Salvation Placed Within Reach of Every Human Being, July 18

Give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall. 2 Peter 1:10.CTr 206.1

Here is our life assurance policy [2 Peter 1:10]. Here we have the directions laid down as to how we shall secure the life that measures with the life of God.... Many profess the religion of Jesus Christ, but they do not live it. What is their profession good for? They might just as well trace their name in the sand—and how long would it stand?CTr 206.2

The religion of Jesus Christ makes us better men and better women.... Christ came to our world to reshape the deformed character of humanity. It was a very crooked character. God wants us to be His sons and His daughters. He wants us, during the hours of probation here, to be fitted up with all these graces that He has presented “according as his divine power hath given unto us all things.” Nothing is withheld that pertains unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him that hath called us to glory and virtue. Then the rich promise is that we shall be partakers of the divine nature. This means everything to us, to be a partaker of the divine nature.CTr 206.3

What victories should we gain in this lifetime if Christ had not overcome point after point for us in the wilderness of temptation? Here the enemy met Him with the three great leading temptations wherewith we are beset.... Christ had instituted and framed the plan Himself that with humanity upon Him, He was to bear every temptation wherewith men and women are beset.CTr 206.4

He was not to work a miracle so as to avoid suffering Himself, but He was to stand the test upon every point of appetite that could be brought to the human family.... If Adam had depended on the words of God in place of the words of a stranger, he would not have transgressed the law of Jehovah. Temptation will come to every one of us as it came to Jesus Christ, and what is our hope? We may be pressed sore with temptations, but we may overcome, because Christ has brought moral power within our reach.CTr 206.5

Everything that pertains to godliness, everything that pertains to the salvation of the human soul, is to be placed within the reach of every human being upon the face of the earth. There is no excuse for one of us to falter and fail in any respect in the work of overcoming, for Christ has said, “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.”—Manuscript 49, 1894.CTr 206.6