture. God's Word is our foundation of all doctrine.-Letter 20, 1888 (The Ellen G. White 1888 Materials, 42-44).
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