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Chosen no: R-1250 a,   from: 1890 Year.

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That God's love and our love copied after his, as they relate to the world, are a different sort of love from what he and we bear toward the saints and all the household of faith, is very evident. Not that the love is of a different kind exactly, but that they are different degrees of intensity of the same quality. This is not only evident from the foregoing citations in which the special love of God for his children, those adopted into his family, is clearly specified, but it is manifest to

::R1251 : page 8::

all by their own experiences also. You love the whole world in the sense of pitying them all and wishing them all a better state of mind and body; but your pitying love for murderers and thieves, for the morally and physically unclean, is, or ought to be, very different from your higher and deeper love of affection for those who are well intentioned--the pure in heart.

It would as truly be an indication of your own moral uncleanness for you to love affectionately the morally polluted as for you not to love affectionately all those brethren who love righteousness.-- `1 John 2:15`.

God not only tells us that he loved the world, but how much he loved it, and in what way his love took shape. He did not love the sin of the world; nor were the sinful qualities of the world lovely in his sight. On the contrary, he tells us that he is angry with the wicked and that he hates evil doers. (`Psa. 7:10-17`; `139:21,22`; `Amos 5:14,15`; `Heb. 1:9`.) He tells us to be like him in our loves and hates--to hate sin and love righteousness. He says, "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him." And again, "Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them."-- `1 John 2:15`; `Eph. 5:11`.

This testimony is perfectly harmonious --we must, as lovers of God and righteousness, have no affectionate love for evil doers, though we should charitably hope that much of the evil is the result of misinformation and inherited weaknesses, and accordingly should feel and act kindly, with pitying love toward such as are out of the way, endeavoring to bring them to righteousness. Such is God's love for the world. He saw man's distress in sin and under its penalty, death; and his pitying love provided the ransom and opened up the way for all to return unto God and be abundantly pardoned and received back into his family and helped out of sin and death to righteousness and life. So then

THE REAL GOOD NEWS FOR ALL

is that God, moved by benevolence, saw that some of his human creatures, if granted a trial for life, after having had an experience with sin and its results, would choose righteousness and its reward of life. Seeing such possibilities of lovable character in men, God loved the race because of the possibilities before it. This prompted the plan and action of God in all his dealings with his creatures. God determined to give Adam and each of his posterity a chance for everlasting life, after they had an experience with sin and its wages. He proposed salvation from the consequences of the sin of Adam--salvation out of sin and death. This would be second trial or second chance for life to Adam and in the sense that all his children were represented in Adam in his trial it would be the second trial or chance for all the race--though to all but Adam it would be the first individual trial.

But in order to be just and to keep his word--that the wages of sin is death, something was needed to be done to meet the penalty that was against Adam of which all men shared the affects in that all are sinners, none being perfect or worthy of life. Would God permit his Word to be broken? Would he restore to life and favor Adam, whom he had justly sentenced to death? No. But God had taken all this into account beforehand; knowing the end from the beginning, his plans were all perfected before man's creation. He would do two things at once--he had a dearly beloved Son on the spiritual plane of existence, who was "the beginning of his creation," and the chief of all his creatures. He wanted to advance him to still higher honors and the divine nature. He would make an open display to all his intelligent creatures of how he shows favor to the obedient and humble, by testing Christ's obedience to the extremist point and then rewarding him highly--just as he had already manifested his disfavor to one (Satan) who in pride had attempted to usurp divine honors.

The redemption of man from the sentence of death would furnish an opportunity wonderfully favorable to several things: 1st, For the manifestation of the obedience of Christ and its great reward; 2nd, For the giving of another trial of life to Adam and an individual opportunity to each of his posterity; 3d, It would vindicate the law of God; and while showing his great love for men, would still maintain untarnished his absolute justice and truthfulness.

In God's due time Christ humbled himself from his higher nature and became a man, simply to carry out God's plan--to prove his full obedience and to pay man's penalty--to be a ransom or corresponding price for Adam, and by dying as his substitute to make it possible for Adam to come out of death, relieving him from the sentence of death.

Remember that the death of Christ did not change God's law. It merely removed the sentence of that law from Adam and his race, and put them under the control of Christ, the purchaser, who will discipline them and select the worthy. Thus Christ became a hope of salvation to all men, but the author of eternal salvation to those only who obey him. (`Heb. 5:9`.) And when his Bride, the Gospel church, has been selected, and he has taken his great power, he will begin the great work of giving knowledge and discipline to all the race, and selecting those who, by hearty obedience, shall be commended as lovers of righteousness, worthy of life everlasting.

Therefore, we see that the real good news for any and for all dates from the cross--everything before that was typical, and based on the coming reality. The good news is that, in God's goodness or grace, Christ Jesus tasted death for us, that we might be released from our death sentence and might have a chance to obtain life everlasting, by accepting of Christ as our Redeemer, and by obeying him and forsaking sin. It is for all, in the sense that no limitations are placed upon it--none are debarred from the privilege. So far as God's part is concerned, all will be done (during the Millennial reign of Christ) that justice and love can do. The knowledge of this salvation and of its conditions will be clearly and fully made known to all, and whoever fails of it will have himself to blame. There would be no means of knowing whether few or many, or none, would pass the trial of the Millennial age successfully, except for God's foreknowledge. He shows that there will be some found worthy of life and some unworthy, but does not tell us the proportions of each class; nor is it necessary for us to know this. Each for himself should, as soon as he hears it, embrace the good news of salvation from sin and death, and by faith and obedience make the blessing his.

W.T. R-1250 a : page 8 – 1890 r.