The Doctrine of Christ

LESSON FORTY-SIX The Victorious Life

1. Christ was victorious over every temptation, and committed no sin. Matthew 4:10, 11; Luke 4:13, 14; 22:28; John 14:30; Hebrews 2:18; 4:15; 1 Peter 2:22; John 8:46; Isaiah 53:9. TDOC 120.2

2. Christ voluntarily made himself entirely dependent upon his Father, and did not avail himself of his divine power to save himself from committing sin. Psalm 22:9-11; Philippians 2:7; John 5:19, 30; 8:28; Hebrews 2:13, first clause. TDOC 120.3

3. Christ depended, as a man upon the life of another, that of his Father, to work the works of righteousness in him. John 14:10, 11. TDOC 120.4

4. Christ in his earthly experience was an example for us.-1 Peter 2:21; Matthew 16:24; 1 John 2:6. TDOC 120.5

5. It is our privilege to live the same victorious life which he lived. Matthew 5:48; 1 Corinthians 10:13, ARV; James 1:12; 1 Peter 1:15, 16; 1 John 3:9. TDOC 120.6

6. As Christ made himself dependent upon the Father, so we are entirely dependent upon Christ. John 15:5; 2 Corinthians 4:7. TDOC 120.7

7. As Christ depended upon the life of another, that of his ‘Father, to work the right works in him, so we must depend upon the life of another, that of Christ, to work the right works in us, it being God who works in and through Christ. 2 Corinthians 4:10, 11; Galatians 2:20; Hebrews 13:20, 21; Philippians 2:12, 13; 4:13; Colossians 1:29; Ephesians 1:19, 20; 3:20; Romans 8:10; 1 Corinthians 12:6, 11; 2 Corinthians 12:9. TDOC 121.1

8. The victorious life of Christ appropriated by faith is revealed in us as our victory. John 16:33; 2 Corinthians 2:14; Romans 8:3, 4, 37; 1 Corinthians 15:57; 1 John 4:4; 5:4. TDOC 121.2

9. He who receives and reveals the victorious life of Christ will have no ground for boasting. 1 Corinthians 4:4; 2 Corinthians 1:12; Philippians 3:13, 14; Psalm 34:2; 92:15. TDOC 121.3

NOTES

Salvation by grace applied

“The victorious life is nothing other than salvation by free grace, in present action, applied to each temptation and problem.” TDOC 121.4

Our motto

“Our victory motto must be the motto that Jesus lived by: I will put my trust in him.” TDOC 121.5

A life of victory

“The victorious life is not a life free from temptation, but a life of victory over temptation.” TDOC 121.6

The contrast

“What is that spirit of the evil one! It is written large in the two words that stand out in that Isaiah passage: ‘I will.’ Set these words against those other words: Not my will, but yours,“ TDOC 121.7

Victory’s secret

“Victory’s final secret is to believe that Christ is doing his part, that his grace is sufficient, that we are free from the law of sin, that we are under grace and not under law, and that therefore sin is not having dominion over us, that he is meeting all our needs, but we are walking in the Spirit.” TDOC 121.8

Jesus had no advantage over us

“Jesus lived the victorious life, not because he was God, but because he was perfect man; he lived as God planned that man should live. In a very true sense our Lord took to himself no more advantage in the matter of winning victory over temptations than have we, his brethren.” TDOC 121.9

Christ our victory

“This is the victory which overcomes the world, even our Christ made present with all his glorious power by faith, so that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, whom shall I fear.” TDOC 122.1

The time to fear

“To fear is to have more faith in your antagonist than in Christ. When you have found one greater than Christ, then you may fear.” TDOC 122.2

The purpose of Christ’s work

“The highest purpose of Christ’s work, for which he both ‘died and rose and revived,’ is to change us into the likeness of his own beauty of perfect purity. That risen life is no mere exaggeration of mystical rhetoric, but an imperative demand of the highest morality, and the plain issue of it is: Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body.” TDOC 122.3

“It is not more true that Christ died to save us than that he died to procure for us the means of living a divine life upon the earth a life of wonderful communion with God and with Christ, in which an Christian experiences should undergo a transfiguration, and Christian peace, joy, faith, become a thousand times the things they are in an ordinary Christian life.” TDOC 122.4

Kept through faith

“This same resurrection power is that which gives life to the soul dead in trespasses and sins.’ Ephesians 2:1. That spirit of life in Christ Jesus, ‘the power of his resurrection,’ sets men ‘free from the law of sin and death.’ Philippians 3:10; Romans 8:2. The dominion of evil is broken, and through faith the soul is kept from sin. He who opens his heart to the Spirit of Christ becomes a partaker of that mighty power which shall bring forth his body from the grave.”-The Desire of Ages, 209, 210. TDOC 122.5

God’s ideal

“God’s ideal for his children is higher than the highest human thought can reach. ‘Be you therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.’ This command is a promise. The plan of redemption contemplates our complete recovery from the power of Satan. Christ always separates the contrite soul from sin. He came to destroy the works of the devil, and he has made provision that the Holy Spirit shall be imparted to every repentant soul, to keep him from sinning.”-Id., 311. TDOC 122.6

Wholly under grace

“The reason for this life of defeat is that Christians mingle law and grace, and this makes complete victory an impossibility. When we are in defeat, it is because we are under the old covenant which can make nothing perfect. It may be that we are clear intellectually on the distinction between law and grace, but it is the mingling of them in daily experience that, results in defeat before sin. The secret of victory, then, is to get entirely from under the law and get wholly under grace for the needs of the present moment.” TDOC 122.7

A greater heresy

“If we regard the doctrine of sinless perfection as a heresy, we regard contentment with sinful imperfection as a greater heresy. And we gravely fear that many Christians make the apostle’s words, ‘If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves,’ the unconscious justification f or a low standard of Christian living. It were almost better f or one to overstate the possibilities of sanctification in his eager grasp after holiness, than to understate them in his complacent satisfaction with a traditional unholiness. Certainly it is not an edifying spectacle to see a Christian worldling throwing stones at a Christian perfectionist.” TDOC 123.1

The prevailing life

“If through the communication of the Holy Spirit the life of Christ is constantly imparted to us, that life will prevail within us. That life is absolutely sinless, as incapable of defilement as the sunbeam which has its fount and origin in the sun. In proportion to the closeness of our abiding in him will be the completeness of our deliverance from sinning. And we doubt not that there are Christians who have yielded themselves to God in such absolute surrender, and who through the upholding power of the Spirit have been so kept in that condition of surrender, that sin has not had dominion over them.” TDOC 123.2

Perfection through faith

“Christ is the ladder that Jacob saw, the base resting on the earth, and the topmost round reaching to the gate of heaven, to the very threshold of glory. If that ladder had f ailed by a single step of reaching the earth, we should have been lost. But Christ reaches us where we are. He, took our nature and overcame, that we through taking his nature might overcome. Made ‘in the likeness of sinful flesh’ (Romans 8:3), he lived a sinless life. Now by his divinity he lays hold upon the throne of heaven, while by his humanity he reaches us. He bids us by faith in him attain to the glory of the character of God. Therefore are we to be perfect, even as our ‘Father which is in heaven is perfect.”-The Desire of Ages, 311, 312. TDOC 123.3

A new life needed

“It is impossible for us, of ourselves, to escape from the pit of sin in which we are sunken. Our hearts are evil, and we cannot change them. ‘Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one.’ ‘The carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.’ Job 14:4; Romans 8:7. Education, culture, the exercise of the will, human effort, all have their proper sphere, but there they are powerless. They may produce an outward correctness of behavior, but they cannot change the heart; they cannot purify the springs of life. There must be a power working from within, a new life from above, before men can be changed from sin to holiness. That power is Christ.”-Steps to Christ, 20. TDOC 123.4

Defeat or victory

“There is ever before the Christian the possibility of tailing. There is no state of grace from which he may not, before some temptation, step into awful sin! But God’s word, which. cannot be broken, stands pledged to us that in every temptation there is ‘the way of escape.’ And our Lord Jesus is ‘the way.’ Victory over temptation was won by Christ. Satan is an already defeated foe. Defeat in temptation came to Adam. It is for every man, and every Christian, to decide whether he will share the first Adam’s defeat or the last Adam’s victory.” TDOC 124.1

The whole Christ

“These four facts-the dwelling with the Father; the voluntary coming to earth; the voluntary leaving earth; and, again, the dwelling with the Father-are the walls of the strong fortress into which we may flee and be sale. With them it stands four square to every wind that blows. Strike away one of them and it totters into ruin. Make the whole Christ your Christ; for nothing less than the whole Christ, is conceived of the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, crucified, dead, and buried, ascended into heaven, and sitting at the right hand of God, is strong enough to help your infirmities, vast enough to satisfy your desires, loving enough to love you as you need, for able to deliver you from your sins and to lift you to the glories of his own throne.” TDOC 124.2

Seek the indwelling Spirit

“The one purpose for which there has been a Christ in the world, for which there is now a Holy Spirit, was that sin may be conquered and made an end of. This is the great object for which the baptism of the Spirit and of fire was given, that in and through believers he might convince of sin, and deliver from it. Put yourself into contact with the world’s sin. Meet it in the love and faith of Jesus Christ, as the servant and helper of the needy and the wretched. Give yourself to prove the reality of your faith in Christ by your likeness to him: so will the Spirit convince the world of its unbelief. Seek the full experience of the indwelling Spirit, not for your own selfish enjoyment, but for this one end, that he can do the Father’s work through you as he did through Christ. Live, in unity of love with other believers to work and pray that men may be saved out of sin: ‘then will the world believe that God hath sent him.’ It is the life of believers in self sacrificing love that will prove to the world that Christ is a reality, and so convince it of its own of unbelief.” TDOC 124.3

Christ’s resurrection the pledge of victory

“The resurrection of Christ marked the acceptance of his work by the Father, and revealed the triumph in which that work ended. Death and all the power of the enemy were overcome, and victory wag attained. For one thing, the resurrection of Christ made sure the righteousness of faith. He rose again for our justification. So every passage of the apostle’s life which proved that his confidence in that respect was not vain, that God in Christ was truly his God, was an experience of the power of Christ’s resurrection. But the resurrection of Christ was also his emergence-his due emergence-into the power and blessedness of victorious life. In the person of Christ, life in God, and unto God, had descended into the hard conditions set for him who would associate a world of sinners to himself. In the resurrection the triumph of that enterprise came to light. Now, done with sin and free from death, and asserting his superiority to all humiliation and all conflict, he rose in the fullness of a power which he was entitled also to communicate. He rose, with full right and power to save. And so his resurrection denotes Christ as able to inspire life, and to make it victorious in his members.” TDOC 124.4

My all in all

“Holy Jesus, fount of light!
As crystal clear, forever bright,
Thou stream overflowing, pure and free;
The brightness of the cherubim,
The glow of burning seraphim,
Are darkness when compared with thee.
Be thou my pattern bright,
My study and delight,
My all in all.
Oh, teach thou me, that I may be
All pure and holy, like to thee.” TDOC 125.1