Jesus never suppressed one word of truth, but He uttered it always in love. He exercised the greatest tact and thoughtful, kind attention in His intercourse with the people. He was never rude, never needlessly spoke a severe word, never gave needless pain to a sensitive soul. He did not censure human weakness. He spoke the truth, but always in love. He denounced hypocrisy, unbelief, and iniquity; but tears were in His voice as He uttered His scathing rebukes. He wept over Jerusalem, the city He loved, who refused to receive Him,—the Way, the Truth, and the Life. They had rejected Him, the Saviour, but He regarded them with pitying tenderness, and sorrow so deep that it broke His heart. His life was one of self-denial and thoughtful care for others. He never made truth cruel, but manifested a wonderful tenderness for humanity. Every soul was precious in His eyes. While He ever bore Himself with divine dignity, He bowed with the tenderest compassion and regard to every member of the family of God. In all, He saw fallen souls, whom it was His mission to save.BTS March 1, 1908, par. 1

Such was the character of Christ as revealed in His life. This is the character of God. It is from the Father's heart that the streams of divine compassion, manifest in Christ, flow out to the children of men. Jesus, the tender, pitying Saviour, was “God manifest in the flesh.”BTS March 1, 1908, par. 2

But we have, as it were, taken only a surface view of the life of Christ. It was to redeem us that He lived and suffered and died. He became a “Man of sorrows,” that we might be made partakers of everlasting joy. God permitted His beloved Son, full of grace and truth, to come from a world of indescribable glory to a world marred and blighted with sin, shadowed with the shadow of death and the curse. He permitted Him to leave the home of His love, the adoration of the angels, to suffer shame, insult, humiliation, hatred, and death. And Jesus bore all this untold sorrow that we might be changed to His divine image, and become the sons of God. “The chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed.” Behold Him in the wilderness, in Gethsemane, upon the cross! The spotless Son of God took upon Himself the burden of sin. He who had been one with God, felt in His soul, the awful separation that sin makes between God and man. This forced from the lips the anguished cry, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” It was the burden of sin, the sense of its terrible enormity, of its separation of the soul from God,—it was this that broke the heart of the Son of God.BTS March 1, 1908, par. 3

It was only by the death of Christ that the human race could be redeemed. Man had broken the law of God, and Christ alone could atone for the transgression. But this great sacrifice was not made in order to create in the Father's heart a love for man, to make him willing to save. No, no. “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.” God suffered with His Son. In the agony of Gethsemane, the death of Calvary, the heart of infinite love paid the price of our redemption. “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself.”BTS March 1, 1908, par. 4

February 1, 1908

May 1, 1908