The Fundamentals - 1917: Vol.3

The Purposes of the Incarnation. 353 Jesus Christ.” The proportion in which man knows God is the proportion in which he sees clearly to the heart of things. By and by, when the redemptive work of Christ has been perfected in man, and in the world, we shall find that all ignorance is banished, and man has found his way into light. But the liar, the one who brings darkness, has made his works far spread o’er all the face of humanity, and all ignorance and resultant despair, and all wandering aimlessly in every realm of life, are due to the work of the one whom Jesus designated a liar from the beginning. Again, the violation of love, as a work of the devil, is seen supremely in the way he entered into the heart of Judas, and made him the betrayer. All the avarice you find in the world today, and all the jealousy, and all the cruelty, are the works of the devil. Finally, he is the supreme sinner. Sin is lawlessness, which does not mean the condition o f being without law, but the con­ dition of being against law, breaking law. So that all wrong done to God in His world, all wrong done by man to man, all wrong done by man to himself, are works of the devil. To summarize then: death, darkness, hatred, find them where you will, are works of the devil. The Son of God was manifested that He might destroy the works of the devil. If at the beginning we saw Him as a soul in conflict with all these things, remember that was an indica­ tion of the program and a prophecy of the purpose. The In­ carnation was not merely the birth of a little child in whom we were to learn the secret of childhood, and in whom pres­ ently we were to see the glories of manhood. All that is true; but it was the happening in the course of human events, of that one thing through which God Himself is able to destroy the works of the devil. WHAT " destroy ” MEANS. “To destroy.” It is a word which means to dissolve, to

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