“By grace you have been saved through faith…We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works” (Eph. 2: 8,10)

You can go outside of this Tabernacle and look up at that window (referring to the window at the back of the pulpit), and it looks like only a mess of melted glass thrown together, unsightly. But come inside and look from within, and you see it as a beautiful piece of workmanship, written in clear texts: “Justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:24), and the law of God written out in full.

You and I can look at ourselves from the outside and all looks dark, ungainly, as it were only a tangled mass. God looks at it from the inside, as it is in Jesus. When we look through the light that God has given us from the inside as we are in Jesus Christ, we shall also see in clear texts by the Spirit of God, “Justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:1). We shall see the whole law of God written in the heart and shining in the life, and the words, “Here are those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus” (Rev. 14:12).

Those who accept Christ are looked upon not as they are in Adam, but as they are in Jesus Christ, as the sons and daughters of God. Are you glad for it? Let us take it in. In Him He had perfected His plan concerning us. Let the power of God work in us, raise us from the dead, and set us at God’s right hand in the heavenly places in Christ, where He sits.

In Him “we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory.”

Jones, General Conference Bulletin, 1895, p.368