Power for Obedience, October 13

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 15:10. {TMK 292.1} Some who claim to believe in Jesus Christ as their Saviour have said, "No one can keep the law." On this point the words of Christ are decisive. He states, "I have kept my Father's commandments." And He is our example in all things. . . . {TMK 292.2} In the Sermon on the Mount Christ plainly declared His mission. "Think not," He said, "that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil" (Matthew 5:17). He came to carry out literally every specification concerning which the prophets had borne testimony. He who existed with the Father before the creation of the world, Himself gave the prophecies recorded by holy men--the prophecies that He came afterward to fulfill. . . . {TMK 292.3} Christ's position with His Father is one of equality. This enabled Him to become a sin offering for transgressors. He was fully sufficient to magnify the law and make it honorable. . . . He separated the precepts of Jehovah from the maxims and traditions of men. He held up the Ten Commandments as an expression of truth in all its purity. . . . {TMK 292.4} Christ came to the world to counteract Satan's falsehood that God had made a law which men could not keep. Taking humanity upon Himself, He came to this earth, and by a life of obedience showed that God has not made a law that man cannot keep. He showed that it is possible for man perfectly to obey the law. Those who accept Christ as their Saviour, becoming partakers of His divine nature, are enabled to follow His example, living in obedience to every precept of the law. Through the merits of Christ, man is to show by his obedience that he could be trusted in heaven, that he would not rebel. {TMK 292.5} Christ possessed the same nature that man possesses. He was tempted in all points like as man is tempted. The same power by which He obeyed is at man's command. {TMK 292.6}