The Fundamentals - 1917: Vol.2

Life in the Word 189 means whereby He may quicken a dead soul. For surely the life of the Word is in every part thereof. Such is the power of the living truth to impart life;.and herein lies the difference between the truth which God has re­ vealed in His Word, and truth which may be found elsewhere. For there is much truth which is not living truth. The multi­ plication table is tru th ; but it is not living truth. It has no quickening power. The theorems of geometry are truth; but they are not living truth. Never yet has any man been heard to testify that he had been the wretched and hopeless slave of sin, and had continued in spiritual darkness, fast bound in misery and vice until his eyes were opened by the great truth that two and two make four, or that three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles; and that thereby his life had been transformed, his soul delivered from bondage, and his heart filled with joy and peace in believing. On the other hand, in the case of a true conversion, it may have been but the shortest and simplest statement of “the Word of the truth of the Gospel” (Col. 1 :5) that was heard and believed, such as that “Christ died for the ungodly” (Rom. 5:6)'/ yet it suffices, through the mighty power of Him who raised up Christ from among the dead, to quicken together with Christ a soul that previously was dead in trespasses and sins (Eph. 1:20 ; 2:5). Thus the Word of truth becomes, in some inscrutable way, the vehicle for imparting that life of which the risen Christ, the Incarnate Word, is the only Source. Eternal life for the in­ dividual soul begins through believing “the testimony of God” (1 Cor. 1:2), and the testimony of God which He has in grace given to perishing sinners that they may believe and be saved, is “concerning His Son” (Rom. 1 :3; 1 John 5 :10), “And this is the record [or testimony], that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son” (1 John 5 : l l j . Therefore it is written of those who experienced the new birth, “For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Tesus” (Gal. 3:26).

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