th his very life blood would but serve to give it its
greatest power and endurance. Heroically he met the fate that he
perceived was conspiring to end his career, to wreck his teachings and
his influence. He went forth to die clear-sighted and unafraid.
He died for the sake of the truth of the message that he lived and so
diligently and heroically laboured for--the message of the ineffable
love of God for all His children and the bringing of them into the
Father's Kingdom. And we must believe from his whole life's teaching,
not to save their souls from some future punishment; not through any
demand of satisfaction on the part of God; not as any substitutionary
sacrifice to appease the demands of an angry God--for it was the exact
opposite of this that his whole life teaching endeavoured to make
known. It was supremely the love of the Father and His longing for the
love and allegiance, therefore the complete life and service of His
children. It was the beauty of holiness--the beauty of wholeness--the
wholeness of life, the saving of the whole life from the sin and
sordidness of self and thereby giving supreme satisfaction to God. It
was love, not fear. If not, then almost in a moment he changed the
entire purpose and content, the entire intent of all his previous life
work. This is unthinkable.
In his last act he did not abrogate his own expressed statement, that
the very essence of his message was expressed, as love to God and love
to one's neighbour. He did not abrogate his continually repeated
declaration that it was the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, which
brings man's life into right relations with God and into right relations
with his fellow-men, that it was his purpose to reveal and to draw all
men to, thereby aiding God's eternal purpose--to establish in this world
a state which he designated the Kingdom of Heaven wherein a social order
of brotherliness and justice, wrought and maintained through the potency
of love, would prevail. In doing this he revealed the character of God
by being himself an embodiment of it.
It was the power of a truth that was to save the life that he was
always concerned with. Therefore his statement that the Son of Man has
come that men might have life and might have it more abundantly--to save
men from sin and from failure, and secondarily from their consequences;
to make them true Sons of God and fit subjects and fit workers in His
Kingdom. Conversion according to Jesus is
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